web analytics

Author: C .T.

Categories
Julian (novel) Literature

Julian, 3

Julian presiding at a conference of Sectarians
(Edward Armitage, 1875)

 
Priscus to Libanius

Athens, March 380

Yes, the edict is well known here, but the general feeling at the University is that despite its severe tone we are not apt to be persecuted. The schools are flourishing. The little Christians flock to us to be civilized, and I find them much like their Hellenist brothers. But then all young people seem to me more and more alike. They ask the same questions and they give you the same answers to the questions they ask you. I despair of teaching anyone anything, least of all myself. I have not had a new idea since I was twenty-seven.

That is why I don’t publish my lectures. Also, too many of us publish out of vanity or to attract students. At seventy-five (I am nine, not a dozen, years older than you) I am an empty flagon. Tap me and you will hear an awful hollow sound. My head is a tomb quite as empty as the one Jesus is supposed to have walked away from. I incline now to Crates and the early Cynics, less to Plato and the rest.

I am not in the least convinced that there is a Divine Oneness at the centre of the universe, nor am I susceptible to magic, unlike Julian, who was hopelessly gullible. I often thought Maximus exploited his good-heartedness. But then I never could endure Maximus. How he used to waste Julian’s time with his séances and arcane gibberish! I teased the Emperor about him once, but Julian only laughed and said, “Who knows through what door wisdom will walk?”

As to your publishing project, I am not at all certain that a sympathetic biography of Julian would have the slightest effect at this time. Theodosius is a military politician, impressed by bishops. He might of course sanction a biography of his predecessor simply because Julian is much admired to this day, though not for his philosophy. Julian is admired because he was young and handsome and the most successful general of our century. The people have a touching admiration for generals who win battles, which is why there are no heroes today.

But if Theodosius did permit a biography, it would have to avoid the religious issue. The bishops would see to that. And for ferocity there is nothing on earth to equal a Christian bishop hunting “heresy”, as they call any opinion contrary to their own. Especially confident are they on that subject where they are as ignorant as the rest of mankind.

Anyway, I don’t want to fight them, because I am one and they are many. And though I am, as you so comfortingly suggest, old and near the end of my life, I enjoy amazingly good health. I am told that I look no different than I did at forty, and I am still capable of the sexual act at almost any time. This vitality repels Hippia, who has aged noticeably in the last few years, but it seems to please various young women in a certain quarter of Athens which you doubtless have heard of—in novels of the Milesian school!

Do I make myself clear? I have no wish to be burned alive or stoned or tacked up to the door of a Christian church, or “charnel house” as Julian used to call them. You may be as brave as you like and I will applaud you in my heart. But I have no intention of writing a single sentence about Julian, fond as I was of him and alarmed as I am at the strange course our world has taken since the adventurer Constantine sold us to the bishops.

Julian’s memoir was written during the last four months of his life. It was begun in March 363, at Hierapolis. Nearly every night during our invasion of Persia he would dictate recollections of his early life. The result is a bit helter-skelter, for both as a writer and as a man he was swift and impulsive. He once told me that he would like to compose an autobiography of the order of Marcus Aurelius to Himself, but he lacked that writer’s discipline.

Julian was also influenced by Xenophon’s The March Upcountry, since Xenophon took much the same route we did seven centuries later. Julian’s interest in history was always lively, and he was a great sightseer. The resulting memoir is something of a hybrid; even so, Julian was often an engaging writer, and if he was not better it is because it is hard to be emperor, philosopher and general all at once. He was also indiscreet about everyone.

I hope you forgive him. I have done so. He suspected that he had very little time and he wanted to get everything said. As for his mysterious death, I have a theory as to what happened, which I will explain to you in due course.

I have never quite known what to do with this work. When Julian died, I took all his personal papers, suspecting that his Christian successors would destroy them. I had no right to these papers, of course, but I don’t regret my theft. I told no one about the memoir until I was back safe in Antioch, where I must have mentioned it to you the day you read us your famous eulogy. I was so moved by your eloquence that I betrayed my own confidence.

