Note 90 — IX. PORPHYRY. 233–306 (?) A.D.
Reading edition
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, xxii. The philosophical fable of Julian—The Cæsars—has been pronounced by the same historian to be “one of the most agreeable and instructive productions of ancient wit.” Its purpose is to estimate the merits or demerits of the various Emperors from Augustus to Constantine. As for the Enemy of the Beard, it may be ranked, for sarcastic wit, almost with the Jupiter in Tragedy of Lucian.