impracticability of the end itself. I. To look, first, at the positive side of his plan, the resto- ration and reformation of heathenism : He reinstated, in its ancient splendor, the worship of the gods at the public expense ; called forth hosts of priests from concealment ; conferred upon them all their former privileges, and showed them every honor ; enjoined upon the soldiers and civil ofiicers attendance at the forsaken temples and altars; forgot no god or goddess, though himself specially devoted to the worship of Apollo, or the sun ; and notwithstanding his parsimony in other respects, caused the rarest birds and whole herds of bulls and lambs to be sacrificed, until the continuance of the species became a subject of concern.' He removed the cross and the monogram of Christ from the coins and standards, and replaced the former pagan symbols. He surrounded the statues and portraits of the emj^erors with the signs of idolatry, that every one might be compelled to bow before the gods, who would pay the emperors due respect. He advocated images of the gods on the same grounds on which afterwards the Christian iconolaters defended the images of the saints. If you love the emperor, if you love your father, says he, you like to see his portrait ; so the friend of the gods loves to look upon their images, by which he is pervaded with rever- ence for the invisible gods, who are looking down upon him. Julian led the way himself with a complete example. He discovered on every occasion the utmost zeal for the heathen ' Ammianus Marc. xxv. i . . . innumeras sine parsimonia pecudes mactans ut oeatimaretur, si revertisset de Partbis, boves jam defuturos. 48 THIRD PEKIOD. A.D. 311-590. religion, and performed, with tlie most scrupulous devotion, tlie offices of a pontifex maximus, which had been altogether neglected, although not formally abolished, under his two predecessors. Every morning and evening he sacrificed to the rising and setting sun, or the supreme light-god ; every night, to the moon and the stars ; every day, to some other divinity. Says Libanius, his heathen admirer : " He received the rising sun with blood, and attended him again with blood at his setting." As he could not go abroad so often as he would, he turned his palace into a temple and erected altars in his garden, which was kept purer than most chapels. " Wherever there was a temple," says the same writer, " whether in the city or on the hill or the mountain top, no matter how rough, or difficult of access, he ran to it." He prostrated himself devoutly before the altars and tlie images, not allowing the most violent storm to prevent him. Several times m a day, surrounded by priests and dancing women, he sacrificed a hundred bulls, himself furnishing the wood and kindling the flames. He used the knife himself, and as haru- spex searched with his own hand