I am now having a fair copy made of the manuscript. You are misinformed if you think copying is cheaper here than at Antioch. Quite the contrary. The estimated cost will run to eighty gold solidi, which I suggest you send by return post. On receipt of the full amount, I will send you the book to use as you see fit. Only do not mention to anyone that I had any connection with the matter. I have not the slightest desire to endure martyrdom at this time, or ever.

I thought I had written you about your collection of letters. I did get the book and it was very thoughtful of you to send it to me. We are all in your debt for those letters, especially yours to Julian. They are wise. I know of no other philosopher so sensible of posterity as to keep copies of every letter he writes, realizing that even his most trivial effusion has, in the context of the large body of his work, an eternal value.

Hippia joins me in wishing you good health.

Categories
Patriarchy Real men

In defense of white sharia

by Sacco Vandal

Donald Thoresen recently wrote a criticism of the White Sharia meme, wherein he alleged that the proponents of the meme may perhaps be suffering from “self-hatred… and the internalization of white subservience.” As one of the genuine originators of the meme—which was first promulgated on my podcast, The War Room, in late 2016—I assure you: this is simply not the case.

In his piece, Thoresen wonders why anyone on the Alt Right would be “attracted to the brutality of the Islamic world” and advises those who enjoy the White Sharia meme to “decolonize themselves.” Unfortunately, it is Thoresen who needs to decolonize himself. He seems to have internalized the attempts of the darker races to meme our men into pacifistic, overly-civilized weaklings. Our enemies have facilitated this lie precisely in order to disarm us before moving in for the kill. But, in reality, barbarity is not foreign to us whites.

We should never forget that Faustian man was once, not so long ago, the most vicious and barbaric player on the world stage. Oswald Spengler referred to early Western man as “the red-haired barbarian” of “Frankistan.” Whites did not conquer the entire Earth by being nice or civilized; Whites conquered the world by sailing into foreign lands and taking those lands by force. Vikings, Crusaders, and Conquistadores alike were all practitioners of rape, pillage, and plunder.

But, alas, we have lost that barbarity. Our enemies have successfully memed us into cowardly weaklings.

____________

Read it all: here

Categories
Quotable quotes

Nature

“National Socialism was not invented by Adolf Hitler, but is the conscious expression of the fundamental Laws of Nature governing our lives.”

“As National Socialists we follow no other voice than the voice of Nature and no other ethic than the ethic of Nature, and we know only one mortal sin: to try to revolt against this ethic.”

“If the world does not accept National Socialism as its only hope of a future, man will be facing destruction. This will be a logical consequence of his continuous violations of the Laws of Nature.”

—Povl Heinrich Riis-Knudsen

Categories
James Mason Swastika

Siege, 4

Serious steps

Hitler did not arrive at January 30th, 1933, in a dream. Nor was the NSDAP [National Socialist German Worker’s Party] itself an idle concoction. Hitler did not get off the ground politically until after he was thirty years of age, after he had been orphaned, after he had existed in the streets of Vienna, after he had gone through the horrors of the First World War.

The idea of National Socialism, the Swastika, the social ferment and disorder in Germany and Europe, even the very men who were to make up his winning team, every element was there, in place, active, just waiting for Hitler to appear as catalyst that would lead to the Machitergreifung [seizure of power] in 1933. At no point did Hitler, in his off-hours or his idle frustration, imagine that any idea, effort, or group would be “keen”, “swift”, “fun”, or “groovy”.

Everything that was done was done because it had to be done. Hitler, like the master that he was, with consummate skill, played the ball exactly where it lay, utilizing the forces and elements at hand around him, applying them effectively and appropriately, step-by- step, to victory.

Joseph Tommasi did the very same thing as Adolf Hitler. Perhaps his is the closest comparison to Hitler’s methodology to date. Was he a copy-cat, aping the Marxists? If he was, so was Hitler. In all frankness, he took the name SIEGE from an L.A. County Library book by that title which was devoted to the Weather Underground faction of the SDS [the militant Leftist group Students for a Democratic Society].

