# Dictionary of Christian Biography and Literature to the End of the Sixth Century/Julianus, Flavius Claudius, emperor

Julianus (103), Flavius Claudius, emperor, often called Julian the Apostate; born A.D. 331; appointed Caesar, Nov. 6, 355; proclaimed Augustus, Apr. 360; succeeded Constantius as sole emperor, Nov. 3, 361; died in Persia, June 27, 363. For the authorities for Julian's life, see D. C. B. (4-vol. ed.), s.v.
The first and still in some respects the best English account of Julian is to be found in Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, cc. 19, 22–24—a forcible and on the whole very just picture. Like some other cold and sceptical people (e.g. Strauss), Gibbon despised Julian's superstitious enthusiasm, and, though he cannot restrain some sneers at the church and the orthodox faith, this part of his history has generally met with comparative favour at the hands of Christian critics. Mr. J. W. Barlow on Gibbon and Julian in the Dublin Hermathena for 1877 endeavours to shew that Gibbon, in order to gain a reputation for impartiality, is unfair to the emperor, whom he thinks morally and intellectually the best man "of the whole series." In the first three quarters of the last century little or nothing was published in England specially on this subject. An interesting and valuable essay, written for a Cambridge historical prize by the Hon. Arthur Lyttelton, has been kindly placed at the disposal of the writer of this article, who owes to it several important references. It is embodied in the Church Qtly. Rev. for Oct. 1880, Vol. xi. pp. 24–58, The Pagan Reaction under Julian, which gives a fresh and vigorous view of the subject. Mr. Gerald H. Rendall's Hulsean Essay for 1876, The Emperor Julian; Paganism and Christianity is decidedly the best account of Julian's religious position in English, perhaps in any modern language. In French, we have the invaluable Tillemont and other writers of church history. Besides the articles in vol. iv. of the Empereurs there is a special treatise on the Persécution de l᾿Eglise par J. l᾿Apostat, in vol. vii. of the Mémoires. We miss, however, a critical treatment of the authorities and wide generalizations in Tillemont. He also seems to exaggerate the scope of the law against Christian professors. The fullest history of Julian is that of Albert de Broglie in vols. iii. and iv. of his L᾿Eglise et l᾿empire romain au quatrième siècle (Paris, 1866, etc.). This is indispensable to the student of the period. Its general attitude is that taken in this article, but he is too anxious to make points to be careful of minute accuracy, and therefore of entire fairness, and his references often want correction. These volumes were reviewed by C. Martha in the Revue des deux mondes for Mar. 1867, vol. lxviii. pp. 137–169, who paints the emperor more favourably. In German J. F. A. Mücke, Flavius Claudius Julianus: nach den Quellen (Gotha, 1867 and 1869, 2 parts) is the most complete modern account. Fr. Rode, Geschichte der Reaction Kaiser Julians gegen die christliche Kirche (Jena, 1877); a useful study, and generally very accurate, paying proper attention to chronology. The writer takes up something of the same position is Keim does in his essay on Constantine's conversion—striving after fairness towards the church, without accepting its doctrines. He admires Julian's books against the Christians as anticipating the line of modern critical
theology in many points, pp. 102, 103; cf. p. 32, n. 10.
§ 1. Early years of Julian as a Christian. (A.D. 331–351). § 2. Conversion to heathenism 351–355. § 3. Julian as Caesar from Nov. 6, 355 to Nov. 3, 361. § 4. Residence at Constantinople as Augustus, Nov. 3, 361 to May, 362. § 5. Journey through Asia Minor, May to July, 362. § 6. Residence at Antioch, July, 362 to March 5, 363. § 7. Persian campaign and death, March 5 to June 27, 363.
§ 1. Early Years of Julian as a Christian (A.D. 331–351).—Flavius Claudius Julianus was the youngest son of Julius Constantius, the half-brother of Constantine the Great. His mother, Basilina, was of the noble family of the Anicii, and daughter of Julianus the praetorian prefect, whose name was given to her son. Julian was born at Constantinople in the latter part of A.D. 331, the year after the dedication of the new capital.
Upon the death of Constantine in May 337, and the accession of his three sons, there was a general massacre of the male branches of the younger line of the Flavian family descended from Constantius Chlorus and his second wife Theodora. In this tragedy there perished the father and eldest brother of Julian, his paternal uncle, his cousins the Caesars Delmatius and Hanniballian, and four other members of the family. Julian and his elder half-brother Gallus, who was sick of an illness which was expected to be mortal, were alone preserved, by the compassion or the policy of Constantius (cf. Socr. H. E. iii. 1; Greg. Naz. Or. iii. p. 58 B . Julian, ad S. P. Q. Athen. p. 270
C , gives the list of those who perished, and ascribes their deaths to Constantius, who he says wished at first to slay both himself and Gallus). Julian is said to have owed his life to the interference of Mark, bp. of Arethusa, who gave him sanctuary in a church (Greg. Naz. Or. iii. p. 80
C ). The boy was taken charge of by his mother's family, and his education conducted under the direction of the Arian Eusebius, bp. of Nicomedia, who was distantly related to him (Amm. xxii. 9. 4; Cf. Soz. v. 2). When Eusebius was translated in 388 to the see of Constantinople Julian probably went with him, and attended the schools of that city (cf. Libanius, ἐπιτάφιος, ed. Reiske, i. p. 525; Julian, Ep. 58; and Rode, Die Reaction Julians, p. 22, n. 10). His constant attendant and guardian was his mother's slave Mardonius, whose influence evidently had great power in moulding the character and tastes of his pupil, and who insisted strongly on a staid and perhaps rather pedantic demeanour (Liban. l.c.; Jul. Misopogon, pp. 351 seq.; Mücke, in his Julianus nach den Quellen, zweite Abtheilung, pp. 6. and 9, makes a curious blunder in supposing that Julian disliked Mardonius). Though educating him only for a private position, he set before him a high standard, and particularly held up to his imitation the names and characters of "Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, and Theophrastus" (Misop. p. 353 B). He kept him from the theatre and the circus, and taught him rather to love the Homeric descriptions of Phaeacia and Demodocus and Calypso's isle, and the cave of Circe (ib. 351 D). Such teaching doubtless fed the naturally dreamy temperament of his pupil. Julian tells us that from a child he had a strange desire of gazing at the sun, and that he loved to spend a clear night in looking fixedly at the moon and stars, so that he almost gained the character of an astrologer (Jul. Or. iv. ad regem Solem ad init.; cf. the fable, Or. vii. p. 229, in which he speaks of himself as entrusted by Zeus to the sun's guardianship).
These pleasant days of freedom .were brought to an abrupt conclusion by the command of Constantius. The death of his relative Eusebius (in 342) deprived Julian of a powerful protector, when he was about 11 years old; and soon after (probably in 343 or 344) the emperor recalled Gallus from exile, and sent the two brothers to the distant palace of Macellum in Cappadocia. Here for six years they were kept under surveillance, with no lack of material comforts, but apart from young men of their own age and with only the society of their slaves (Greg. Naz. Or. iii. p. 58 B; Julian, ad Ath. p. 271 C). Their seclusion was only once broken by a visit from Constantius (Jul. ad Ath. p. 274, probably in 347, see laws of the Cod. Theod. in this year). Masters and teachers were not wanting, especially of that form of Arianism to which Constantius was devoted; and Julian now, if not before, made a considerable verbal acquaintance with the Bible, an acquaintance which frequently appears in his writings. He and Gallus were admitted to the office of Reader in the church—a proof that he had been baptized, though no mention of his baptism is recorded. They interested themselves zealously in the building of chapels over the relics of certain martyrs (Greg. Naz. Or. iii. p. 58; Soz. v. 2). The success of Gallus in this building and the ill-success of Julian was remarked at the time, and was (afterwards, at any rate) considered as an omen of his apostasy (Greg. Naz. l.c. p. 59).
In the spring of 351 Constantius felt himself forced by the burden of empire to take a colleague, and Gallus was appointed Caesar. Julian with difficulty was permitted to leave Macellum, and seems to have returned for a short time to Constantinople; there he studied grammar with Nicocles, and rhetoric with Hecebolius then a zealous Christian (Socr. H. E. iii. 1). Constantius, fearing lest his presence in the capital might lead to his becoming too popular, ordered him to remove to Nicomedia (Liban. Epitaph. p. 526, προσφωνητικός, p. 408). Hecebolius exacted a promise from his pupil that he would not attend the lectures of the famous heathen sophist Libanius; Julian kept his promise, perhaps fearing to excite suspicion by outward intercourse with a chief partisan of the old religion, but contented himself with a study of the written lectures of the master (Liban. l.c. 526 seq. Libanius does not name Hecebolius, but the description seems to point to him: Sievers, Libanius, p. 54, n. 5, supposes Nicocles to be meant). Others, however, in Nicomedia besides Libanius attracted the attention of the young prince. He here learnt to know some of the more mystical of the heathen party, to whom paganism was still a reality and the gods living beings, visions of whom
were to be seen by night and whose power still worked signs and wonders. "He is sent to the city of Nicomedes," says Libanius, "as a place of less importance than Constantinople. But this was the beginning of the greatest blessings both to himself and the world. For there was there a spark of the mantic art still. smouldering, which had with difficulty escaped the hands of the impious. By the light of this" (turning to Julian) "you first tracked out what was obscure, and learnt to curb your vehement hatred of the gods, being rendered gentle by the revelations of divination " (Liban. Prosphoneticus, ed. Reiske, 1, p. 408.
While Julian was thus having his first experience of the inner circle of heathen life, Gallus met his brother for the last time as he passed through Bithynia to undertake the government of the East with which Constantius had invested him (Liban. Epitaph. p. 527, διὰ τῆς Βιθυνίας). The two brothers, according to Julian's account, corresponded but rarely after this, and on few subjects (Jul. ad Ath. p. 273; Liban. Epitaph. p. 530). Gallus, it is said, having reason at a later date to suspect his brother's change of belief, sent the Arian Aetius to confer with him (Philostorgius, 3, 27). Julian, if we may believe Libanus, sent Galllus good advice on his political conduct, which had he followed he might have preserved both the empire and his life (Liban. ad Jul. cos. p. 376, ed. Reiske).
§ 2. Conversion to Heathenism (A.D. 351–355).—The secret apostasy of Julian was the result of his residence at Nicomedia, though it was not completed there. The chief agent in effecting it was the neo-Platonist Maximus of Ephesus, a philosopher, magician, and political schemer. The fame of the wisdom of Aedesius first attracted Julian to Pergamus but he, being old and infirm, recommended him to his pupils, Chrysanthius and Eusebius. The latter was, or pretended to be, an adversary of the theurgic methods of Maximus, and a follower of the higher and more intellectual Platonism, and used to finish every lecture by a general warning against trickery and charlatans. Julian, much struck with this, took the advice of Chrysanthius upon the point, and asked Eusebius to explain what he meant. The latter replied by an account of Maximus, which gave a new edge of the already keen curiosity of Julian. "Some days ago" (he went on) "he ran in and called our company together to the temple of Hecate, thus making a large body of witnesses against himself. . . . When we came before the goddess and saluted her, he cried, 'Sit down, dearest friends, and see what will happen, and whether I am superior to ordinary men.' We all sat down, then he burnt a grain of frankincense, and as he repeated some sort of chant to himself he so far succeeded in the exhibition of his power that first the image smiled and then even appeared to laugh. We were confounded at the sight, but he said, 'Let none of you be disturbed at this, for in a moment the torches which the goddess has in her hands will be lighted up'—and before he had done speaking light actually burned in the. torches. We then retired, being amazed and in doubt at the wonder which had taken place. But do not you wonder at anything of this kind, just as I also through the purifying effects of reason conceive it is nothing of great importance." Julian (says Eunapius) hearing this, exclaimed, "Farewell, and keep to your books, if you will; you have revealed to me the man I was in search of" (Eunapius, Vita Maximi, pp. 48–51, ed. Boissonade). It is difficult to believe that Eusebius was not in league with Chrysanthius to bring Julian under the influence of Maximus. The young prince hurried off to Ephesus, and there threw himself with eagerness into the teaching of his new master, which seems exactly to have suited his fantastic temperament. Julian had no practical Christianity to fall back upon. The sense of being watched and suspected had sunk deeply into his mind at Macellum, and he had learnt to look upon Constantius not only as his jailor, but as the murderer of his nearest relations. This naturally did not incline him to the religion inculcated by Arian or semi-Arian court bishops, who probably laid stress upon their peculiar points of divergence from the orthodox faith, and neglected the rest of Christian theology. Julian therefore conceived of Christianity, not as a great body of truth satisfying the whole man, but as a set of formulas to be plausibly debated and distinguished. On the other hand, he had a real, though pedantic, love of Hellenic authors and literature, and a natural dislike to those who destroyed the ancient monuments of the old faith. His characteristic dreaminess and love of mystery found satisfaction in the secret cults to which men like Maximus were addicted—all the more zealously as public sacrifice was difficult or dangerous. He was by nature ardent and superstitious, and never fell into good hands. The pagan coterie soon discovered the importance of their convert, and imbued him with the notion that he was the chosen servant of the gods to bring back again Hellenic life and religion. By the arts of divination a speedy call to the throne was promised him, and he vowed to restore to the temples if he became emperor. (Libanius Epitaph. pp. 529 and 565, who agrees substantially with Socrates, iii. 1, p. 168, and Sozomen, v. 2, p. 181; cf. Theod. iii. 1). For the present, however, the fulfilment of such hopes seemed distant, and Julian for ten years pretended zeal for Christianity (Liban. Epitaph. p. 528; Amm. xxii. 5, 1; Sol iii. 1; Soz. v. 2). He had, indeed, good reason to fear the suspicions of his cousin. In 354 [GALLUS], was craftily removed from his government and executed, and Julian was apprehended, on obscure charges (Amm. xv. 2, 7—the charge of leaving Macellum without permission seems strange, since the brothers had been released from their retirement some four years before). For seven months he was confined in N. Italy near the court, being removed from place to place (Jul. ad Ath. p. 272 D; Liban. Epitaph. p. 530; cf. Jul. ad Themist. p. 260 A)—an imprisonment brought to an end by the intervention of the gentle empress Eusebia, who procured for him an interview with Constantius, and leave to return to his studies (Jul.
ad Ath. pp. 272, 274; Or. 3, p. 118 B). At first he determined to retire to his mother's property in Bithynia, Constantius having confiscated all the estates of his father (Jul. ad Ath. p. 273; Ep. 40, p. 417 A, to Iamblichus—an interesting letter written 3 years later, and not concealing his religious opinions). He had hardly arrived in Asia Minor when the suspicions of Constantius were aroused by two reports brought by informers, one of treasonable proceedings at a banquet given by Africanus, the governor of Pannonia Secunda at Sirmium, the other of the rising of Silvanus in Gaul (Jul., ad Ath. p. 273 C, D; cf. Amm. xv. 3, 7 seq.). The first was no doubt connected in his mind with Julian, who had just passed through that country, and whom he in consequence recalled, but on his way back received permission, or rather command, to turn aside into Greece, a privilege which Eusebia had procured for him (ad Ath. 273 D; Or. 3, p. 118 C). He thus could gratify a long-cherished wish of visiting Athens. The young prince was naturally well received by professors and sophists, such as Prohaeresius and Himerius, then teaching at Athens. He had a turn for philosophy, and could discourse eagerly, in the modern neo-Platonic fashion, about the descent and the ascent of souls. He was surrounded by a swarm of young and old men, philosophers and rhetoricians, and (if we may believe Libanius) gained favour as much by his modesty and gentleness as by the qualities of his intelligence (Liban. Epitaph. p. 532). Two of the most distinguished of his familiars among his fellow-students at this time were the future bishops Basil and Gregory Nazianzen, then as always close and intimate friends. Gregory, however, seems to have detected something of his real character; he noticed an air of wildness and unsteadiness, a wandering eye, an uneven gait, a nervous agitation of the features, an unreasoning and disdainful laugh, an abrupt, irregular way of talking, which betrayed a mind ill at ease with itself, and exclaimed, "What a plague the Roman empire is breeding! God grant I may be a false prophet!" (Or. pp. 161, 162). Gregory, who had many friends among the professors, may well have been aware of the real state of the young prince's mind, and of his nightly visits to Eleusis, where he could indulge his religious feelings without reserve. Maximus had introduced him to the hierophant there, a great miracle-worker who was in league with the heathen party in Asia Minor (Eunapius, Vita Maximi, pp. 52, 53).
