the minds of a Homer, a Hesiod, a Demosthenes, a Thucydides, an Isocrates, and a Lysias, and these writers consecrated their works to Mercury ' Gregory of Naz., Orat. iv., censures the emperor bitterly for forbidding the Christians what was the common property of all rational men, as if it were the ex- clusive possession of the Greeks. Even the heathen Ammianus Marcellinus, xxii. 10, condemns this measure: "Illud autem erat inclemens, obruendum perenni silentio, quod arcebat docere magistros rhetoricos et grammaticos, ritus Christian! cultores." Gibbon is equally decided. Directly, Julian forbade the Christians only to teach, but indirectly also to learn, the classical literature ; as they were of course unwilling to go to heathen schools 54 THERD PERIOD. A.D. 311-590. or the muses.' Hence lie liated especially the learned church teachers, Basil, Gregory of Nazianzen, Apollinaris of Laodicea, who applied the classical cultui'e to the refutation of heathen- ism and the defence of Christianity. To evade his interdict, the two Apollinaris produced with all haste Christian imita- tions of Homer, Pindar, Euripides, and Menander, "which were considered by Sozomen equal to the originals, but soon passed into oblivion. Gregory also wrote the tragedy of "The Suffering Christ," and several hymns, which still exist. Thus these fathers bore witness to the indispensableness of classical literature for a higher Christian education, and the church has ever since maintained the same view.* Julian further sought to promote his cause by literary assaults upon the Christian religion ; himself writing, shortly before his death, and in the midst of his preparations for the Persian campaign, a bitter work against it, of which we shall speak more fully in a subsequent section.^ 3. To the same hostile design against Christianity is to be referred the favor of Julian to its old hereditary enemy, Judaism. The emperor, in an official document, affected reverence for that ancient popular religion, and sympathy with its ad- herents, praised their firmness under misfortune, and con- demned their oppressors. He exempted the Jews from bur- densome taxation, and encouraged them even to return to the holy land and to rebuild the temple on Moriah in its original splendor. He appropriated considerable sums to this object from the public treasury, intrusted his accomplished minister * Epist. 42. ^ Dr. Baur (1. c. p. 42) imjustly charges the fathers with the contradiction of making use of the classics as necessary means of education, and yet of condemning heathenism as a work of Satan. But this was only the one side, which has its element of truth, especially as applied to the heathen religion ; while on the other side they acknowledged, with Justin M., Clement and Origen, the working of the divine Logos in the Hellenic philosophy and poetry preparing the way for Christianity. The in- discriminate condemnation of classical literature dates from a later period, from Gregory I. ' See below, § 9. § 4. JULIAN TUB APOSTATE. 56 Alypius with tlie supervision of tlie building, and promised, if lie