He took the name National Socialist Liberation Front from an earlier Movement effort at organizing Whites on campuses, a name, by the way, copied from the National Liberation Front of the Viet Cong. He let his hair grow long and wore olive drab fatigues. This and much more he adopted solely in order to “get with the times” and manners of the present day reality, in order to be effective.

And he was tremendously effective in the one year of life he had left to him from 1974 to 1975. Crackpot games and escapades don’t generally outlive their progenitors by a decade, going on to gain strength and influence and to set the pace for the rest of an entire school of thought.

I mention Tommasi and the NSLF as major landmarks in our desperate drive to get serious in our modus operandi. Even with Universal Order I retain the publication title of SIEGE as tribute to this fact. Getting a bit deeper, war is to politics what politics is to the Idea. Of course minus the Idea, all is futile, just like the “power” wielded by the System and the Jews. Tommasi was more of a great general than he was a philosopher.

He opened our eyes to strategy and tactics rather than the nature of our purpose. But is that not precisely what we are in direst need of? It won’t get there unless we put it there. Thinking about it, and writing about it won’t put it there. Only a serious, step-by- step program of organized action will bring it about. And not “treadmill” action but forward action.

Vol. XII, #7 – July, 1983

Categories
Miscegenation

Titans

Food for thought from the prologue of March of the Titans: The Complete History of the White Race:

 
Politically correct historians blame the rise and fall of the great nations of the past on politics, economics, morals, lawlessness, debt, environment, and a host of other superficial reasons.

As long as a civilization’s founding race maintains its territorial integrity and does not use large numbers of any other alien race to do its labour, that civilization will remain in existence.

In India, the invading Indo-Aryans established a strict segregation system to keep themselves separate from the local dark skinned native population. This system was so strict that it has lasted to this day and has become known as the caste system. However, even the strictest segregation (and Aryan laws prescribing punishments such as death for miscegenation) did not prevent the majority population from eventually swallowing up the ruling Aryans until the situation has been reached today where only a very few high caste Brahmin Indians could still pass as Europeans.

Exactly the same thing happened in Central Asia, Egypt, Sumeria and to a lesser degree, modern Turkey. Slowly but surely, as these civilizations relied more and more on others to do their work for them, or were physically conquered by other races, their population makeup became darker and darker.

Categories
Civil war Evil James Mason

Siege, 3

Mail-Order Revolution?

At the time of the first American Revolution the adversary was the King of England. This man could have been called a lot of things but he couldn’t be called evil. The enemy today is the U.S. Government itself and it is, by every standard of measure, the most evil thing that has ever existed on earth. This, once it has sunk home, should be a good enough indicator of the sort of struggle we have ahead of us.

I’m not going to agonize over “How evil is it?” because that would be typically Right Wing and a waste of time. Rather, I’m going to tell you what that means, or should mean to you if you claim to have the three big essentials for accomplishing anything that were set forth by George Lincoln Rockwell over twenty years ago: sufficient intelligence to perceive and understand; sufficient strength, courage and resources to act; and sufficient will to persevere in spite of whatever obstacle or hardship.

It means this: they’re not going to let us do it. It means that we’re going to have to do it in spite of them. Over their dead bodies.

Will this be done by any legally chartered, tax-paying outfit? Will it be done by any outfits that own land and have public headquarters? Will it be done by those with big bank accounts (by “big” I mean those that read in figures greater than four digits) who deposit, withdraw and earn interest? Will it be accomplished by strings of P.O. boxes? The best, most sobering question I can hit anyone with is: will this, the most evil system on earth, allow anything even remotely dangerous to pass through its own postal system, to apply for and get special bulk rate mail permits, etc.?

The answer is a flat no. Those who point to the dozens of outfits currently operating in an attempt to belie that statement are in a hopeless fog. Those who agree but qualify it with, “Up to a point”, may have hope left yet. Those who disagree totally would also believe we can win through the electorate, with the consent of the masses. Those who partially agree, I suppose, imagine we will have to fight a “partial” revolution.