§ 3. Julian as Caesar (from Nov. 6, 355, to Nov. 3, 361—death of Constantius).—About May 355 Julian was permitted to go to Athens, but a few months later was summoned again to the court (Jul. ad Ath. p. 273 D). He left the city in low spirits and with many tears, and, stretching out his hands to the Acropolis, besought Athena to save her suppliant—an act which, he tells us, many saw him perform (ib. p. 475 A). Those who did so could hardly have doubted his change of religion, and there were doubtless many sympathizers who looked to him as the future restorer of the old faith. He first crossed the Aegean to Ilium Novum, where he visited the antiquities under the guidance of the then Christian bp. Pegasius, who delighted him by omitting the sign of the cross in the temples, and otherwise shewing heathen sympathies (Jul. Ep. 78—the letter, first edited by C. Henning, in Hermes, Vol. ix.). On his arrival at Milan, Constantius was absent, but Julian was well received by the eunuchs of the empress (ad Ath. pp. 274, 275 B). His first impulse was to write to his protectress and implore her to obtain leave for him to return home; but on demanding a revelation from the gods, he received an intimation of their displeasure and a threat of disgraceful death if he did so, and, in consequence; schooled himself to yield his will to theirs, and to become their instrument for whatever purposes they chose (ib. pp. 275, 276 ; cf. Liban. ad Jul. consulem, t. 1, p. 378). Constantius soon returned, and determined, under the persevering pressure of his wife and notwithstanding strong opposition, to give the dignity of Caesar to his sole remaining relative (Amm. xv. 8, 3; Zos. 3, 1). On Nov. 6, 355, Julian received the insignia in the presence of the army at Milan, and was given control of the prefecture of Gaul (i.e. Spain, Gaul, Britain, and Germany), and especially of the defence of the frontiers (ad Ath. p. 277 A; Amm. l.c.). As he drew the unwonted garb around him in place of his beloved pallium, he was heard to mutter the line of Homer, to which his wit gave a new shade of meaning:
"Him purple death and destiny embraced"
(Amm. xv. 8, 17). At the same time he received, through the management of Eusebia, the emperor's sister Helena as his bride, and the gift of a library from the empress herself (Or. iii. p. 123 D). Thus the reconciliation of the cousins was apparently complete. Julian produced a spirited panegyric upon the reign and just actions of Constantius, which it seems right to assign to this date (Or. 1; cf. Spanheim's notes, p. 5). He set out, on Dec. 1, for his new duties with a small retinue, from which almost all his personal followers were carefully excluded (Amm. xv. 8, 17, 18; Jul., ad Ath. p. 277 B, C). Of his four slaves, one was his only confidant in religious matters, an African named Euhemerus (ad Ath. p. 277 B; Eunap. Vita Maximi, p. 54). His physician, Oribasius, who had charge of his library, was only allowed to accompany him through ignorance of their intimacy (ad Ath. l.c.; Eunap. Vita Oribasii, p. 104). He entered Vienne with great popular rejoicing (for the province was hard-pressed by the barbarians) and possibly with secret expectations amongst the heathen party, which had been strong in the time of Magnentius. A blind old woman, learning his name and office as he passed, cried out, "There goes he who will restore the temples of the gods!" (Amm. xv. 8, 22).
During the next five years the young Caesar appears as a strenuous and successful general and a popular ruler. The details of his wars with the Franks and Alamanns, the Salii and Chamavi, will be found in Ammianus and Zosimus. Perhaps we ought to recollect that he was his own historian, writing "commentaries"
(now no longer extant) which were no doubt intended to rival those of the author of the Gallic War. After an expedition against the Franks in the autumn of 357 he wintered for the first time at Paris, which became a favourite abode of his. He gives a well-known description of his φίλη Λουκετία in the Misopogon (pp. 340 seq.). His military successes endeared him to both troops and people. His internal government, particularly as lightening public burdens, was equally popular. He had specially to contend with the avarice of Florentius, the praetorian prefect, who desired to increase the capitatio, and who, on Julian's refusal to sign the indiction, complained of him to Constantius (Amm. xvii. 3, 2, and 5, in 357). Constantius, while reproving him for discrediting his officer, left him a practically free hand, and the tax, which on his entering Gaul was 25 aurei a head, had been reduced to 7 when he left (Amm. xvi. 5, 24; cf. xvii. 3, 6).
His ambition was to imitate Marcus Aurelius as a philosopher upon the throne, and Alexander the Great as a model in warfare (ad Themist. p. 253). His table was very plainly furnished, and he refused all the luxuries which Constantius had written down for him as proper for a Caesar's board (Amm. xvi. 5, 3). His bed was a mat and a rug of skins, from which he rose at midnight, and, after secret prayer to Mercury, addressed himself first to public business and then to literature. He studied philosophy first, then poetry, rhetoric, and history, making himself also fairly proficient in Latin. His chamber was ordinarily never warmed; and one very cold night, at Paris, he was nearly suffocated by some charcoal in a brazier, but erroneously attributed it to the dampness of the room (Misopogon, p. 341). All this attracted the people, but was not agreeable to many of the courtiers. Julian knew that he was surrounded by disaffected officials and other spies upon his conduct, and continued to conceal his religious sentiments, and to act cautiously towards his cousin. During his administration of Gaul he produced another panegyric upon Constantius, and one upon Eusebia, though the exact occasion of neither can be determined (Or. 2 and 3). In these orations Julian, though indulging to the full in classical parallels and illustrations, takes care to hide his change of religion. He speaks even of his prayers to God for Constantius, naturally indeed and not in a canting way (Or. 3, p. 118 D). Nor did he hesitate to join with him in issuing a law denouncing a capital penalty against those who sacrifice to or worship idols (Cod. Theod. xvi. 10, 6, Apr. 356), in repressing magic and all kinds of divination with very severe edicts (ib. ix. 16, 4–6, in 357 and 358), in punishing renegade Christians who had become Jews (ib. xvi. 8, 7), and in granting new privileges to the church and clergy, and regulating those already given (ib. xvi. 2, 13–16; the last as late as Mar. 361). To have hinted at dislike to any of these measures would, indeed, have aroused at once the strongest suspicions. One of the edicts against magic, which threatens torture for every kind of divination, seems almost personally directed against Julian (Cod. Theod. ix. 16, 6, dated July 5, 358, from Ariminum). The effect upon his conscience of condemning as a public officer what he was secretly practising must have been hardening and demoralizing. For Julian was not without thought on such subjects. At another time he declared he would rather die than sign the oppressive edict brought him by Florentius (Amm. xvii. 3, 2); and in his later famous decree against Christian professors he writes vehemently of the wickedness of thinking one thing and teaching another (Ep. 42).
In Apr. 360 Constantius ordered the flower of the Gallic auxiliaries to be sent to aid him in his expedition against the Persians (Amm. xx. 4). This request produced great irritation among men who had enlisted on the understanding that they were not to be required to cross the Alps—an irritation fomented no doubt by the friends of Julian, particularly, it is said, by Oribasius (Eunap. Vita Oribasii, p. 104). The troops surrounded the palace at Paris and demanded that their favourite should take the title of Augustus (ad Ath. p. 284; Amm. xx. 4, 14). Julian, according to his own account, was quite unprepared for such a step, and would not accede till Jupiter had given him a sign from heaven. This sign was no doubt the vision of the Genius of the Empire, who declared that he had long been waiting on his threshold and was now unwilling to be turned away from it. Yet he warned him (so Julian told his intimates) that his residence with him would in no case be for long (Amm. xx. 5, 10; cf. Lib. ad Jul. cos. p. 386). We have no reason, however, to think that Julian had any real hesitation, except as to the opportuneness of the moment. When he came down to address the troops, he still appeared reluctant, but the enthusiasm of the soldiers would take no denial, and he was raised in Gallic fashion upon a shield, and hastily crowned with a gold chain which a dragoon (draconarius) tore from his own accoutrements. He promised the accustomed donative (Amm. xx. 4, 18), which the friends of Constantius, it would seem, secretly tried to outdo by bribes (ad Ath. p. 285 A). The discovery of their intrigue only raised the popular enthusiasm to a higher pitch, and Julian felt strong enough to treat with his cousin. He dispatched an embassy with a letter declining to send the Gallic troops, who (he declared) positively refused to go, and could not be spared with safety; but he offered some small corps of barbarian auxiliaries. He related the action of the army in proclaiming him Augustus, but said nothing of his own wish to bear the title. As a compromise he proposed that Constantius should still appoint the praetorian prefect, the chief governor of that quarter of the empire, but that all lesser offices should be under his own administration (ib. D, and for particulars, Amm. xx. 8, 5–17), who gives the substance of the letter at length). But to these public and open requests he added a threatening and bitter private missive, which had the effect, whether intentionally or not, of rendering his negotiations abortive (Amm. l.c.).
Such a state of things could only end in war, but neither party was in a hurry to precipitate it. In Vienne Julian celebrated the fifth
anniversary of his appointment, and appeared for the first tune in the jewelled diadem which had become the symbol of imperial dignity (Amm. xxi. 1, 4). Meanwhile both Eusebia and Helena had been removed by death, and with them almost the last links which united the cousins. Julian still kept up the pretence of being a Christian. At Epiphany, 361, he kept the festival solemnly and even ostentatiously, joining in the public prayers and devotions (ib. 2). He witnessed calmly the triumphant return of St. Hilary after his exile, and permitted the Gallic bishops to hold a council at Paris (S. Hilarii, Frag. Hist. pp. 1353, 1354). His name also appears, after that of Constantius, attached to a law issued on Mar. 1 at Antioch, giving privileges to Christian ascetics. But all this was mere dissimulation for the sake of popularity. In secret he was anxiously trying, by all possible heathen means, to divine the future (Amm. xxi. x1 6 seq.). He sent in particular for the hierophant of Eleusis, with whose aid he performed rites known to themselves alone (Eunap. Vita Maximi, p. 53; cf. Amm. xxi. 5, 1, "placata ritu secretiori Bellona").
The irritation against Constantius was further increased by an arrogant letter, addressed of course to the Caesar Julian, requiring his immediate submission and merely promising him his life. Julian, on receiving this, uttered an exclamation which betrayed his religion: "He would rather commit himself and his life to the gods than to Constantius" (Zos. iii. 9, 7). The moment seemed now come for action. In a speech to the soldiers in which he referred in ambiguous language to the will of the God of heaven—"arbitrium dei caelestis"—he called upon them to take the oath of allegiance and follow him across the Alps. He spoke in general terms of occupying Illyricum and Dacia, and then deciding what was to be done (Amm. xxi. 5). Having thus secured the Western provinces, he made a rapid and successful passage through N. Italy, receiving its submission. He reached Sirmium without opposition, having ordered the different divisions of his army to concentrate there. Then he took and garrisoned the important pass of Succi (Ssulu Derbend) on the Balkans, between Sardica and Philippopolis, thus securing the power to descend into Thrace. For the time he established his quarters at Naissus (Nish), and awaited further news. From there he wrote to the senate of Rome against Constantius, and in self-defence to the Athenians, Lacedemonians, and Corinthians (Zos. iii. 10).
The Athenian letter was possibly entrusted to the Eleusinian hierophant, who returned home about this time. It was perhaps also under his guidance that Julian underwent the secret ceremonies of initiation described by Gregory Nazianzen (Or. 4, 52–56, pp. 101–103). According to common report, he submitted to the disgusting bath of blood, the taurobolium or criobolium, through which the worshippers of Mithra and Cybele sought to procure eternal life. Julian's object, it is said, was not only to gain the favour of the gods, but also to wash away all defilement from previous contact with the Christian mysteries. This miserable story is yet a very credible one. Existing monuments prove that many pagans of position continued the taurobolium till the end of the 4th cent. (see the inscriptions in Wilmanns, Exempla Inscr. Lat. 107–126).
Such secret incidents preceded Julian's public declaration of his change of religion. At Naissus or Sirmium he threw off the mask, and professed himself openly a heathen. Of his first public sacrifice he wrote with exultation to his friend Maximus: "We worship the gods openly, and the greatest part of the troops who accompanied me profess the true religion. We have acknowledged our gratitude to the gods in many hecatombs. The gods command me to consecrate myself to their service with all my might, and most readily do I obey them. They promise us great returns for our toils if we are not remiss" (Ep. 38, p. 415 C).
Now came the news of his cousin's sudden death at Mopsucrene, at the foot of Mount Taurus, on Nov. 3, and Julian learnt that he was accepted without opposition as the successor designated by his dying breath, a report of which we cannot guarantee the truth (Amm. xxii. 2, 6).
§ 4. Julian as Augustus at Constantinople (from Nov. 3, 361, to May 362).—Julian hastened to Constantinople, through the pass of Succi and by Philippopolis and Heraclea, entering the Eastern capital amid general rejoicings on Dec. 11. He conducted the funeral of Constantius with the usual honours; laying aside all the imperial insignia, except the purple, and marching in the procession, touching the bier with his hands (Liban. Epitaph. p. 512, cf. Greg. Naz. Or. 5, 16, 17, pp. 157, 158). Constantius was buried near his father in the Church of the Apostles, but whether Julian entered it is not stated.
