The Arguments of the Emperor Julian Against the Christians — page 42: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

AGAINST THE CHRISTIANS. — 19 life which they have instituted, have added but little to the nature and pursuits of mankind; and hence the Scythians received Anacharsis as one agitated with Bacchic fury. Nor in the western nations will you easily find any, except a very few, who are led to philosophize, or geo- metrize, or who are adapted to any thing of this kind, though the Roman empire is so widely extended. But these nations alone enjoy the gift of speech, and those among them who are very ingenious, are skilled in rhetoric, but they are perfectly ignorant of the mathematical disci- plines: so strong does nature appear to be. ‘Whence then arises the difference of manners in nations and legal institutes ? Moses, indeed, assigns a very fabulous cause of the dissimilitude in languages. For he says that the sons of men, assembling together, were willing to build a city, and in it a great tower ; but that God said, it was requisite he should descend, and confound their speech. And that no one may think these things are devised by me, we may read what follows in the writings of Moses: “ And they said, come, let us build us a Cc 2 COIN G HOO) SS (CO