Despite hopeful showings of any Nazi or Klan candidates at the polls, it amounts to nothing concrete; if they gain a lot of votes but fail to win the election they are as bad off as before because those voters haven’t got the guts to do anything more than pull a lever in secret… they’ll never make contact or provide support directly; and those that may win the election are in for the hassle of their lives dealing with “fellow Democrats”, etc., who are rabidly pro-Jew, pro-Black, if not outright Red. (But hats off to those few who try as they do lend to the revolutionary climate and help reveal by their results what the national pulse-rate is like, and what kind of potential support we might expect once a full-scale revolt is launched).

And here again, can you picture a scenario like this: that great “Silent Majority” has at last gotten fed up, found its wits and given the Nazis or the Klan a voter mandate. The Jews, the Blacks, and the assorted fanatic Reds, etc. least of all to mention the entrenched Capitalist System manned largely by sick, liberal Whites give up, say it was a fair fight, shake hands and turn it all over to us.

It’s just too crazy to contemplate. If it even started to look like we were verging on some kind of real power they’d go nuts and pull out all stops against us. It has even been predicted that they would go as far as to use H-Bombs against any large strongholds and I wouldn’t doubt it a bit considering the stakes.

It’ll be a real fight but it won’t be a fair fight. Matters of survival seldom are.

Vol IX, # 4, August, 1980

Categories
Arthur de Gobineau Charles Darwin Nordicism Racial studies Science

Raciology, 2


 
Racial theories in physical anthropology, 1850-1918

The scientific classification established by Carl Linnaeus is requisite to any human racial classification scheme. In the 19th century, unilineal evolution (a.k.a. classical social evolution) was a conflation of competing sociologic and anthropologic theories proposing that Western European culture was the acme of human socio-cultural evolution.

The proposal that social status is unilineal—from primitive to civilized, from agricultural to industrial—became popular among philosophers, including Friedrich Hegel, Immanuel Kant and Auguste Comte. The Christian Bible was interpreted to sanction slavery and from the 1820s to the 1850s was often used in the antebellum Southern United States, by writers such as the Rev. Richard Furman and Thomas R. Cobb, to enforce the idea that Negroes had been created inferior, and thus suited to slavery.

 
Charles Darwin

Darwin’s influential 1859 book On the Origin of Species did not discuss human origins. The extended wording on the title page, which adds By Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, uses the general term “races” as an alternative for “varieties” and does not carry the modern connotation of human races. The first use in the book refers to “the several races, for instance, of the cabbage” and proceeds to a discussion of “the hereditary varieties or races of our domestic animals and plants.”

In The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871), Darwin examined the question of “Arguments in favour of, and opposed to, ranking the so-called races of man as distinct species.” In Richard Weikart’s 2004 book From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics and Racism in Germany he wrote:

Darwin clearly believed that the struggle for existence among humans would result in racial extermination. In Descent of Man he asserted, “At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace throughout the world the savage races.”

The quoted passage, in full context, reads:

At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as Professor Schaaffhausen has remarked, will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian and the gorilla. (The Descent of Man, 1871, Volume I, Chapter VI: “On the Affinities and Genealogy of Man,” pages 200-201).

Darwin contrasted the “civilized races” with the “savage races.” Like most of his contemporaries, except the naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, he did not distinguish “biological race” from “cultural race.” Moreover, he noted that savage races risked extinction more from white European colonialism, than from evolutionary inadequacy. On the question of differences between races, Darwin wrote:

There is, however, no doubt that the various races, when carefully compared and measured, differ much from each other—as in the texture of the hair, the relative proportions of all parts of the body, the capacity of the lungs, the form and capacity of the skull, and even in the convolutions of the brain. But it would be an endless task to specify the numerous points of structural difference. The races differ also in constitution, in acclimatisation, and in liability to certain diseases.

Their mental characteristics are likewise very distinct; chiefly as it would appear in their emotional, but partly in their intellectual, faculties. Every one who has had the opportunity of comparison, must have been struck with the contrast between the taciturn, even morose, aborigines of S. America and the light-hearted, talkative negroes. There is a nearly similar contrast between the Malays and the Papuans, who live under the same physical conditions, and are separated from each other only by a narrow space of sea.