Almost his next act was to appoint a special commission under the presidency of Saturninus Sallustius Secundus (to be distinguished from the prefect of the Gauls) to bring to justice the principal supporters of the late government. Julian himself avoided taking part in it, and allowed no appeal from its decisions. The commission met at Chalcedon, and acted with excessive rigour.
Julian next turned his attention to the palace, with its swarm of needless and overpaid officials, eunuchs, cooks, and barbers, who battened on bribes and exactions. All these he swept away, to the general satisfaction (Amm. xxii. 4; Liban. Epit. p. 565).
Towards Christians he adopted a policy of toleration, though desiring nothing more keenly than the humiliation of the Church. His object was to set sect against sect by extending equal licence to all (cf. Amm. xxii. 5). He issued an edict allowing all bishops exiled under Constantius to return, and restoring their confiscated property (Socr. iii. 1, p. 171). On the other hand, the extreme Arian, Aetius, as a friend of Gallus, received a special invitation to court (Ep. 31). A letter "to Basil," seemingly of the same date, and of similar purport, may possibly have been addressed to St. Basil of Caesarea (Ep. 12; De Broglie assumes this, t. iv. pp. 133, 235, n.). To Caesarius, a court physician of high repute and the brother of Gregory, Julian shewed great attention, and strove for his conversion.
He even entered into a public discussion on religion with him, and was much mortified by the ill success of his rhetoric (Greg. Naz. Ep. 6; Orat. vii. 11–14). The Donatists, Novatianists, and perhaps some extreme Arians were not loth to appear before the new emperor, who sought to destroy unanimity by extending free licence to all Christian sects, but there is no trace of any important Catholic leader falling into the snare. In the same spirit he ordered Eleusius, Arian bp. of Cyzicus, to restore the ruined church of the Novatianists within two months (Socr. ii. 38, p. 147; iii. 11; cf. Ep. 52, p. 436 A). Toleration was also extended to the Jews, from a real though imperfect sympathy. Their ritual seemed to Julian a point of contact with Hellenism, and with their rejection of an Incarnate Saviour he was quite in harmony. He approved of their worship of the Creator, but could not tolerate their identification of Him with the God Whose especial people they claimed to be—and Whom he, in his polytheism, imagined to be an inferior divinity (S. Cyril. in Jul. iv. pp. 115, 141, 201, 343, 354, ed. Spanheim).
The great task which lay nearest his heart was the restoration of heathenism to its former influence and power, and its rehabilitation both in theory and practice. He composed an oration for the festival of the sun, no doubt that celebrated on Dec. 25, as the "Natalis Solis invicti," in connexion with the winter solstice. Though Constantinople had never been a heathen city, or polluted with public heathen ceremonies, he called this "the festival which the imperial city celebrates with annual sacrifices" (Orat. 4, p. 131 D). The main body of the oration is occupied with the obscure theory of the triple hierarchy of worlds: the κόσμος νοητός or "intelligible world," the κόσμος νοερός or " intelligent," and the κόσμος αἰσθητός the "visible" or "phenomenal." In each of these three worlds there is a central principle, who is the chief object of worship and the fountain of power; the Sun king being the centre of the intermediate or "intelligent" world. This ideal god was evidently a kind of counterpoise in Julian's theology to the Word of God, the mediator of the Christian Trinity (μέση τις, οὐκ ἀπὸ τῶν ἄκρων κραθεῖσα, τελεία δὲ καὶ ἀμιγὴς ἀφ᾿ ὅλων τῶν θεῶν ἐμφανῶν τε καὶ ἀφανῶν καὶ αἰσθητῶν καὶ νοητῶν, ἡ τοῦ βασιλέως Ἡλίου νοερὰ καὶ πάγκαλος οὐσία, p. 139 B, and τῶν νοερῶν θεῶν μέσος ἐν μέσοις τεταγμένος κατὰ παντοίαν μεσότητα. Cf. Naville, Jul. l᾿A. et sa philosophie du polythéisme, pp. 102 seq.). This oration should be read in connexion with the fifth oration "on the Mother of the Gods," which he delivered at her festival, apparently at the vernal equinox, and while still at Constantinople. It is chiefly an allegorical platonizing interpretation of the myth of Attis and Cybele, very different from the modern reference of it to the circle of the seasons.
In the practice of all superstitious ceremonies, whether public or mystic, Julian was enthusiastic to the point of ridiculous ostentation. He turned his palace into a temple. Every day he knew better than the priests themselves what festival was in the pagan calendar, and what sacrifice was required. He himself acted as attendant, slaughterer, and priest, and had a passion for all the details of heathen ritual (Liban. Epitaph. p. 564, ad Jul. cos. pp. 394 seq.; Greg. Orat. 5, 22, p. 161; de Broglie, iv. pp. 126, 127). No previous emperor had so highly prized his office of pontifex maximus, which Julian valued as equal to all the other imperial prerogatives (χαίρει καλούμενος ἱερεὺς οὐχ ἧττον ἢ βασιλεύς Liban. ad Jul. cos. p. 394). In this capacity he apparently attempted to introduce something of the episcopal regimen into the loose system of the heathen priesthood, himself occupying the papal or patriarchal chair (cf. Greg. Or. 4, ii. p. 138). Thus he appointed Theodorus chief priest of Asia and Arsacius of Galatia, with control over inferior priests; the hierophant of Eleusis was set over Greece and Lydia, and Callixene made high priestess of Pessinus. (Ep. 63 Theodoro is early in his reign, and the long Fragmentum Epistolae may be a sequel to it; Ep. 49 Arsacio is later, as is that to Callixene, Ep. 21. The appointments of the hierophant and of Chrysanthius are described by Eunapius, Vita Maximi, pp. 54, 57). As chief pontiff he issued some remarkable instructions to his subordinates, some of which have been preserved. His "pastoral letters," as they may properly be called, to the chief priests of Asia and Galatia, shew a striking insight into the defects of heathenism considered as a religious ideal, and a clear attempt to graft upon it the more popular and attractive features of Christianity. He regrets several times that Christians and Jews are more zealous than Gentiles, especially in charity to the poor (Ep. 49, pp. 430, 431; in Frag. p. 305 he refers to the influence of the Agapé and similar institutions. In Ep. 63, p. 453 D, he describes the persistency of the Jews in abstaining from swine's flesh, etc.). He promises large endowments of corn for distribution to the indigent and the support of the priesthood ; and orders the establishment of guest-houses and hospitals (ξενοδοχεῖα, καταγώγια ξένων καὶ πτωχῶν, Soz. v.16, Jul. Ep. 49, p. 430 C). In the very spirit of the Gospel he insists on the duty of giving clothing and food even to enemies and prisoners (Frag. pp. 290–291). "Who was ever impoverished," he writes, "by what he gave to his neighbours? I, for my part, as often as I have been liberal to those in want, have received back from them many times as much, though I am but a bad man of business ; and I never repented of my liberality " (Frag. p. 290 C). Elsewhere he enters into minute details on the conduct and habits of the priesthood. He fixes the number of sacrifices to be offered by day and night, the deportment to be observed within and without the temples, the priest's dress, his visits to his friends, his secret meditations and his private reading. The priest must peruse nothing scurrilous or indecent, such as Archilochus, Hipponax, or the old comedy; nothing sceptical like Pyrrho and Epicurus; no novels and love-tales; but history and sound philosophy like Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics; and must learn by heart the hymns to the gods, especially those sung in his own temple (Frag. pp. 300–301; cf. Ep. 56, to Ecdicius, ordering him to train boys for the temple
choirs). He must avoid theatres and taverns, and all public resorts where he is likely to hear or see anything vulgar or indecent (Frag. p. 304 B, C; Ep. 49, p. 430 B). Not only priests, but the sons of priests, are forbidden to attend the "venationes" or spectacles of wild beasts (Frag. p. 304 D). The true priest is to be considered superior, at least in the temple, to any public official, and to be honoured as the intercessor between gods and men (Frag. p. 296 B, C; cf. the edict to the Byzantine against applauding himself in the Tychaeum, Ep. 64). He, however, who does not obey the rules laid down for his conduct, is to be removed from his office (Frag. p. 297; Ep. 49, p. 430 B); and we possess an edict of Julian's suspending a priest for three months for injury done to a brother priest (Ep. 62).
Further, "he intended," says Gregory Or. iv. III, p. 138), "to establish schools in all cities, and professorial chairs of different grades, and lectures on heathen doctrines both in their bearings on moral practice and in explanation of their abstruser mysteries." Of such lectures, no doubt, he wished his own orations on the Sun and the Mother of the Gods to be examples. Besides this imitation of Christian sermons and lectures, he desired to set up religious communities of men and women, vowed to chastity and meditation (ἁγνευτήριά τε καὶ παρθενεύματα καί φροντιστήρια cf. Soz. v. 16). These were institutions familiar to Oriental heathenism, but out of harmony with the old Greek spirit of which Julian professed himself so ardent an admirer. He was, indeed, unconsciously less a disciple of Socrates than of the Hindu philosophy, a champion of Asian mysticism against European freedom of thought.
Julian used not only his literary and personal influence and pontifical authority in favour of the worship of the gods, but also his imperial power. The temples where standing were reopened, or rebuilt at the expense of those who had. destroyed them, and received back their estates, which had been to some extent confiscated under Constantius (Amm. xxii. 4, 3, "pasti ex his quidam templorum spoliis"; Liban. Epitaph. p. 564, describes the general plan of restitution; cf. his Ep. 624, πᾶσι κηρύξας κομίζεσθαι τὰ αὑτῶν.). A friend of the gods was as a friend of the emperor's, their enemy became his (Liban. l.c. and more strongly p. 617). Yet direct persecution was forbidden and milder means of conversion practised (Ep. 7 to Artabius; Liban. 564). Julian even bore with some patience the public attacks of the blind and aged Maris, Arian bp. of Chalcedon, who called him an "impious atheist," while he was sacrificing in the Tychaeum of Constantinople. Julian replied only with a scoff at his infirmity: "Not even your Galilean God will heal you." Maris retorted, "I thank my God for my blindness which prevents me from seeing your apostasy," a rebuke which the emperor ignored (Soz. v. 4, where we must of course read τυχαίῳ for τειχίω cf. Jul. Ep. 64, Byzantinis). Not a few persons of position apostatized, among them Julian's maternal uncle Julianus, his former tutor Hecebolius, the officials Felix, Modestus, and Elpidius, and the former bp. of Ilium Novum, Pegasius, all of whom were rewarded by promotion. (Philost. vii. 10; Socr. iii. 13; Liban. pro Aristophane, pp. 435, 436, and Ep. 17; Greg. Naz. Or. iv. 62, p. 105; Jul. Ep. 78 ; cf. Sievers, Libanius, p. 105. On the readiness of many of these converts to return to the church cf. Asterius of Amasea, Hom. in Avaritiam, p. 227, and Hom. xix. in Psalm. v. p. 433, Migne.) But the number of these new converts was less than might perhaps have been expected from the divided state of the church and the low standard of court Christianity under Constantius. It was far less, no doubt, than Julian's sanguine expectations. Caesarius, as we have seen, stood firm, and so did three prominent officers in the army, destined to be his successors in the empire—Jovian, Valentinian, and Valens (Valentinian was banished, Soz. vi. 6 ; Philost. vii. 7 ; cf. Greg. Or. iv. 65, p. 106). The steadfastness of the court and the army was indeed sorely tried. The monogram of Christ was removed from the Labarum, and replaced by the old S.P.Q.R.; and heathen symbols again began to appear upon the coinage, and upon statues and pictures of the emperor, so that it was difficult to pay him respect without appearing to bow to an idol. (Greg. Or. iv. 80, 81, pp. 116, 117; Socr. vi. 17. Socrates probably somewhat exaggerates. The obscure letter of Julian to a painter, Ep. 65, appears to reprimand him for painting him without his customary images in his hands or by his side.) Julian even condescended to a trick to entrap a number of his soldiers, probably of the praetorian guard, by persuading them to offer incense when receiving a donative from his hands (Soz. v. 17; Greg. Or. iv. 83, 84, pp. 118, 119; cf. Rode, p. 62). Some of the soldiers, on discovering the snare from the jeers of their companions, protested loudly and threw down their money; and Julian, in consequence, dismissed all Christians from his bodyguard (Greg. l.c.; Socr. iii. 13). Many common soldiers were doubtless less firm, and conformed, at least outwardly, but the subsequent election of Jovian by the army of Persia looks as if their conviction was not deep. (Liban. ad Jul. cos. Jan. I. 363, p. 399; Greg. Or. iv. 64, 65, p. 106 ; St. Chrys. de Babyla contra Julianum, § 23, vol. ii. pp. 686, 687, ed. Gaume; cf. Sievers, Libanius, pp. 107–109). It was pretty well understood that no Christian official would be promoted to high civil functions, while converts like Felix and Elpidius were. Julian is reported to have stated in an edict that the Christian law forbade its subjects to wield the sword of justice, and therefore he could not commit the government of provinces to them. Such a sentiment would be characteristic, and this edict is probably an historical fact (Rufin. i. 32), but perhaps did not extend to persons already in office or in the army, unless they offered resistance to the course of events. Other measures were aimed at the clergy as a body, and intended to reduce the church generally to the position which it held before Constantine. The church suffered as much perhaps as private owners of property by the order to restore the temples and refund temple lands. The clergy and widows who had received grants from the municipal revenues were deprived of them and obliged to repay their previous receipts—an act of great injustice
(Soz. v. 5). The church lost its power of inheritance, and its ministers the privileges of making wills and of jurisdiction in certain cases (Jul. Ep. 52, p. 437 A Bostrenis). But perhaps what was felt most of all was the loss of immunity from personal taxation and from the service of the curiae or municipal councils, who were held responsible for the taxes of their district. A short decree issued on Mar. 13, 362, made all persons, formerly privileged as Christians, liable to the office of decurion (Cod. Theod. xii. I, 50). We may readily admit that the church would have been safer and holier without some of its privileges, which bound it too closely to the state. But to abolish them all at once, without warning, was a very harsh proceeding, which caused much suffering, and Ammianus only spoke the general opinion when he censured the conduct of his hero (Amm. xxv. 4, 21, cf. xxii. 9, 12). A Greek decree of apparently the same date, addressed to the Byzantines—i.e. the citizens of Constantinople—extended this measure to all privileged persons whatsoever, except those who had "done public service in the metropolis"—i.e. probably, those who had as consuls or praetors exhibited costly games for the public amusement (Ep. II); a later decree also confirming the "chief physicians" in their immunities (Cod. Theod. xiii. 3–4, nearly equivalent to Ep. 25).