In An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races (1853-55), Arthur de Gobineau (1816-1882), a French aristocrat and writer, proposed three human races and claimed that miscegenation would lead to the collapse of civilization. He established the equation of the terms “Germanic race” and “Aryan race.”

Categories
Civil war James Mason

Siege, 2

Revolution through armed struggle

“The true guerrilla is never beaten. He will never negotiate away his freedom. He will never compromise his ideals. He will never surrender.

“History offers many examples of far larger and better equipped armies that were finally defeated by guerrillas. They can fight on for years, even generations. Guerrilla bands can fight in the cities, country, forests, swamps, deserts or mountains. They are everywhere and yet nowhere. They strike without warning and vanish without a trace. They take away with them the arms, food and ammunition they will need to fight again another day.

“The guerrilla is a grim fighter and a terrible foe.

“His strength is in his heart—in his love for his Race—in his hatred for the enemy.”

—Anonymous

“…a unit can either fight a real enemy, or it must lose. And again, a unit not fighting a real enemy is in the service of another power—there is no middle ground. If a unit is not fighting for itself, it is fighting against itself.”

—Francis Parker Yockey

“The lost man, who has no belongings, no outside interests, no personal ties of any sort—not even a name. Possessed of but one thought, interest and passion—the revolution. A man who has broken with Society, broken with its laws and conventions. He must despise the opinions of others, and be prepared for death and torture at any time. Hard towards himself, he must be hard to others, and in his heart there must be no place for love, friendship, gratitude or even honor.”

—Mikhail Bakunin

 

Phase one has phased out

Hardly an individual receiving this bulletin will be unfamiliar with the name at the top [National Socialist Liberation Front]. Lately with an organization of the “Mass Strategy” set, and currently on my own at last, unlike all other ventures of the past this one will succeed or fall flat due to the abilities or lack of them of just one person: ME. No more excuses or dependence on different backers or front-men, both of which have a way of never failing to screw up at the critical time. There will be those who will say that I’ve been able to go through fronts and front-men like a snake his skin.

True, up to a point, but that has ended now and for two reasons: one, there are no more of them left; and two, those surviving that I am no longer with or have never been with are still getting nowhere at a blinding rate of speed while the conditions in the country and in the world are becoming more and more revolutionary. I have been increasingly alarmed at this trend for quite a while, and my nerves won’t allow me to sit back and continue to play more games while the storm clouds build.

I’ve been associated with a lot of Nazi periodicals in the past. Some were original, some were assumed and some were resurrected. Some I lifted from others and some were lifted from me. I’ve been cheered and condemned. I’ve been called magnificent and I’ve been called everything from “white nigger” to a “slime-dripping reptile”.

As stated, I’ve been with the Mass Strategists—started out there a long time ago—gone with the Armed Struggle, and back again with other Mass Strategists. Personally I must say that I strongly favor the Armed Struggle. In format I’ve issued everything from downright rags to thick journals to tabloid newspapers. I’ve learned that, surprisingly, it doesn’t matter much what the format is or its appearance. Not even what you say or how you say it. Just that you know what the hell you’re talking about and who you are addressing it to.

Why, for example, talk out of the side of your mouth in legalistic euphemisms appealing to the noble instincts of a handful of Right Wing types while the bottom line must always come down to revolution, which scares them off? Why indeed break your back trying to get up a “mass” publication when you know damned good and well that the masses will never see it? A useless ploy directed at a useless bunch. (Or could it possibly be that the whole point to this nonsense is some sort of personal thrill or kick and, if luck is with you, maybe an easy living on the side?)

You can’t try to do two contradictory things at once in a too-little-too-late fashion. But that’s the history of the U.S. Right Wing of which the Nazis are a part in all but ideology. The whole basis of the Right Wing was to try and “hold”, defend a shrinking perimeter, shouting “Never!”, anti-this and anti-that. One can only be shoved over the brink so many times, or trampled and annihilated up to a certain point when one must admit that, if it was a defensive struggle that was being waged, it was lost a little while ago.

Vol. IX, #4- August, 1980

This was the first segment of the first
issue of James Mason’s revived SIEGE.