In the spring of this year, while he was still at Constantinople, the affairs of the church of Alexandria attracted Julian's attention, and led to the first decided step which violated his policy of personal toleration. The intruded Arian bishop, George of Cappadocia, had made himself equally detested by pagans and Catholics. On Dec. 24 he was foully murdered by the former (without any intervention of Christians) in a riot. Dracontius, master of the mint, who had overturned an altar recently set up in his office, and Diodorus, who was building a church and gave offence to pagan prejudices by cutting short the hair of some boys employed under him, were both torn to pieces in the same sedition (Amm. xxii. II, 9). Julian wrote an indignant reprimand to the people, but inflicted no punishment (Ep. 10, Amm. l.c.; cf. Julian's letter to Zeno, Ep. 45). On Feb. 22 St. Athanasius was again seated upon his throne amid the rejoicing of the people. Julian saw in him an enemy he could not afford to tolerate. He wrote to the Alexandrians (apparently at once), saying that one so often banished by royal decree ought to have awaited special permission to return; that in allowing the exiled bishops to come back he did not mean to restore them to their churches; Athanasius, he feared, had resumed his "episcopal throne," to the great disgust of "god-fearing Alexandrians." He therefore ordered him to leave the city at once, on pain of greater punishment (Ep. 26). Athanasius braved the emperor's wrath and did not leave Alexandria, except, perhaps, for a time. Public feeling was with him, and an appeal was apparently forwarded to the emperor to reconsider his sentence. (Ep. 51, written probably in Oct. 362, speaks of Athanasius as (ἐπιζητούμενος by the Alexandrians.) The sequel of this appeal will appear later.
Another change of policy about this time shewed a further advance in intolerance and inconsistency. Julian determined to take the control of education into the hands of the state. On June 17, while en route between Constantinople and Antioch, he issued an edict, promulgated at Spoleto, to the Western empire, on June 28. This document said nothing about Christian teachers, but required for all professors and schoolmasters a diploma of approval from the municipal council in every city before they might teach. This was to be forwarded to himself for counter-signature (Cod. Theod. xiii. 3, 5). This power of veto was no doubt aimed at Christian teachers; and another edict, supposed to have been issued soon after, struck an open and violent blow at the church. This may have been issued even earlier; it can hardly have been much later (Ep. 42, with no title or date). It declares that "only a cheat and a charlatan will teach one thing while he thinks another. All teachers, especially those who instruct the young, ought . . . not to oppose the common belief and try to insinuate their own. . . . Now Homer, Hesiod, Demosthenes, Herodotus, Thucydides, Isocrates, and Lysias all founded their learning upon the gods, and considered themselves dedicated to Hermes or the Muses. It is monstrous, then, that those who teach these writers should dishonour their gods. I do not wish them to change their religion that they may retain their offices, but I give them the choice, either not to teach, or, if they prefer to do so, to teach at the same time that none of these authors is guilty of folly or impiety in his doctrine about the gods. . . . If teachers think these authors which they expound wise, and draw philosophy from them, let them emulate their religion. If they think them in error, let them go to the churches of the Galileans and expound Matthew and Luke, who forbid our sacrifices. I wish, however, the ears and tongues of you Christians may be 'regenerated,' as you would say, by these writings which I value so much."
Christians considered the decree practically to exclude them from the schools. For Julian expressly orders all teachers to insist on the religious side of their authors. Grammar schools were to become seminaries of paganism. No indifferent or merely philological teaching was to be allowed. No sincere Christian parents therefore could send their sons to such schools. A quotation given by Gregory, as if from this decree, is not found in the text of the edict as we have it (Or. 4, 102, p. 132). Perhaps he may be quoting some other of Julian's writings, e.g. the books against the Christians. The words are characteristic: "Literature and the Greek language are naturally ours, who are worshippers of the gods ; illiterate ignorance and rusticity are yours, whose wisdom goes no further than to say `believe.'" The last taunt is borrowed from Celsus (Origen, c. Celsum, i. 9).
Two celebrated men gave up their posts rather than submit to this edict—Prohaeresius of Athens, whom many thought superior to Libanius, and C. Marius Victorinus of Rome. Julian had already made overtures to the former (Ep. 2), and even offered to except him from the action of the edict; but he refused to be put in a better condition than his fellows (Hieron. Chron. sub anno 2378; cf. Eunap.
Prohaeresius, p. 92; Himerius, p. 95 ; and Frag. 76, p. 544, ed. Boissonade). Victorinus was equally famous at Rome, and his constancy was a subject of just glory to the church (see the interesting account of his conversion, etc. in August. Conf. viii. 2–5).
Attempts were made to supply the place of classical literature by putting historical and doctrinal portions of Scripture into Greek prose and verse. Thus the elder APOLLINARIS wrote 24 books in hexameters, which were to form a substitute for Homer, on the Biblical history up to the reign of Saul, and produced tragedies, lyrics, and even comedies on Biblical subjects (Soz. v. 18). The younger Apollinaris reduced the writings of the N.T. into the form of Platonic dialogues (Socr. iii. 16); and some of the works of Victorinus in Latin, such as the poem on the seven Maccabean brothers, and various hymns, may have been written with the same aim (cf. Teuffel, Gesch. der Röm. Lit. § 384, 7), as also the Greek tragedy, still extant, of Christus Patiens. Whatever their merit, these books could not properly supply the place of the classical training; and if Julian had lived and this edict had been put in force for any time, it would have been a very dangerous injury to the faith. (Socrates has some very good remarks on this subject, iii. 16.)
§ 5. Julian's journey through Asia Minor—(May to July 362).—After a sojourn of about five months in Constantinople Julian began to think of foreign affairs. Fears of internal resistance were removed by the surrender of Aquileia, which had been seized by some troops of Constantius. He determined upon an expedition against Persia, the only power he thought worthy of his steel. Shortly after May 12 he set out upon a progress through Asia Minor to Antioch. He passed through Nicaea into Galatia, apparently as far as Ancyra, from which place, perhaps, he dispatched the edict about education just described (Amin. xxii. 9, 5. If the law, Cod. Just. i. 40, 5, is rightly attributed to Julian, he was at Ancyra on May 28, to which visit belongs a somewhat hyperbolical inscription celebrating his triumphant march from the Western Ocean to the Tigris, beginning, DOMINO TOTIVS ORBIS | IVLIANO AVGVSTO | EX OCEANO BRI | TANNICO (C. I. L. iii. 247, Orell. 1109, Wilmanns 1089). From Ancyra he visited Pessinus in Phrygia to pay homage to the famous sanctuary of the Mother of the Gods, at which he offered large and costly presents (Amm. l.c.; Liban. ad Jul. cos. p. 398). The oration in honour of this deity, who, with the Sun-god, was Julian's chief object of veneration, was probably delivered earlier; but he took occasion about this time to vindicate the doctrine of Diogenes from the aspersions of false and luxurious cynics (Or. vi. εἰς τοὺς ἀπαιδεύτους κύνας, delivered about the summer solstice, p. 181 A). He was not satisfied with the progress of heathenism, amongst the people of the place (Ep. 49, Arsacio pontifici Galatiae, ad fin.). At Ancyra, according to the Acts of the Martyrs, a presbyter named Basil was accused of exciting the people against the gods and speaking injuriously of the emperor and his apostate courtiers. Basil was cruelly treated in his presence, and, after a second trial, was put to death by red-hot irons (Boll. Mar. 22; also in Ruinart, Acta Mart. Sincera, p 599; Soz. p. 11). [BASILIUS OF ANCYRA.] Julian left Ancyra, according to the same Acts, on June 29, and soon after was met by a crowd of litigants, some clamouring for a restoration of their property, others complaining that they were unjustly forced into the curia, others accusing their neighbours of treason. Julian shewed no leniency to the second class, even when they had a strong case, being determined to allow as few immunities as possible. To the rest he was just and fair, and an amusing instance is recorded of the summary way he disposed of a feeble charge of treason (Amm. xxii. 9, 12 ; cf. xxv. 4, 21).
In Cappadocia his ill-humour was roused by finding almost all the people Christian. "Come, I beseech you," he writes to the philosopher Aristoxenus, "and meet me at Tyana, and shew us a genuine Greek amongst these Cappadocians. As far as I have seen, either the people will not sacrifice, or the very few that are ready to do so are ignorant of our ritual" (Ep. 4). He had already shewn his anger against the people of Caesarea, the capital of the province, who had dared, after his accession, to destroy the Temple of Fortune, the last that remained standing in their city. According to Sozomen (v. 4), he erased the city from the "list of the empire and called it by its old name Mazaca." He fined the Christians 300 pounds of gold, confiscated church property, and enrolled the ecclesiastics in the militia of the province, besides imposing a heavy poll-tax on the Christian laity. But either these severe measures must have been justified by great violence on the part of the Christians or Sozomen's account is exaggerated; for Gregory Nazianzen says that it is perhaps not fair to reproach him with his violent conduct to the Caesareans, and speaks of him as "justly indignant" (Or. 4, 92, p. 126). Such mild language in this instance may well make us attach more weight to Gregory's statements as to Julian's misdoings on other occasions. The emperor was further incensed by the tumultuous election of Eusebius to the bishopric of Caesarea, in which the soldiers of the garrison took part. This Eusebius was still a catechumen, but a man of official rank and influence, known to be an enemy of the emperor (Greg. Or. in Patrem, xviii. 33, p. 354). The elder Gregory firmly resisted the remonstrances of the governor of the province, who was sent to him by Julian, and the storm passed away (ib. 34, p. 355). "You knew us," cried Gregory, "you knew Basil and myself from the time of your sojourn in Greece, and you paid us the compliment which the Cyclops paid Ulysses, and kept us to be swallowed last " (Or. 5, 39 p. 174). The silence of Gregory may be taken as clenching the arguments from style against the genuineness of the supposed correspondence between Julian and St. Basil, which would otherwise be assigned to this date (see pp. 490 f.). The letters referred to are Epp. 40, 41, in the editions of St. Basil, the first of these—Jul. Ep. 75 (77 Heyler); cf. Rode, p. 86, note 11.
A more pleasant reception awaited Julian in the neighbouring province, Cilicia. Entering it by the famous pass of the Pylae Ciliciae, he was met by the governor, his friend Celsus,
once his fellow-student, and probably his confidant at Athens, who greeted him with a panegyric—a greeting more agreeable to Julian than the customary presents made to emperors in their progresses (Amm. xxii. 9, 13; Liban. Epit. p. 575, and Ep. 648). Julian shewed his high esteem for his encomiast by taking him up into his chariot and entering with him into Tarsus, a city which evidently pleased him by its welcome. Celsus accompanied him to the southern boundary of his province, a few leagues N. of Antioch. Here they were met by a large crowd, among whom was Libanius (Liban. de Vita Sua, p. 81; Ep. 648 ; see Sievers, Libanius, p. 91). He reached Antioch before July 28, the date of a law found in both the Codes, permitting provincial governors to appoint inferior judges or judices pedanei (Cod. Theod. i. 68 = Cod. Just. iii. 3, 5; cf. C. I. L. iii. 459).
§ 6. Julian's Residence at Antioch (July 362 to March 5, 363).—The eight months spent at Antioch left Julian yet more bitter against the church, and less careful to avoid injustice to its members, in fact countenancing persecution even to death, though in word still forbidding it and proclaiming toleration. (Libanius says that Julian spent nine months at Antioch, Epit. p. 578, 15, but it is hard to make more than eight.) The narrative of this period may be divided into an account of (a) his relations with the citizens of Antioch; (b) his relations to the church at large; (c) attempt to rebuild the temple at Jerusalem.
(a) Internal State of Antioch.—On his entrance into the city Libanius greeted him in a speech in which he congratulated him on bringing back at once the ancient rites of sacrifice and the honour to the profession of rhetoric (Prosphoneticus Juliano, ed. Reiske, i. p. 405). But other sounds saddened Julian with a presage of his coming doom. It was the festival of the lamentation for Adonis, and the air resounded with shrieks for the lover of Venus, cut down in his prime as the green corn fails before the heat of the summer sun. This ill-omened beginning was followed by other equally unpropitious circumstances, and the residence of Julian at Antioch was a disappointment to himself and disagreeable to almost all the inhabitants. He was impatient, or soon became so, to engage upon his Persian campaign; but the difficulty of making the necessary preparations in time determined him to pass the winter at the Syrian capital (Liban. Epit. p. 576 ; Amm. xxii. 10, 1). He had anticipated much more devotion on the part of the pagans and much less resistance on that of the Christians. He was disgusted to find that both parties regretted the previous reign—"Neither the Chi nor the Kappa" (i.e. neither Christ nor Constantius) "did our city any harm" became a common saying (Misopogon, p. 357 A). To the heathens themselves the enthusiastic form of religion to which Julian was devoted was little more than an unpleasant and somewhat vulgar anachronism. His cynic asceticism and dislike of the theatre and the circus was unpopular in a city particularly addicted to public spectacles. His superstition was equally unpalatable. The short, untidy, long-bearded man, marching pompously in procession on the tips of his toes, and swaying his shoulders from side to side, surrounded by a crowd of abandoned characters, such as formed the regular attendants upon many heathen festivals, appeared seriously to compromise the dignity of the empire. The blood of countless victims flowed everywhere, but seemed to serve merely to gorge his foreign soldiery, especially the semi-barbarous Gauls; and the streets of Antioch were disturbed by their revels (Amm. xxii. 12, 6). Secret rumours spread of horrid nocturnal sacrifices and of the pursuit of arts of necromancy from which the natural heathen conscience shrank only less than the Christian. The wonder is, not that Julian quarrelled with the Antiochenes, but that he left the city without a greater explosion than actually took place.
Not a little of the irritation between the emperor and the citizens was centred upon the suburb of the city, called Daphne, a delicious cool retreat in which, as it was fabled, the nymph beloved by Apollo had been transformed into a laurel. Here was a celebrated temple of the god, and a spring that bore the name of Castalian, in former days the favourite haunt of the gay, the luxurious, and the vicious. Gallus had counteracted the genius loci by transposing to it the relics of the martyr bp. Babylas, whose chapel was erected opposite the temple of Apollo. The worship of the latter had almost ceased, and Julian, going to Daphne in Aug. (Loüs), to keep the annual festival of the Sun-god, was surprised to find no gathering of worshippers. He himself had returned for the purpose from a visit to the temple of Zeus Casius, several leagues distant. To his disgust the city had provided no sacrifice, and only one poor priest appeared, offering a single goose at his own expense. Julian rated the town council soundly (Misop. pp. 361 D, seq.). He took care that in future sacrifices should not be wanting, and eagerly consulted the oracle and unstopped the Castalian spring. After a long silence he learnt that Apollo was disturbed by the presence of the "dead man," i.e. Babylas. "I am surrounded by corpses," said the voice, "and I cannot speak till they are removed" (Soz. v. 19 ; Chrys. de S. Bab. §15, p. 669; Liban. Monodia in Daphnen, vol. iii. p. 333)· All the corpses were cleared away, but especially that of the martyr (Amm. xxii. 12, 8; Misop. p. 361 B). A remnant of religious awe perhaps prevented Julian from destroying the relics of which his actions practically acknowledged the power, and they were eagerly seized by the Christians and borne in triumph to Antioch. The procession along the five miles from Daphne to the city chanted aloud Ps. xcvii.: "Confounded be all they that worship carved images and that delight in vain gods." Julian, incensed by this personality, forced the prefect Sallustius, much against his will, to inquire into it with severity and punish those concerned. One young man, Theodorus, was hung upon the rack (equuleus) and cruelly scourged with iron nails for a whole day, till he was supposed to be dying. Rufinus, the church historian, who met him in after-life, asked him how he bore the pain. Theodorus replied that he had felt but little, for a young man stood by him
wiping off the sweat of his agony and comforting him all the time (Rufin. i. 35, 36, referred to by Soc. iii. 19, and given in Ruinart, Acta Martyrum, p. 604, ed. Rabisbon. 1859). The anger of Julian was also braved by a widow named Publia, the head of a small community of Christian virgins, who sang in his hearing the Psalms against idols and against the enemies of God. She was brought before a court and buffeted on the face with severity, but dismissed (Theod. iii. i9).
Shortly after the translation of the relics of St. Babylas to Antioch, on the night of Oct. 22, the temple of Daphne itself was burnt to the ground. The heathens accused the Christians of maliciously setting it on fire; they attributed it to fire from heaven and the prayers of St. Babylas. A story also got about that Asclepiades the cynic had left a number of lighted candles burning in the shrine (Amm. xxii. 13; Soz. v. 20; Chrys. de S. Bab. § 17, p. 674). Julian's wrath was intense. He accused the Christians of the deed, and suspected the priests of knowing about it (Misop. pp. 346 B, 361 B, C). As a punishment he ordered the cathedral church of Antioch to be closed, and confiscated its goods (Amm. xxii. 13, Soz. v. 8). The order was executed by his uncle Julianus, now count of the East, with all the zeal of a new convert and with circumstances of disgusting profanity. Theodoret, a presbyter, who still collected a congregation of the faithful, was tortured and beheaded (Ruinart, Acta Mart. p. 605). The Christian account tells us that Julian reproved his uncle as having brought him into disgrace, but in the Misopogon he gives him nothing but praise (ib. p. 607, Misop. p. 365 C). The count's miserable death, which followed soon after, was naturally treated as a judgment from heaven (Soz. v. 8; Theod. iii. 12, etc.). That of Felix, another renegade, had, a little earlier, been equally remarkable for its suddenness. The two were regarded as a presage of the emperor's own doom, for now that Julianus and Felix were gone, Augustus would soon follow, a play upon the imperial title Julianus Felix Augustus (Amm. xxiii. 1, 5). This was a trivial saying, but calculated to disquiet and irritate a mind like Julian's.
Antioch meanwhile was afflicted by a dearth, which almost became a famine, and the emperor's efforts to alleviate it failed. He imported a large quantity of grain from Egypt, and fixed the market price at a low figure. Speculators bought up his importations, and would not sell their own stores, and soon there was nothing in the markets. Julian declared that the fault was in the magistrates, and tried in vain to infuse some of his own public spirit into the farmers and merchants (Liban. Epit. p. 587). The town council were sent to prison (Amm. xxii. 14, 2; Liban. Epit. p. 588). Their confinement, however, did not last a day, and they were released by the intercession of Libanius, who tells us that he was not deterred from his petition by the sarcastic hint that the Orontes was not far off (de Vita Sua, vol. i. p. 85). The whole winter, indeed, was clouded with misfortunes. On Dec. 2 the rest of Nicomedia was destroyed by earthquake, and a large part of Nicaea suffered with it (Amm. xxii. 13, 5). News was brought that Constantinople was in danger from the same cause, and some suggested that the wrath of the earth-shaker Poseidon must be appeased. This gave Julian, who had a real affection for the city, an opportunity of showing his enthusiasm. He stood all day long in the open air, under rain and storm, in a fixed and rigid attitude, like an Indian yogi, while his courtiers looked on in amazement from under cover. It was calculated afterwards that the earthquake stopped on the very day of the imperial intercession, and Julian, it is said, took no harm from his exposure (Liban. Epit. p. 581). But this partial success did not make him feel secure of the favour of the gods. He was convinced that Apollo had deserted Daphne and the other deities were not propitious. Even the day of his entering the consulship, Jan. 1, 363, graced with an oration of Libanius (ad Jul. imp. consulem), was disfigured by a bad omen: a priest fell dead on the steps of the temple of the Genius. This was the more annoying, as he had no doubt intended to make his fourth consulship mark a new era by taking as his colleague his old friend Sallustius prefect of the Gauls, an honour paid to no one outside the imperial family since the days of Diocletian (Amm. xxiii. 1, 1). At the same time too he received news of the failure of the attempt (see (c), infra) to rebuild the temple at Jerusalem (Amm. xxiii. 1, 3)
Meanwhile his designs for involving the city in heathen rites caused considerable excitement and odium. He profaned the fountains of the city of Daphne according to Christian ideas, and consecrated them according to his own, by throwing into them a portion of his sacrifices, so that all who used them might be partakers with the gods, and for a similar reason ordered all things sold in the market, such as bread, meat, and vegetables, to be sprinkled with lustral water. The Christians complained but followed the precept of the apostle in eating, freely all things sold in public, without inquiry (Theod. iii. 15). Two young officers, Juventinus and Maximinus, were one day lamenting this state of things, and quoted the words from the Greek Daniel, c. iii. 32, "Thou hast delivered us to a lawless king, to an apostate beyond all the heathen that are in the earth." Their words were repeated by an informer, and they were ordered to appear before the emperor. They declared the cause of their complaint, the only one (as they said) which they had to bring against his government. They were thrown into prison, and friends were sent to promise them large rewards if they would change their religion; but they stood firm, and were beheaded in the middle of the night, on the charge of having spoken evil of the emperor (Chrys. in Juvent. et Max. 3 ; cf. Theod. iii. 15). The date of this "martyrdom" may have been Jan. 25, as it appears in Latin calendars (Boll. Jan. p. 618).
Julian discharged his spleen upon the Antiochenes by writing one of the most remarkable satires ever published—the Misopogon. "He had been insulted," says Gibbon, "by satires and libels; in his turn he composed, under the title of The Enemy of the Beard, an ironical confession of his own faults and a
severe satire on the licentious and effeminate manners of Antioch. The imperial reply was publicly exposed before the gates of the palace, and the Misopogon still remains a singular monument of the resentment, the wit, the humanity, and the indiscretion of Julian" (Decline and Fall, c. 24, vol. 3, p. 8, ed. Bohn). Julian's own philosophic beard gives the title to the pamphlet, which throws much light upon the character of the emperor. In form it is a dialogue between himself and the people, in which he describes his own virtues under the colour of vices, and their vices as if they were virtues. Occasionally he lays aside his irony and directly expresses his indignation against them, and reveals his own character with a humorous simplicity that in turn attracts and repels us. This pamphlet was written in the seventh month of his sojourn at Antioch, probably, that is, in the latter half of Jan.; and he left the city in the first week of March. "I turn my back upon a city full of all vices, insolence, drunkenness, incontinence, impiety, avarice, and impudence," were his last words to Antioch (Liban. Legatio ad Jul. pp. 469 seq.).
(b) Julian's Relation to the Church at Large during his Residence at Antioch.—The general object of the emperor's policy was to degrade Christianity and to promote heathenism by every means short of an edict of persecution or the imposition of a general penalty on the profession of the faith.
We do not possess the text of many of Julian's edicts, a number of which were naturally removed from the statute book. We know that he ordered the temples to be reopened and their estates to be restored, but we do not know the terms in which this order was couched. Probably he used bitter language against the "atheists" and "Galileans," ordering all chapels of martyrs built within the sacred precincts to be destroyed, and all relics of "dead men" to be summarily removed. Something of this kind must have been the σύνθημα or "signal," of which he speaks in the Misopogon as having been followed by the neighbouring "holy cities" of Syria with a zeal and enthusiasm which exceeded even his wishes (Misop. p. 361 A; Soz. p. 20, ad fin., mentions an order to destroy two Christian chapels near the temple of Apollo Didymaeus at Miletus). This confession from his own mouth goes far to justify the statements of his opponents. Riots occurred in consequence of this "signal" in many cities, particularly of Syria and the East, where the Christians were numerous and popular passion was strong. The details of Julian's relation to some of these cases form perhaps the gravest stains upon his character.
The earliest case after his entry into Antioch which can be dated exactly was that of Titus, bp. of Bostra, in Arabia Auranitis. Julian had informed Titus that he should be held responsible for any breach of the peace (Soz. v. 15, p. 102 B). The bishop answered by a memorial, declaring that the Christian population was equal in numbers to the heathen but that under his influence and that of their clergy, they were careful to abstain from sedition (ib.). Julian on Aug. 1, 362, replied by a public letter to the people of Bostra, representing this language as an impertinence, and calumniating Titus as the accuser of the Christian body. After quoting the memorial of Titus, he proceeds: "These are the words of the bishop concerning you. Observe, he does not ascribe your regularity to your own inclination; unwillingly, he says, you refrain 'by his exhortations.' Do you then use your wills, and expel him as your accuser from your city. . . Such is their fate who turn from the worship of the immortal gods to dead men and relics" (Ep. 52).
A month or two later, probably in Oct., he continued his attack upon Athanasius, the first acts of which have already been described. The great champion had never left Alexandria, or had soon returned. Julian was thoroughly enraged to find his first order had not been executed. He wrote angrily to the prefect Ecdicius: "I swear by great Serapis if he does not leave Alexandria and every part of Egypt, by the 1st of Dec., I will fine your cohort a hundred pounds of gold. You know that I am slow to condemn, but when I have condemned much slower in pardoning," adding in his own hand, "I am thoroughly pained at being treated in this way with contempt. By all the gods, no sight, or rather no news, of your doings could give me greater pleasure than that of Athanasius being driven from Egypt, the scoundrel who in my reign has dared to baptize Greek ladies of rank. Let him be expelled" (Ep. 6). At the same time he wrote to the people of Alexandria, mingling personal abuse of their bishop with arguments to enforce the worship of Serapis and the visible gods, the sun and moon, and to depreciate the worship of "Jesus, Whom neither you nor your fathers have seen," and "Whose doctrine has done nothing for your city." "We have long ago ordered him," he concludes, "to leave the city, now we banish him from the whole of Egypt" (Ep. 51). The news of these decrees was brought to Athanasius on Oct. 23, and he felt it time to depart. "Be of good heart," he said to those who clustered round him, "it is but a cloud; it will soon pass" (Ruf. i. 32 ; Festal Epistles, Chronicle, p. 14, for the date). During the rest of Julian's reign he lived in retirement in the monasteries of the Egyptian desert.
To Hecebolius (who was perhaps his old master advanced to some place of authority) he wrote concerning a sedition at Edessa, in much the same terms as he had written to the people of Bostra, but apparently with more justice. "I have always used the Galileans well, and abstained from violent measures of conversion; but the Arians, luxuriating in their wealth, have treated the Valentinians in a manner which cannot be tolerated in a well-ordered city. In order, therefore, that they may enter more easily into the kingdom of Heaven in the way which their wonderful law bids them, I have ordered all the money of the church of Edessa to be seized for division amongst the soldiers, and its estates to be confiscated" (Ep. 43, cf. Rufin. i. 32; Socr. iii. 13). This twisting of the gospel precept against the church is a close parallel to the alleged edict forbidding Christians to exercise the sword of the magistrate, and supports its authenticity (so Rode, p. 85, n. 9, see supra). Another disturbance was reported
as occurring between the cities of Gaza and Maiuma in Palestine. The latter, originally a suburb of Gaza, had been raised by Constantius to the rank of an independent corporation. The people of Gaza had successfully petitioned the new emperor for a withdrawal of these privileges, and now in their exultation attacked their neighbours, and set fire to their chapels, with other acts of violence. Three brothers of a respectable family named Eusebius, Nestabus, and Zeno, were murdered with circumstances of great atrocity. The people were considerably alarmed by fear of what the emperor might do, and the governor arrested some of the ringleaders, who were brought to Antioch. In this case Julian's sense of justice seems entirely to have deserted him. Not only was no reprimand addressed to the people of Gaza, but the governor was himself put on his trial and deprived of his office. "What great matter is it if one Greek hand has slain ten Galileans?" were words well calculated to bear bitter fruit wherever they were repeated, and equivalent, as Gregory argues, to an edict of persecution (Greg. Or. 4, 93, p. 127; Sozomen—a Gazene himself—v. 9). Rode accepts most of this story, but rejects without sufficient reason the words attributed to Julian, p. 92, n. 12, who did and said many things in a fit of passion, of which his cooler judgment disapproved. Disturbances against the Christians broke out in many parts of Palestine. Holy places and holy things were profaned, and Christian people maltreated, tortured, and destroyed, sometimes in the most abominable manner (Chron. Pasch. p. 546, ed. Bonn.; Soz. v. 21; Philost. vii. 4).
Meanwhile Mark, bp. of Arethusa, a small town in Syria, who was said to have saved the life of the infant Julian, had refused to pay for the restoration of a temple which he had destroyed in the preceding reign. He was scourged in public, his beard was torn, his naked body was smeared with honey and hung up in a net exposed to the stings of insects and the fierce rays of the Syrian sun. Nothing could be wrung from him, and he was at last set free, a conqueror (Greg. Or. 4, 88–91, pp. 122–125; Soz. v. 10). Wherever he went, he was surrounded by admirers, and this case became a warning to the more temperate and cautious pagans not to proceed to extremities. Libanius intercedes for an offender, lest he should turn out another Mark (Ep. 730); and Sallust, the prefect of the East, admonished Julian for the disgrace this fruitless contest with an old man brought upon the pagan cause (Greg. l.c.; Sallust's name is not mentioned, but his office and character are described with sufficient clearness).