Categories
Julian (novel) Literature

Julian, 2

As to yesterday’s London terrorist attack I agree with Hunter Wallace that “There is nothing new to add here” (at any event, remember that only the news that I consider important will be mentioned at the Addenda). More important is to hammer on our view that the religion of our parents means white genocide. In the first pages of Julian we see a dramatisation of how ancient intellectuals dealt with a hostile takeover of their Hellenic culture by a cult of Levantine extraction:

 

Youth

I

Libanius to Priscus

Antioch, March [A.D.] 380

Yesterday morning as I was about to enter the lecture hall, I was stopped by a Christian student who asked me in a voice eager with malice, “Have you heard about the Emperor Theodosius?”

I cleared my throat ready to investigate the nature of this question, but he was too quick for me. “He has been baptized a Christian.”

I was non-committal. Nowadays, one never knows who is a secret agent. Also, I was not particularly surprised at the news. When Theodosius fell ill last winter and the bishops arrived like vultures to pray over him, I knew that should he recover they would take full credit for having saved him. He survived. Now we have a Christian emperor in the East, to match Gratian, our Christian emperor in the West. It was inevitable.

I turned to go inside but the young man was hardly finished with his pleasant task. “Theodosius has also issued an edict. It was just read in front of the senate house. I heard it. Did you?”

“No. But I always enjoy imperial prose,” I said politely.

“You may not enjoy this. The Emperor has declared heretic all those who do not follow the Nicene Creed.”

“I’m afraid Christian theology is not really my subject. The edict hardly applies to those of us who are still faithful to philosophy.”

“It applies to everyone in the East.” He said this slowly, watching me all the while. “The Emperor has even appointed an Inquisitor to determine one’s faith. The days of toleration are over.”

I was speechless; the sun flared in my eyes; all things grew confused and I wondered if I was about to faint, or even die. But the voices of two colleagues recalled me. I could tell by the way they greeted me that they, too, had heard about the edict and were curious to know my reaction. I gave them no pleasure.

“Of course I expected it,” I said. “The Empress Postuma wrote me only this week to say that…” I invented freely. I have not of course heard from the Empress in some months, but I thought that the enemy should be reminded to what extent I enjoy the favour of Gratian and Postuma. It is humiliating to be forced to protect oneself in this way, but these are dangerous times.

I did not lecture yesterday. I went straight home. I am now living in Daphne, by the way, a charming suburb which I prefer to Antioch proper because of the quiet. As I get older, I find that the slightest sound in the night disturbs me and, once awake, I have difficulty falling asleep again. You can imagine how intolerable my old house in the city became. You remember the house; it was there that I gave the reception for the Emperor Julian when he…

But I forget. You were not there, and you were much missed! My memory plays me odd tricks these days. Even worse, I tend to mislay the notes I jot down as reminders, or (terrible confession!) when I do find them, I am often unable to decipher my own handwriting. Age spares us nothing, old friend. Like ancient trees, we die from the top.

Except for occasional lectures, I seldom go into town, for the people, though my own, distress me with their loud voices and continual quarrelling, their gambling and sensuality. They are hopelessly frivolous. Nights are made day with artificial light, while nearly all the men now use depilatories, which makes it difficult to tell them from women… to think how I once eulogized this city! But I suppose one must be tolerant, recalling that the Antiochenes are the victims of a demoralizingly sultry climate, the proximity of Asia and of course that pernicious Christian doctrine which asserts that a sprinkling of water (and a small donation) will wash away sin, again and again and again.

Now, my old friend, as I sit here in my study surrounded by our proscribed friends (I mean those books of Greece which made the mind of man), let me tell you what thoughts I had last night—a sleepless night not only because of the edict but because two cats saw fit to enliven my despair with the noise of lust (only an Egyptian would worship a cat). I am weary today but determined.

We must fight back. What happens to us personally is not important, but what happens to civilization is a matter of desperate concern. During my sleepless night, I thought of various appeals that might be made to our new Emperor. I have a copy of the edict before me as I write. It is composed in bad bureaucratic Greek, the official style of the bishops, whose crudity of language is equalled only by the confusion of their thought. Not unlike those celebrated minutes of the council at—where was it? Chalcedon?—which we used to read aloud to one another with such delight! Carefree days, never to come again. Unless we act now.