(c) Attempt to rebuild the Temple at Jerusalem.—Julian had apparently for some time past wished to conciliate the Jewish people, and was quite ready to grant Jehovah a place, amongst the other local deities (cf. Frag. p. 295 C; St. Cyril. in Spanheim's Julian, pp. 99, 100, and p. 305, on Sacrifice). It seems probable, therefore, that his chief motive in wishing to restore the temple at Jerusalem was the desire to increase the number of divinities who were propitious to him, and to gain the favour of the Jewish God in the prosecution of his Persian campaign. This is substantially the account given by Socrates, who tells us that he summoned the Jews to him and asked why they did not offer sacrifice. They replied that it was not lawful for them to do so, except at Jerusalem, and he therefore determined to rebuild the temple of Solomon (Socr. iii. 20). This account agrees best with the statements of the emperor himself in his epistles and in his books against the Christians, and other motives attributed to him may be considered as subordinate (cf. Greg. Or. 5, 3, p. 149; Rufin. i. 37; Soz. v. 21). There is, however, an air of great probability in the statement of Philostorgius that he wished to falsify the prediction of our Blessed Lord as to the utter destruction of the temple (vii. 9). Nor could the enmity of the Jews against the Christians be otherwise than very pleasing to him (Greg. l.c. ἐπαθῆκε καὶ τὸ Ἰουδαίων φῦλον ἡμῖν). Julian provided very large sums for the work, and entrusted its execution to the oversight of Alypius of Antioch, an officer who had been employed by him in Britain and who was his intimate personal friend (Amm. xxiii. i. 2; Epp. 29 and 30 are addressed to him). The Jews were exultant and eager to contribute their wealth and their labour. The rubbish was cleared away and the old foundations were laid bare. But a stronger power intervened. To quote the words of Ammianus: "Whilst Alypius was strenuously forcing on the work, and the governor of the province was lending his assistance, fearful balls of flames, bursting out with frequent assaults near the foundations, and several times burning the workmen, rendered access to the spot impossible; and in this way the attempt came to a standstill through the determined obstinacy of the element" (xxiii. 1, 3). No doubt the Christians saw in this defeat of their oppressor not only a miracle of divine power, but a peculiarly striking fulfilment of the old prophecies in which fire is so often spoken of as the emblem and instrument of judgment (e.g. Deut. xxxii. 22, Jer. xxi. 14, and particularly, perhaps, the historical description of Lam. iv. 11, "The Lord hath accomplished His fury; He hath poured out His fierce anger, and hath kindled a fire in Zion, and it hath devoured the foundations thereof"). They thought also, of course, of our Lord's own words, now more completely verified than ever. Julian retained his wide knowledge of the text of Scripture, as we see by his writings, and these prophecies doubtless irritated him by their literal exactness. The "globi flammarum prope fundamenta erumpentes" of the heathen historian are an undesigned coincidence with the words of Hebrew prophecy.
&gt;From heathen testimonies, and from the fathers and historians of the church, Dr. Newman has put together the following detailed account of the occurrence, in which he chiefly follows Warburton. The order of the incidents is, of course, not certain, but only a matter of probable inference; nor can we guarantee the details as they appear in the later writers. "They declare as follows: The work was interrupted by a violent whirlwind, says Theodoret, which scattered about vast quantities of lime, sand and other loose
materials collected for the building. A storm of thunder and lightning followed; fire fell, says Socrates, and the workmen's tools, the spades, the axes, and the saws were melted down. Then came an earthquake, which threw up the stones of the old foundation, says Socrates; filled up the excavation, says Theodoret, which had been made for the new foundations; and, as Rufinus adds, threw down the buildings in the neighbourhood, and especially the public porticoes in which were numbers of the Jews who had been aiding in the undertaking, and who were buried in the ruins. The workmen returned to their work; but from the recesses, laid open by the earthquake, balls of fire burst out, says Ammianus; and that again and again as often as they renewed the attempt. The fiery mass, says Rufinus, raged up and down the street for hours; and St. Gregory, that when some fled to a neighbouring church for safety the fire met them at the door and forced them back, with the loss either of life or of their extremities. At length the commotion ceased; a calm succeeded; and, as St. Gregory adds, in the sky appeared a luminous cross surrounded by a circle. Nay, upon the garments and the bodies of the persons present crosses were impressed, says St. Gregory; which were luminous by night, says Rufinus; and at other times of a dark colour, says Theodoret ; and would not wash out, adds Socrates. In consequence the attempt was abandoned" (Newman, Essay on Miracles in Early Eccl. Hist. p. clxxvii.). All these incidents present a picture consistent with the extraordinary operations of the forces of nature. Even for the luminous crosses there are curious parallels in the history of storms of lightning and volcanic eruptions (see those collected by Warburton and quoted by Newman, p. clxxxii. notes). The cross in the sky has its likeness in the effects of mock suns and parhelia. But even so, a Christian may still fairly assert his right to call the event a miraculous interposition of God's providence. It fulfilled all the purposes we can assign to the Scripture miracles. It gave "an impression of the present agency and of the will of God." It seemed to shew His severe disapproval of the attempt and fulfilled the prophecy of Christ. It came, like the vision of Constantine, at a critical epoch in the world's history. It was, as the heathen poet has it, a "dignus vindice nodus." All who were present or heard of the event at the time thought it, we may be sure, a sign from God. As a miracle it ranges beside those Biblical miracles in which, at some critical moment, the forces of nature are seen to work strikingly for God's people or against their enemies.
§ 7. Julian's Persian Campaign and Death (Mar. 5 to June 27, 363).—Julian's route into Persia is marked with considerable exactness; the first part of it by a letter which he wrote to Libanius from Hierapolis (Ep. 27). At Beroea, the modern Aleppo, he "conversed with the senate on matters of religion—all praised my discourse, but few only were convinced by it" (Ep. 27, p. 399 D).
At Batnae (the scenery of which he compared to that of Daphne) he found ostentatious preparations for sacrifice upon the public roads, but thought them too obviously studied and too redolent of personal flattery. Leaving Edessa on his left hand, probably as a city too distinctly Christian to be visited with comfort, he had reached Carrhae, a place of vigorous pagan traditions, on Mar. 19. At some distance from the town there was a famous temple of the Moon, in which it was worshipped both as a male and a female deity, and near which the emperor Caracalla had been murdered (Herodian. iv. 13, 3; Spartian. Caracallus, 6, 6; 7, 3). Julian made a point of visiting it and offered sacrifices "according to the local rites." Of his secret doings in this temple there are different accounts. Ammianus had heard that he invested his relative Procopius, who was his only companion, with his paludamentum, and bid him seize the empire in case he died in the campaign on which they were engaged (Aram. xxiii. 3, 2). Among Christians a report was current that he offered a human sacrifice. The story ran that he sealed up the temple and ordered it not to be opened till his return: and that after the news of his death people entered it and found a woman hanging by the hair of her head, and her body cut open as if to search for omens (Theod. iii. 26).
On Mar. 27 he was at Callinicum and celebrated the festival of the Mother of the Gods (Amm. xxiii. 3, 7). At the beginning of Apr. he came to Circesium (Carchemish) at the junction of the Chaboras and the Euphrates. Here he received distressing letters from his friend Sallustius in Gaul, urging him to give up his campaign as he felt sure that the gods were unfavourable (Amm. xxiii. 5, 6). At Zaitham (where Ammianus first begins to speak in the first person) they saw the high mound which marked the burial-place of the emperor Gordian. The historian records numerous portents on their march; among them, a lion which appeared at Dura gave rise to a curious dispute between the Etruscan augurs and the philosophers who followed in his train. The former shewed from their books that it was an ill omen; the latter (amongst whom were Maximus and Priscus) had historical precedents to prove that it need not be so regarded. A similar dispute occurred next day as to the meaning of a thunderstorm (xxiii. 5, 10 seq.). Such superstitious discussions were not likely to embolden the soldiery; but Julian decided in favour of the philosophers, animated the army with his own courage, and tried to dispel the prejudice that the Romans had never invaded Persia with success. One of his most important officers, Hormisdas (elder brother of Sapor, the reigning king of Persia), had angered the nobles of his country by threats, had been imprisoned by them, and escaped to the court of Constantine. He became apparently a sincere Christian, yet remained a useful and trusted officer of Julian: By his intervention several Assyrian towns opened their gates to the invaders (xxiv. 1, 6, etc.). The country was inundated by the natives, and it required all Julian's inventive quickness and personal example to carry the army through the marshes. After various successes he arrived at the bank of the Tigris, at the ruins of
the old Greek city of Seleucia opposite Ctesiphon. He forced the passage of the river by a very vigorous and dangerous movement in the face of the enemy, and found himself under the walls of the capital (xxiv. 6, 4–14). But no threats or sarcasms could draw the inhabitants from their impregnable defences, and Sapor himself made no appearance. Part of the Roman army had been left in Mesopotamia, where the two ambitious generals, Procopius and Sebastianus, fell out, and the support expected from Arsaces was not forthcoming. But though Sapor did not appear to give battle, he sent a secret ambassador with offers of an honourable peace, the exact terms of which are unknown to us (Liban. Epit. p. 608; Socr. iii. 21; Ammianus is here defective). These Julian declined, against. the advice of Hormisdas. He was fired with all sorts of vague and enthusiastic projects; he longed to visit the plain of Arbela and to overrun the whole Persian empire (Liban. Epit. p. 609). These ideas were kindled into action by the arts of a certain Persian noble, who pretended to be a deserter, indignant against his sovereign, but who in reality played the part of a second Zopyrus (Greg. Naz. Or. 5, 11, p. 154; cf. Aurel. Victor. Epit. 67; Soz. vi. 1, p. 218). Julian's fleet presented a difficulty, and he determined upon the hazardous measure of burning it, except a very few vessels, which were to be placed on wheels. This was done at Abuzatha, where he halted five days (Zos. iii. 26). A short time of reflection and a discovery that his Persian informants were deceiving him made him regret his decision. He attempted too late to save some of the ships. Only twelve out of some 1,100 were still uninjured. What had been intended to be a triumphant progress almost insensibly became a retreat. The Persian cavalry were perpetually harassing the outskirts of the army, and though beaten at close quarters were continually appearing in fresh swarms. The few ships that remained were insufficient to build a bridge by which to open communications with Mesopotamia. Nothing was left but to proceed along the E. bank of the Tigris to the nearest friiendly province, Corduene in S. Armenia, as quickly as possible. This was determined on June 16, only ten days before the death of Julian (Amm. xxiv. 8, 5). How far he had previously penetrated into the interior is not easy to determine. In the next few days the Romans fought several battles with success, but not such as to ensure them a quiet march forwards. They suffered from want of food, and Julian shared their privations on an equality with the commonest soldier (Amm. xxv. 2, 2). On the night of June 25, as he was studying some book of philosophy in his tent, he had a vision (as he told his intimates) of the Genius of the Republic leaving his tent in a mournful attitude, with a veil over his head and over the cornucopia in his hand—reminding him by contrast of his vision of the night before he was proclaimed Augustus. He shook off his natural terror, and went out into the night air to offer propitiatory sacrifices, when he received another shock from the appearance of a brilliant meteor, which he: interpreted as a sign of the wrath of Mars, whom he had already offended (xxv. 2, 4; cf. xxiv. 6, 17). When day dawned the Etruscan diviners implored him to make no movement that day, or at least to put off his march for some hours. But his courage had returned with daylight, and he gave the order to advance. Sudden attacks of the enemy from different quarters threw the army into confusion, and Julian, excited by the danger, rushed forward without his breastplate, catching up a shield as he went. As he raised his hands above his head to urge his men to pursue, a cavalry spear from an unknown hand grazed his arm and lodged in his right side. He tried to draw out the spear-head, but the sharp edges cut his fingers. He threw up his hand with a convulsive motion, and fell fainting from his horse (xxv. 3, 7, compared with other accounts), uttering a cry which is differently reported. Some said he threw his own blood towards heaven with the bitter words, "O Galilean, Thou hast conquered!" (Theod. iii. 25). Others thought they heard him reproach the gods, and especially the Sun, his patron, for their desertion (Philost. vii. 15; Soz. vi. 2). He was borne to his tent and his wound dressed, no doubt by his friend Oribasius. For a moment he revived, and called for a horse and arms, but a gush of blood shewed how weak he really was. On learning that the place was called Phrygia he gave up all hope, having been told by some diviner that he should die in Phrygia. He addressed those who stood around him in a highly philosophic speech in the style of Socrates, of which Ammianus has preserved a report. He considered that death was sent him as a gift from the gods. He knew of no great faults he had committed either in a private station or as Caesar. He had always desired the good of his subjects, and had endeavoured to be a faithful servant of the republic. He had long known the decree of fate, that his death was impending, and thanked the supreme God that it came, not in a disgraceful or painful way, but in a glorious form. He would not discuss the appointment of his successor, lest he should pass over one who was worthy, or endanger the life of some one whom he thought fit, but hoped that the republic would find a good ruler after him. He then distributed his personal effects to his intimate friends, and asked among others for Anatolius, the master of the offices. Sa!lustius (the prefect of the East) replied that he was happy. Julian understood that he had fallen, but lamented the death of his friend with a natural feeling which he had restrained in thinking of his own. Those who stood round could no longer restrain their grief, but he still kept his habit of command, and rebuked them for their want of high feeling. "My life gives me confidence of being taken to the islands of the blest, to have converse with heaven and the stars; it is mean to weep as if I had deserved to be condemned to Tartarus " (Liban. Epit. p. 614, ἐπετίμα τοῖς τε Ἁλλοις, καὶ οὐχ ἥκιστα (τοῖς φιλοσόφοις) εἰ τῶν βεβιωμένων αὐτὸν εἰς μακάρων νήσους ἀγόντων, οἱ δὲ ὡς ἀξίως ταρτάρου βεβιωκότα δακρύουσιν: Amm. xxv. 3, 22, "humile esse caelo sideribusque conciliatum lugeri principem dicens").
His last moments were spent in a difficult discussion with Maximus and Priscus on "the sublimity of souls." In the midst of this debate his wound burst afresh, and he called for a cup of cold water, drank it, and passed away quietly at midnight on the evening of June 26, having not yet reached the age of 32 (Amm. xxv. 3, 23; 5, 1; Socr. iii. 21, etc.).
It was never found out who threw the fatal spear, though the Persians offered a reward. The suggestion of Libanius that it was a Christian was such as he would naturally make in his bitterness (Epit. pp. 612, 614). Gregory, Socrates, and Rufinus consider it uncertain whether it was a Persian or one of his own soldiers (Greg. Or. v. 13, p. 155; Ruf. i. 36; Socr. iii. 21). Sozomen notices the suspicion of Libanius, and defends it in a spirit which cannot but be condemned (Soz. vi. 1).
The news of Julian's death and that the army had elected a Christian, Jovian, to succeed him caused enormous rejoicings, especially in Antioch. Jovian was obliged to make peace by ceding the five Mesopotamian provinces, including Nisibis, which had been the bulwark of the empire in the East. Procopius was ordered to carry back the body to Tarsus, where it was interred with pagan ceremonies opposite that of Maximinus Daïa.
Character.—Julian's story leaves the impression of a living man far more than that of most historical personages. The most opposite and unexpected estimates of him have been formed. He has been admired and pitied by religious-minded men, detested and satirized by sceptics and atheists. His own friend Ammianus despised his superstition, and paints it in terms not much weaker than the invectives of Gregory and Chrysostom; Gibbon sneers at him alternately with his Christian opponents. A. Comte wished to appoint an annual day for execrating his memory in company with that of Bonaparte, as one of the "two principal opponents of progress," and as the "more insensate" of the two (System of Positive Polity, Eng. trans. vol. i. p. 82; an ordinance afterwards withdrawn, ib. vol. iv. p. 351). Strauss treats him as a vain, reactionary dreamer, comparable to medievalists who tried to stay the march of modern thought. On the other hand, pietistic historians like Arnold, Neander, and even Ullmann, unlike the ancient writers of the church, are tolerant and favourable.
The simple reason of this divergence is, of course, that the strongest force working in him was a self-confident religious enthusiasm, disguised under the form of self-surrender to a divine mission. Such a character constantly appears in different lights, and some of those who have judged him have looked chiefly at the sentimental side of his life, without considering his actions; while others have estimated him by his actions apart from his principles—the more so because he was inconsistent himself in his conduct, and sometimes acted with, sometimes against, his principles; and hence any one who chooses to take a partial view may easily find a justification in the positive statements of this or that historian, or of Julian himself.
A Christian who attempts to judge Julian without prejudice will probably go through several phases of opinion before he comes to a final estimate. All but the cold-hearted will sympathize, to some extent at least, with his religious enthusiasm, and with the sacrifices which he was ready to make in its behalf. It is impossible to doubt that he had a vein of noble sentiment, and a lofty and, in many ways, unselfish ambition. He had a real love of ideal beauty, and of the literary and artistic traditions of the past. There was something even pathetic in his hero-worship and his attachment to those whom he supposed to be his friends. If he was often pedantic and imitative, if he had a somewhat shallow and conceited manner, yet we must confess that much of this was the vice of the age, and this pettiness was thrown off in critical moments. Under strong excitement he often became simple, great, and natural.
Or again, many persons will sympathize with his conservative instincts, and his wish to retain what was great in the culture and art of past ages; while others will be attracted by his mystic speculations and ascetic practices, which were akin to much that has been valued and admired in many great names in the history of the church. But on reflection we see that all this was combined with a ruling spirit and view of things which was essentially heathen, and therefore fundamentally defective, as well as antagonistic, to all that we hold dearest and most vital. Julian was at bottom thoroughly one-sided. He was enthusiastic and even passionate in his religion; but it was the passion of the intellect and senses rather than of the heart.
Much of his natural warmth of feeling had been chilled and soured by the sense of injustice and secret enmity under which he so long laboured. He could not forget the murder of his nearest relations, nor the suspicions, intrigues, and actual personal indignities of which he was the subject. What we know of his early surroundings inclines us to suppose that their influence for good was but slight. His relation, Eusebius of Nicomedia, does not bear a high character. His pedagogue Mardonius was evidently more heathen than Christian in his sympathies, and a time-serving creature like Hecebolius was not likely to make much impression upon his pupil.
We have endeavoured to give a fair general estimate of this remarkable character, with the full consciousness how hazardous such an estimate is. If any one wishes for a catalogue of qualities, which can, as it were, be ticketed and labelled, be cannot do better than read Ammianus's elaborate award (xxv. 4). The historian takes the four cardinal virtues—temperance, prudence, justice, and courage—and gives a due amount of praise tempered with some fault-finding under each head. His chastity and abstinence were remarkable. He aimed at justice, and to a great extent earned a high reputation for it. He was liberal to his friends, and careless of his own comforts and conveniences in a very remarkable degree; while he did much to lighten and equalize the burden of taxation upon his subjects. His successes in Gaul gained him the affection of the people, and his popularity with the soldiers may be gathered from the manner in which the dwellers in northern and
western lands followed him into the midst of Persia. He may be said to have quelled a military tumult by the threat of retiring into private life. The lighter qualities of his character present him in rather a disagreeable aspect. He was loquacious and inconsistent in small things and in great. He was extremely superstitious, and even fanatical in his observance of religious rites, to a degree that made him appear trifling and undignified even to his friends. His manner was obviously irritating, and such as could not inspire respect in his subjects; and, on the other hand, he was too eager to gain popular applause. No one can doubt his cleverness and ability as a writer, but the greater number of his writings do not shew method, and they are often singularly deficient in judgment. An exception, perhaps, may be made in respect to the first oration to Constantius, the letter to the Athenians, and the Caesars. The latter, however, was a strange performance for one who was himself an emperor.
In person he was rather short, and awkwardly though very strongly built. His features were fine and well-marked, and his eyes very brilliant; his mouth was rather over-large and his lower lip inclined to droop. As a young man he grew a beard, but was required to cut it off when he became Caesar, and seems only to have grown it again after taking possession of Constantinople. At Antioch it was allowed to grow to a great size. His neck was thick, and his head hung forward, and was set on broad and thick shoulders. His walk was ungraceful; and he had an unsteady motion of the limbs. There is a fine life-size statue of Julian, of good and artistic workmanship, in the ruined hall of his palace in the garden of the Hôtel Clugny at Paris. It is figured as the frontispiece to E. Talbot's translation of his works.
Theory of Religion.—Julian's theory was too superficial and occasional to leave much mark upon the history of thought. His book against Christianity became indeed a favourite weapon with infidels, but he never founded a school of positive belief. He was, in fact, an enthusiastic amateur, who employed some of the nights of a laborious career of public business in writing brilliant essays in the neo-Platonic manner. He tells us that the oration in praise of the Sun took him three nights; that on the Mother of the Gods was composed, "without taking breath, in the short space of one night." Such work may astonish us even now, but it is not surprising that it should be incomplete, rambling, and obscure.
There are, however, certain constantly recurring thoughts which may be regarded as established principles with Julian. Julian forms one of that long line of remarkable men in the first four centuries after Christ who endeavoured to give a rational form to the religion and morality of the heathen world in opposition to the growing power of Christianity—men whose ill-success is one of the strongest proofs of the deadness of their own cause, and the vitality of that against which they strove. Seneca, Plutarch, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Celsus, Plotinus, Porphyry, Iamblichus, and Hierocles were in this sense precursors of Julian. We may define the objects of their efforts on behalf of paganism as:
(1) To unite popular beliefs in many gods with some conception of the unity of the divine being, and to give some consistent, if not rational, account of the origin of the world and of the course of human history.
(2) To defend the myths and legends of heathenism, and generally to establish heathen morals on a higher basis than mere custom.
(3) To satisfy the yearnings of the soul for the knowledge of God, while rejecting the exclusive claims of the Jewish and Christian revelation.
(1) Doctrine as to the Nature of God.—The birth of Christ took place in the fulness of time, i.e. when mankind had been prepared for it, by many influences bearing them towards the acceptance of a revelation. One of the most important of these preparations was the movement towards monotheism. The old simple belief in many gods living together in a sort of upper world was gone, and thinking men would accept no system which did not assume the supremacy of one divine principle, and in some degree "justify " the action of Providence in dealing with mankind as a whole. But the worship of many gods had too deep a hold upon the fancy and affections, as well as the mind, of the people to be surrendered without a long struggle, and various methods were advanced to shelter and protect the current belief. The systems thus formed were naturally all more or less pantheistic, finding unity in an informal abstraction from the phenomena of nature. But, as we should expect to be the case on European soil, they were neither logically pantheistic in the abstract way of the Hindu philosophical sects nor sharply dualistic like the speculations of the Gnostics and Manicheans. The more practical minds of the Graeco-Roman world were satisfied to give an account of things as they appeared without overpowering and paralyzing themselves by the insoluble question as to the existence and potencies of matter; and thus they were at once more inconsistent and less absurd than some of their contemporaries. While looking upon matter as something degrading, and upon contact with it as a thing to be avoided, they nevertheless did not define matter to be non-existent, or merely phenomenal, nor did they regard it as absolutely evil. In the same way, while they lost all true hold upon the personality of God, and believed in the eternity of the world (e.g. Jul. Or. iv. p.132 C), they used the terms creation and providence, and spoke of communion with and likeness to God. Into an eclectic system of this kind it was not difficult to incorporate the gods of the heathen world, and to make them subserve a sort of philosophy of history. With Julian they take a double position: (a) as intermediate beings employed in creation who protect the Supreme Being from too intimate contact with the world; (b) as accounting for the difference between nations, and so enabling men to uphold traditional usages without ceasing to hold to one ideal law and one truth (Jul.Or. vi. p. 184 C, ὥσπερ γὰρ ἀλὴθεια μία, οὕτω δὲ καί φιλοσοφία μία).
The chief source of information on this part
of Julian's theory is his Fourth Oration, in praise of the Sovereign Sun. The most striking feature of the theology proper of this system is its triple hierarchy of deities and worlds. Such a triple division was a common feature of neo-Platonism and had its roots in thoughts current before the Christian era; but it was no doubt emphasized by later theorists as a counterpoise to the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. That of Julian was probably borrowed from Iamblichus of Chalcis (uncle, it has been supposed, of his correspondent), to whom he frequently appeals in terms of the highest veneration (e.g. Or. iv. p.146 A, 150 D, 157 D; see Ueberweg, Hist. of Philosophy, § 69, vol. i. pp. 252–254, Eng. trans.).
According to this belief there are three worlds informed and held together by three classes of divine beings. The highest and most spiritual is the κόσμος νοηρός, or "intelligible world," the world of absolute immaterial essences, the centre of which is the One or the Good, who is the source of beings and of all beauty and perfection to the gods who surround him (p.133 C). Between this highly elevated region and the grosser material world comes the κόσμος νοερός, or "intelligent world," the centre of which is the sovereign sun, the great object of Julian's devotion. He receives his power from the Good, and communicates it not only to the gods around him, but also to the sensible world, the κόσμος αἰσθητός, in which we live. In this sphere the "visible disk" of the sun is the source of light and life, as the invisible sun is in the intelligible world. Any one who will read this oration with care will be convinced that Julian wished to find in his sovereign sun a substitute for the Christian doctrine of the second person of the blessed Trinity, and this appears in particular on pp.141,142 (cf. Naville, p.104; Lamé, pp. 234 ff.). The position specially given to the sun is a proof of the advance of Oriental thought in the Roman empire, and it was certainly no new idea of Julian's. Amongst others, Aurelian and Elagabalus had made him their chief divinity, and Constantine himself had been specially devoted to the "Sol invictus." Julian, we have seen, had from his childhood been fascinated with the physical beauty of the light. Towards the close of the century we find Macrobius arguing somewhat in the spirit of some modern inquirers that all heathen religion is the product of solar myths. Yet it is curious to observe the shifts to which Julian is put to prove this doctrine out of Homer and Hesiod, and from the customs of the ancient Greeks and Romans (pp. 135–137 and 148 ff.). He seems, indeed, conscious of the weakness of his arguments from the poets, and dismisses them with the remark that they have much that is human in their inspiration, and appeals to the directer revelations of the gods themselves—we must suppose in the visions which he claimed to receive (p.137 c).
The connexion of this theory with the national gods is nowhere distinctly worked out. It is, in fact, part of the pantheistic character of this belief, that the idea of the personality of the gods recedes or becomes prominent, like the figures in a magic lantern, according to the subject under discussion, without any shock to the dreamy neo-Platonist. At one time they are mere essences or principles, at another they are Zeus, Apollo, Ares, etc., ruling and directing the fortunes of nations, and imposing upon them a peculiar type of character and special laws and institutions. At one moment they are little more than the ideas of Plato, at another they are actual δαίμονες, acting as lieutenants of the Creator. This last view is in essentials the same as that put forward by Celsus (probably in the reign of Marcus Aurelius) in his book, known to us from its refutation by Origen (bk. v. cc. 25–33). It is the view asserted at length by Julian in his books against the Christians, especially as a defence of the customs and institutions of antiquity against the innovations of the religion which strove to break down all prejudices of class and nation. (St. Cyril. adv. Jul. iv. pp. 115, 116, 130, 141, 143, 148, etc.; cf. Fragmentum Epistolae, p. 292 C, D, ἄνθρωποι τοῖς γενεάρχαις θεοῖς ἀποκληρωθέντες, οἳ καὶ προήγαγον αὐτούς, ἀπὸ τοῦ δημιουργοῦ τὰς ψυχὰς παραλαμβάνοντες ἐξ αἰῶνος; for the subject generally, see Naville, c. iii. "Les Dieux Nationaux.") It is easy to see how fatal such a doctrine must be to moral progress. If everything is as it is by the will of the gods, no custom, however revolting, lacks defence. It is strange that, after the refutation of this absurdity by Origen, any one should have been bold enough to put it forward as a serious theory (cf. Orig. contra Celsum, v. cc. 25–28 and 34–39).
With regard to the relation of images and sacrifices to the gods, who are worshipped by these means, there is an interesting passage in the Fragment of the Letter to a Priest (pp. 293 ff.). He warns his correspondent not to consider images as actually receiving worship, nor to suppose that the gods really need our sacrifices. But he defends their use as suitable to our own bodily condition ἐπειδὴ γὰρ ἡμᾶς ὄντας ἐν σώματι σωματικὰς ἔδει ποιεῖσθαι τοῖς θεοῖς καὶ τὰς λατρείας, ἀσώματοι δέ εἰσιν αὐτοί, p. 293 D). "Just as earthly kings desire to have honour paid them and their statues without actually needing it, so do the gods. The images of the gods are not the gods, and yet more than mere wood and stone. They ought to lead us up to the unseen. And yet being made by human art, they are liable to injury at the hands of wicked men, just as good men are unjustly put to death like Socrates, and Dion, and Empedotimus. But their murderers afterwards were punished by divine vengeance, and so have sacrilegious persons manifestly received a due reward in my reign" (pp. 294 C to 295 B).
(2) Defence of Pagan Morality.—We have already described at some length Julian's attempts to raise the morality of his heathen subordinates, especially in the priesthood. He was conscious of a defect, and strenuously set himself to remedy it, though he could do little more in the way of quotation of texts than allege a few general maxims drawn from ancient writings as to kindness to the poor, etc. His strongest argument is one that might well have made him hesitate—the shame of being so much outdone by the "Galileans." Another branch of this subject was the relation of
morality to Greek mythology, and with this he busied himself on two occasions, about the same time. The two orations, The Praise of the Mother of the Gods and Against the Cynic Heraclius, were probably both delivered about the time of the vernal equinox, while he was still at Constantinople, A.D. 362. In the first of these he gives an elaborate explanation of the story of Attis; in the second he rebukes Heraclius for his immoral teaching in the form of myths, and gives an example of one which he thinks really edifying, which describes his own youth under the protection of the gods.