Priscus, I am sixty-six years old and you are, as I recall, a dozen years older than I. We have reached an age when death is a commonplace not to be feared, especially by us, for is not all philosophy but preparation for a serene dying? And are we not true philosophers who have nothing to lose but that which in the natural course we shall surrender in any case, more soon than late?

I have already had several seizures in recent years which left me unconscious and weakened, and of course my chronic cough, aggravated by an unseasonable wet winter, threatens to choke me to death at any time. I am also losing my sight; and I suffer from a most painful form of gout. Therefore let us, fearing nothing, join forces and strike back at the Christians before they entirely destroy the world we love.

My plan is this. Seventeen years ago when you returned from Persia, you told me that our beloved friend and pupil, the Emperor Julian, had written a fragment of memoir which you had got hold of at the time of his death. I have often thought to write you for a copy, simply for my own edification. I realized then, as did you, that publication was out of the question, popular though Julian was and still is, even though his work to restore the true gods has been undone.

Under the Emperors Valentinian and Valens we had to be politic and cautious if we were to be allowed to go on teaching. But now in the light of this new edict, I say: an end to caution! We have nothing but two old bodies to lose, while there is eternal glory to be gained by publishing Julian’s memoir, with an appropriate biography to be written by either or both of us. I knew his quality best, of course, but you were with him in Persia and saw him die.

So between the two of us, I his teacher and you his philosopher-companion, we can rehabilitate his memory and with close reasoning show the justice of his contest with the Christians. I have written about him in the past, and boldly. I refer particularly to the eulogy I composed just after his death when, if I may say so, I was able to bring tears even to hard Christian eyes.

Shortly afterwards, I published my correspondence with Julian. Incidentally, I sent you a copy and though you never acknowledged this gift, I do hope you found it interesting. If by any chance you did not receive it, I shall be happy to send you another one. I kept all of Julian’s letters to me over the years, as well as copies of my own letters to him.

One can never rely on the great keeping one’s letters; and should those letters vanish, one is apt to be remembered only as the mysterious half of a dialogue to be reconstructed in the vaguest way from the surviving (and sometimes lesser!) half of the exchange. Finally, I am at work on an oration to be called “On Avenging the Emperor Julian”. I mean to dedicate this work to Theodosius.

Let me know as soon as possible if you concur in my plan. I repeat: we have nothing to lose. And the world has much to gain. By the way, as a sign of the times, there is now a Latin Academy at Antioch, with a heavy enrolment. It is enough to chill the blood. The young men are deserting Hellenic studies for Roman law in the hopes of government preferment. My own classes are still large but many of my colleagues are literally starving to death. Recently, a student (Christian, of course) most tactfully suggested that I, Libanius, learn Latin! At my age and after a life-time devoted to Greek!

I told him that as I was not a lawyer there was nothing I needed to read in that ugly language, which has produced only one poem and that a depressing paraphrase of our great Homer. I hope after so many years of silence between us that this letter finds you and your admirable wife, Hippin, in good health. I envy you your life at Athens, the natural centre of our universe. Do I need to add that I will of course defray any expenses you might incur in having Julian’s memoir copied? The price of copying, luckily, is less at Athens than here at Antioch. Books always cost more in those cities where they are least read!

Added: An old rumour has just been confirmed. The Great King of Persia, Sapor, is dead at last. He was over eighty and reigned most of his life. A strange coincidence that the king who struck down our beloved Julian should die just as we are about to restore his memory. I was once told that Sapor had read my Life of Demosthenes and admired it. How marvellous books are, crossing worlds and centuries, defeating ignorance and, finally, cruel time itself. Let us make Julian live again, and for all time!

Categories
James Mason

Siege, 1

Preface to the second edition

SIEGE has turned out from the beginning to have had a remarkable career. Born out of emergency in the summer of 1980, it pulled its own weight financially for the six years of its original run as a monthly newsletter until I decided to end it in the summer of 1986.