The explanation of the myth of Attis is important as a specimen of Julian's theology. According to modern interpreters, this myth, as well as that of Adonis in its hundred forms, describes merely the succession of the seasons; Julian adapts it to his speculations on the triple hierarchy of worlds. With him the mother of the gods is the female principle of the highest and most spiritual world. He calls her the lady of all life, the mother and bride of great Zeus, the motherless virgin, she who bears children without passion, and creates things that are together with the father (p. 166 A, B). Here we are landed into the full obscurity of Gnostic principles and emanations, and the whole story is evidently only a kind of converse arrangement of that which meets us in the Valentinian myth of Achamoth (see Mansel, Gnostic Heresies, lects. 11, 12). Attis is a principle of the second or intelligent world, "the productive and creative intelligence, the essence which descends into the farthest ends of matter to give birth to all things" (p. 161 c). It is difficult to see how he is distinguished in his functions with regard to creation from the sovereign sun, but this is only one of the many weak points of this fanciful exposition. His material type in the lowest world is the Milky Way, in which philosophers say that the impassible circumambient ether mingles with the passible elements of the world (p. 165 c). The mother of the gods engages Attis to remain ever faithful to herself, that is, to look always upward. Instead of this, he descends into the cave, and has commerce with the nymph, that is, produces the visible universe out of matter. The sun, who is the principle of harmony and restraint, something like the Valentinian Horus (ὅρος), sends the lion or fiery principle to put a stop to this production of visible forms. Then follows the ἐπτομή of Attis, which is defined as the ἐποχή τῆς ἀπείριας, the limit placed upon the process into infinity. The part played by the sun is indicated by the season at which the festival took place, the vernal equinox, when he produces equality of day and night (p. 168 C, D). All this is explained as a mere passionless eternal procedure on the part of the supposed gods. A real creation proceeding from God's love and good pleasure was a thought far above the scope of this philosophy, to which the world was as personal as the so-called gods.
Enough has been said to shew how thoroughly pantheistic was Julian's interpretation of the myths; how destructive of any true conception of the divine nature, how thoroughly unmoral, how utterly incapable of touching the heart, was his theology. Yet he felt the need of some personal commerce with God, however inconsistent such a wish was with his intellectual view of divine things.
(3) Intercourse with God.—When Julian was in Asia Minor under the influence of the philosophers Eusebius and Chrysanthius, and heard the details of the wonderful works of Maximus, he said (according to Eunapius), "Farewell, and keep to your books if you will; you have revealed to me the man I was in search of" (Eunap. Vita Maxima, p. 51). This story has been discredited by some, who think it strange that so great a lover of books as Julian should speak slightingly of them. But it is confirmed by his own language in his Oration on the Sun (p. 137 C): "Let us say farewell to poetic descriptions; for they have much that is human mixed up with the divine. But let us go on to declare what the god himself seems to teach us both about himself and the other gods" (ix. II, 5). Julian here appeals from a book revelation, as it were, to a direct instruction given him in the numerous visions in which he was visited by the gods.
We have already noticed Julian's enthusiasm for the mysteries and his love of all rites and practices which promised a closer intercourse with the gods. He could never bring himself to acquiesce in the colder methods of some of the masters of the neo-Platonic school. He was not satisfied with the intellectual ecstasy described by Plotinus, nor with the self-purification of Porphyry, who generally rejected sacrifice and damnation (Ueberweg, Hist. of Philosophy, § 68, notes, vol. i. p. 251, Eng. trans.). The party of Iamblichus, to which Julian belonged, required something approaching a control of a god (theurgy), a quasi-mechanical method of communication with him, which could be put in force at will, and the result of which could only be called a "Bacchic frenzy" (Or. vii. pp. 217 D and 221 D, etc.). Julian was duped by men who were half deceivers and half deceived. He is one among many who are forced by an inward conviction to believe in supernatural revelation, but who will only have it on their own terms. Libanius tells us that Julian knew the forms and lineaments of the gods as familiarly as those of his friends, and we have mentioned the visions which appeared to him at great crises of his life. He himself says, "Aesculapius often healed me, telling me of remedies" (St. Cyril. adv. Jul. viii. p. 234), and elsewhere he speaks of this deity as a sort of incarnate Saviour (Or. iv. p. 144 B, C). This temper of mind, while it speaks in high-flown, positive language of the knowledge of God and pours contempt on the uninitiated, yet means something by "knowledge" very different from the sober and bracing certainty attained by Christian faith, hope, and love. Here, as elsewhere, the pantheistic temper speaks grandly, but feels meanly. Death indeed is looked forward to with some composure as the emancipation of the divine element in man from darkness. Julian several times prays for a happy death, and expected after it to be raised to communion with the gods. His orations to the Sun and the Mother of the Gods both conclude with such prayers, and we have seen how he actually met his end (Liban. Ep. p. 614; Amm.
xxv. 3, 22). But the doctrine of the ascent (sublimitas) of souls, on which he was conversing with Maximus and Priscus when that end came, was a very different thing from the Christian's hope. It was, in fact, the same in substance as the barren and deadening Oriental doctrine of transmigration; and it is remarkable that Julian, who felt himself so favoured by the heavenly powers, in one of his most ardent prayers to the sun, looks forward to a felicity which has no certainty of being eternal (Or. iv. p. 158 C; see some good remarks on the contrast between this and the Christian doctrine in Naville, pp. 59 ff.).
Julian's Polemic against Christianity.—How near measures against Christianity were to his heart may be seen in his prayer to the Mother of the Gods, where he speaks of "cleansing the empire from the stain of atheism" as the great wish of his life (Or. v. p.18O B). He preferred, however, the method of persuasion to that of constraint, and his books against the Christians are an evidence of this temper. He begins by saying that he wishes to give the reasons which have convinced him that the Galilean doctrine is a human invention (Cyr. ii. p. 39). He then goes on to attack the narratives of the Bible as fabulous. He allows that the Greeks have monstrous fables likewise (p. 44), but then they have philosophy, while Christians have nothing but the Bible, and are in fact barbarians. If Christians attack the idolatry of heathens, Julian retorts, "you worship the wood of the cross, and refuse to worship the ancile which came down from heaven" (Cyr. vi. p. 194). On the whole, he does not spend much time in such questions, but accepts the Bible as a generally true narrative, and rather attacks Christianity on grounds of supposed reason, and in connexion with and in contrast to Judaism.
We may follow Naville in considering the main body of his works under three heads: (1) his polemic against the monotheism of the O.T.; (2) his attack upon the novel and aggressive character of Christian doctrine; (3) especially against the adoration of Christ as God, and the worship of "dead men," such as the martyrs (cf. Naville, pp. 175 ff.).
(1) Against the Monotheism of the O.T.—Julian regarded. the gods of polytheism as links or intermediaries between the supreme God and the material world, and so as rendering the conception of creation easier and more philosophical. He contrasts Plato's doctrine of creation in the Timaeus with the abrupt statements of Moses, "God said," etc. (pp. 49–57). One might almost suppose (he urges) that Moses imagined God to have created nothing incorporeal, no intermediate spiritual or angelic beings, but to have Himself directly organized matter (p. 49). He proceeds to argue against the supposition that the supreme God made choice of the Hebrew nation as a peculiar people to the exclusion of others. "If He is the God of all of us, and our common creator, why has He abandoned us?" (p. 106). Both in acts and morals the Hebrews are inferior. They have been always in slavery, and have invented nothing. As for morality, the imitation of God amongst the Jews is the imitation of a "jealous God," as in the case of Phinehas (Cyr. v. pp. 160–171). The worst of our generals never treated subject nations so cruelly as Moses treated the Canaanites (vi. p. 184). The only precepts in the Decalogue not held in common by all nations are the commandments against idolatry and for the observance of the Sabbath. The true view, to his mind, was that the God of the Jews was a local, national god, like those of other peoples, far inferior to the supreme God (iv. pp. 115, 116, 141, 148, etc.). Sometimes he seems inclined to accept Jehovah as the creator of the visible world, while at other times he throws doubt upon this assumption; but in any case he considered Him a true object of worship (Ep. 25, Judaeis. But in Cyril. iv. p. 148 he blames Moses for confounding a partial and national god with the Creator). Further, the Jewish usages of temples, altars, sacrifices, purifications, circumcision, etc., were all observed to have a close resemblance to those of heathenism, and were a foundation for many reproaches against the Galileans, who had abandoned so much that was laudable and respectable (vi. p. 202; vii. p. 238; ix. pp. 298, 299, 305, etc.).
(2) Julian's Attack upon Christianity as a Novel and Revolutionary Religion.—In the same spirit he puts Christianity much below Judaism. "If you who have deserted us had attached yourself to the doctrines of the Hebrews, you would not have been in so thoroughly bad a condition, though worse than you were before when you were amongst us. For you would have worshipped one God instead of many gods, and not, as is now the case, a man, or rather a number of miserable men. You would have had a hard and stern law, with much that is barbarous in it, instead of our mild and gentle customs, and would have been so far the losers; but you would have been purer and more holy in religious rites. As it is, you are like the leeches, and suck all the worst blood out of Hebraism and leave the purer behind" (Cyr. vi. pp. 201, 202). It was thus natural that St. Paul should be the special object of his dislike. "He surpasses all the impostors and charlatans who have ever existed " (Cyr. iii. p. 100). Julian accuses the Jewish Christians of having deserted a law which Moses declared to be eternal (ix. p. 319). Even Jesus Himself said that He came to fulfil the law. Peter declared that he had a vision, in which God showed him that no animal was impure (p. 314), and Paul boldly says, "Christ is the end of the law"; but Moses says, "Ye shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall ye diminish ought from it" ; and "Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things" (Cyr. ix. p. 320 = Deut. iv. 2, xxvii. 27; cf. x. pp. 343, 351, 354, 356, 358, where he attacks Christians for giving up sacrifice, circumcision, and the Sabbath, and asserts that Abraham used divination and practised astrology). He sneers at baptism, which cannot cure any bodily infirmity, but is said to remove all the transgressions of the soul—adulteries, thefts, etc.—so great is its penetrating power! (vii. p. 245). The argument against the Christian interpretation of prophecy is also remarkable. He comments textually on the blessing of Judah, Gen. xlix. 10;
on the prophecy of Balaam, Num. xxiv. 17; on that of Moses, Deut. xviii. 15–18; and on that of Emmanuel, Is. vii. 14; and tries to shew that they have no reference outside Judaism itself, though the last is evidently a difficulty to him (pp. 253, 261, 262).
(3) The Worship of Jesus as God and the Adoration of the Martyrs are the great objects of Julian's attacks. His argument is partly concerned with the prophecies just quoted, partly with the N.T. itself. He asserts that Moses never speaks of "the first-born Son of God," while he does speak of "the sons of God," i.e. the angels, who have charge of different nations (Gen. vi. 2). But Moses says expressly, "Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve" (Cyr. ix. p. 290). Even if the prophecy of Emmanuel in Is. refers to Jesus, it gives you no right to call His mother θεοτόκος. How could she bear God, being a human creature like ourselves? And how is her son the Saviour when God says, "I am, and there is no Saviour beside Me?" (viii. p. 276).
"John began this evil. You have gone on and added the worship of other dead men to that of the first dead man. You have filled all things with tombs and sepulchres; though Jesus speaks of 'whited sepulchres full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness'" (p. 335). "Why, then, do you bow before tombs? The Jews did it, according to Isaiah, to obtain visions in dreams, and four apostles also probably did so after their master's death" (p. 339). (The reference is to Is. lxv. 4, "which remain among the graves and lodge among the monuments": the words δἰ ἐνύπνια are added in the Greek version.) In his letter to the Alexandrians he puts with equal force the folly of adoring a man, and not adoring the sun and the moon, especially the former, the great sun, the living, animated, intelligent, and beneficent image of the intelligible or spiritual Father (Ep. 51. p. 434). It is strange to find this slighting disregard for men as objects of worship in one who assumed that he was a champion of pure Hellenism, especially in an emperor who succeeded a long line of deified emperors. A great deal of his dislike to what he considered the Christian doctrine arose, doubtless, from aristocratic pride. He looked down upon Christ as a Galilean peasant, a subject of Augustus Caesar (Cyr. vi. p. 213). "It is hardly three hundred years since He began to be talked about. During all His life He did nothing worth recording, unless any one reckons it among very great acts to have cured halt and blind people, and to exorcize demoniacs in the villages of Bethsaida and Bethany" (vi. p. 191). He looked upon Christians as parvenus who had assumed a position of power for which they were not fitted, and exercised it wantonly in destroying temples and prosecuting their own heretics, etc. "Jesus and Paul never taught you this. They never expected that Christians would fill so important a place, and were satisfied with converting a few, maidservants and slaves, and by their means to get hold of their mistresses, and men like Cornelius and Sergius. If under the reigns of Tiberius and Claudius they have succeeded in convincing a single distinguished person, you may hold me for a liar in every thing" (vi. p. 206).
It is remarkable that Julian shews practically no appreciation of the need of redemption or of the contrast between Christian and heathen life. This we must ascribe in great measure to the misfortune of his early training, to the Arianism of his teachers, and the unloveliness and unlovingness of his early surroundings. Some allowance must also be made for the corruption and extravagance of some forms of popular religion, and for the rash and violent acts of fanaticism committed by many Christians. The superstitious cultus of martyrs, for instance, was no doubt disavowed by the highest minds of the 4th cent., such as St. Athanasius and St. Augustine. But in the masses newly converted from paganism it formed a natural centre for much of the old superstition and fanaticism (Athan. Or. cont. Arian. ii. 32; August. de Vera Relig. 55; and esp. cont. Faustum, xx. 21).
But besides all this there was in the family of Constantine generally a hardness and self-assertion, though accompanied with strong religious pressure, which made them inaccessible to Christian feeling on the subject of sin. The members of it believed strongly in their providential vocation to take a great part in religious questions, but were very rarely troubled by scruples as to their personal unworthiness. Julian's own character, as we have seen, was specially inconsistent, but its ruling element was self-confidence, which he disguised to himself as a reliance upon divine direction. In conclusion, we may draw attention to some of Julian's admissions. He accepts the account of the Gospel miracles. He rejects the Gnostic interpretation of St. John, which separated the Word of God from the Christ. He witnesses to the common use of the term θεοτόκος long before the Nestorian troubles. His remarks about martyr-worship and the adoration of the cross have some importance as facts in the history of Christian worship.
On the Coins of Julian see D. C. B. (4 vol. ed.) s.v. We conclude that from policy Julian did not make any general issue of coins with heathen inscriptions or strongly marked heathen symbols which would have shocked his Christian subjects. The statements of Socrates and Sozomen are in perfect harmony with this conclusion.
[J.W.]