That was the nuts-and-bolts part of it. And that is important unless one is so taken up by hobbyism that they are willing to pour their own money into a losing venture. I was not and am not. The interest must be out there; otherwise, why would anyone bother?

Naturally, your packaging must contain a certain minimum of professionalism, but beyond that, you really ought to be saying something worth saying and preferably something that hasn’t been already said. From the start, I felt I had these criteria together by virtue of a long career already behind me in what is generically called “the Movement”.

In short, I felt I had seen all the mistakes that could happen and heard or read all the garbage that could be spoken or written, at least as regards the subject matter that this “Movement” claims to specialize in. I knew I could avoid all that at the very least.

Three years after the termination of the SIEGE newsletter, that is, in 1989, an energetic and idealistic young man approached me with the proposal of making SIEGE into a book. If I’d supply him with a complete set of the newsletters, some seventy-two issues, he’d edit them into a book and publish them at his own expense. I said all right, that I’d help him in any way I could, but I cautioned him that, in ten year’s time, he could still have them piled in his closet or garage.

He accepted the risk and, well before ten years were out, SIEGE was a sensation and a complete sell-out. They tell me that copies of this first edition, when they can be found on the Internet, are going for a cool $150.00 apiece. I’d have done well to sat on a couple of cartons of them at the time, but I’m not an investor nor am I a mercenary. All of my “freebies” were likewise handed out freely to friends and associates.

Then, by the mid-Nineties (the book SIEGE having first appeared in 1993), the letters began to come to me begging for a source for a copy of the book. My only answer was that, if I needed one for myself, I wouldn’t know where to go about getting it. And so it only intensified as the Nineties gave way to the new Millennium. So it has stood up until now, after another young and idealistic person has come forth to give us this second edition.

Once again, I determined that the interest was either going to be present or it was not. Beyond mere interest, there was going to once again have to be the expertise as well as the wherewithal to make it a reality. Because things had not gotten any easier since the first edition had been undertaken. One of the reasons for the long time required to bring that first edition out was the difficulty in finding a printer who’d handle it. In light of the events of September 11th, 2001 , that already tiny pool has just about evaporated completely.

And yet where there’s a genuine will there’s usually a way. You’re holding that in your hands.

We felt at the time that we might be letting ourselves in for some hassle from the System due to the perhaps “volatile” content of SIEGE and, indeed, the one “Movement” attorney at the time suggested we supply him with a copy, “just in case.” As it turns out, not only did the System go out of its way to ignore SIEGE, so did all but one of the so-called “leaders” within this self-same “Movement”. As might be considered my right, I ascribed it to jealousy.

The young man had done a magnificent job with the book, blowing whatever might have been its next closest competitor right out of the water, and I, for myself, had from the very beginning chosen not to waste a single word on tripe. That was the winning combination. This same formula had always been there for anyone to use. Why no one used it before is taken up in the pages of SIEGE itself. One more reason why the book was generally banned by the “Movement”.

But never was I interested in convincing anyone else of my sincerity, much less was I interested in impressing anyone who was more or less of my own persuasion. First, to distill some real truth and then to package it for the consumption by some minds who might just make a difference with it was my only concern. And things over the course of the last two decades and more have tended to show that we’ve actually enjoyed some success in the goal.

This new edition is little changed from the first. The new publisher is apparently convinced that the book holds up well enough after twenty years so as to be worth one more turn on the merry-go-round. As its author, I’m aware where the book has dated and, even though I’d retract not a word from it, I might add a few things. But that would constitute another work. I, too, am convinced that SIEGE remains cutting-edge enough even today and still contains enough Movement history so as to be eminently worth reading.

So here it is and I must confess that I am most gratified by it.

Now, after all this time, a fair question might be of this literary antique and oddity: Were we dealing in a bit of prophecy and also of “I-Told-You-So” at the time, and now, in the present, has it all become “I-Told-You-So” with little, if any prophecy, left to it?

You’ll have to be the judge of that.

James Mason, Spring 2003

 

______ 卐 ______

 

To order a luxury copy, bound in hard cover by a traditional bookbinder, contact the publisher of Daybreak:

[email protected]