History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, by Edward Gibbon, Esq.
With notes by the Rev. H. H. Milman
Vol. 2
1782 (Written), 1845 (Revised)
Chapter XXIII: Reign of Julian.
Part I.
The Religion of Julian. -- Universal Toleration. -- He
Attempts to Restore and Reform the Pagan Worship -- To Rebuild
the Temple of Jerusalem -- His Artful Persecution of the
Christians. -- Mutual Zeal and Injustice.
The character of Apostate has injured the reputation of
Julian; and the enthusiasm which clouded his virtues has
exaggerated the real and apparent magnitude of his faults. Our
partial ignorance may represent him as a philosophic monarch, who
studied to protect, with an equal hand, the religious factions of
the empire; and to allay the theological fever which had inflamed
the minds of the people, from the edicts of Diocletian to the
exile of Athanasius. A more accurate view of the character and
conduct of Julian will remove this favorable prepossession for a
prince who did not escape the general contagion of the times. We
enjoy the singular advantage of comparing the pictures which have
been delineated by his fondest admirers and his implacable
enemies. The actions of Julian are faithfully related by a
judicious and candid historian, the impartial spectator of his
life and death. The unanimous evidence of his contemporaries is
confirmed by the public and private declarations of the emperor
himself; and his various writings express the uniform tenor of
his religious sentiments, which policy would have prompted him to
dissemble rather than to affect. A devout and sincere attachment
for the gods of Athens and Rome constituted the ruling passion of
Julian; the powers of an enlightened understanding were betrayed
and corrupted by the influence of superstitious prejudice; and
the phantoms which existed only in the mind of the emperor had a
real and pernicious effect on the government of the empire. The
vehement zeal of the Christians, who despised the worship, and
overturned the altars of those fabulous deities, engaged their
votary in a state of irreconcilable hostility with a very
numerous party of his subjects; and he was sometimes tempted by
the desire of victory, or the shame of a repulse, to violate the
laws of prudence, and even of justice. The triumph of the party,
which he deserted and opposed, has fixed a stain of infamy on the
name of Julian; and the unsuccessful apostate has been
overwhelmed with a torrent of pious invectives, of which the
signal was given by the sonorous trumpet of Gregory Nazianzen.
The interesting nature of the events which were crowded into the
short reign of this active emperor, deserve a just and
circumstantial narrative. His motives, his counsels, and his
actions, as far as they are connected with the history of
religion, will be the subject of the present chapter.
The cause of his strange and fatal apostasy may be derived
from the early period of his life, when he was left an orphan in
the hands of the murderers of his family. The names of Christ and
of Constantius, the ideas of slavery and of religion, were soon
associated in a youthful imagination, which was susceptible of
the most lively impressions. The care of his infancy was
intrusted to Eusebius, bishop of Nicomedia, who was related to
him on the side of his mother; and till Julian reached the
twentieth year of his age, he received from his Christian
preceptors the education, not of a hero, but of a saint. The
emperor, less jealous of a heavenly than of an earthly crown,
contented himself with the imperfect character of a catechumen,
while he bestowed the advantages of baptism on the nephews of
Constantine. They were even admitted to the inferior offices of
the ecclesiastical order; and Julian publicly read the Holy
Scriptures in the church of Nicomedia. The study of religion,
which they assiduously cultivated, appeared to produce the
fairest fruits of faith and devotion. They prayed, they fasted,
they distributed alms to the poor, gifts to the clergy, and
oblations to the tombs of the martyrs; and the splendid monument
of St. Mamas, at Caesarea, was erected, or at least was
undertaken, by the joint labor of Gallus and Julian. They
respectfully conversed with the bishops, who were eminent for
superior sanctity, and solicited the benediction of the monks and
hermits, who had introduced into Cappadocia the voluntary
hardships of the ascetic life. As the two princes advanced
towards the years of manhood, they discovered, in their religious
sentiments, the difference of their characters. The dull and
obstinate understanding of Gallus embraced, with implicit zeal,
the doctrines of Christianity; which never influenced his
conduct, or moderated his passions. The mild disposition of the
younger brother was less repugnant to the precepts of the gospel;
and his active curiosity might have been gratified by a
theological system, which explains the mysterious essence of the
Deity, and opens the boundless prospect of invisible and future
worlds. But the independent spirit of Julian refused to yield the
passive and unresisting obedience which was required, in the name
of religion, by the haughty ministers of the church. Their
speculative opinions were imposed as positive laws, and guarded
by the terrors of eternal punishments; but while they prescribed
the rigid formulary of the thoughts, the words, and the actions
of the young prince; whilst they silenced his objections, and
severely checked the freedom of his inquiries, they secretly
provoked his impatient genius to disclaim the authority of his
ecclesiastical guides. He was educated in the Lesser Asia, amidst
the scandals of the Arian controversy. The fierce contests of the
Eastern bishops, the incessant alterations of their creeds, and
the profane motives which appeared to actuate their conduct,
insensibly strengthened the prejudice of Julian, that they
neither understood nor believed the religion for which they so
fiercely contended. Instead of listening to the proofs of
Christianity with that favorable attention which adds weight to
the most respectable evidence, he heard with suspicion, and
disputed with obstinacy and acuteness, the doctrines for which he
already entertained an invincible aversion. Whenever the young
princes were directed to compose declamations on the subject of
the prevailing controversies, Julian always declared himself the
advocate of Paganism; under the specious excuse that, in the
defence of the weaker cause, his learning and ingenuity might be
more advantageously exercised and displayed.
As soon as Gallus was invested with the honors of the purple,
Julian was permitted to breathe the air of freedom, of
literature, and of Paganism. The crowd of sophists, who were
attracted by the taste and liberality of their royal pupil, had
formed a strict alliance between the learning and the religion of
Greece; and the poems of Homer, instead of being admired as the
original productions of human genius, were seriously ascribed to
the heavenly inspiration of Apollo and the muses. The deities of
Olympus, as they are painted by the immortal bard, imprint
themselves on the minds which are the least addicted to
superstitious credulity. Our familiar knowledge of their names
and characters, their forms and attributes,
seems to bestow on those airy beings a
real and substantial existence; and the pleasing enchantment
produces an imperfect and momentary assent of the imagination to
those fables, which are the most repugnant to our reason and
experience. In the age of Julian, every circumstance contributed
to prolong and fortify the illusion; the magnificent temples of
Greece and Asia; the works of those artists who had expressed, in
painting or in sculpture, the divine conceptions of the poet; the
pomp of festivals and sacrifices; the successful arts of
divination; the popular traditions of oracles and prodigies; and
the ancient practice of two thousand years. The weakness of
polytheism was, in some measure, excused by the moderation of its
claims; and the devotion of the Pagans was not incompatible with
the most licentious scepticism. Instead of an indivisible and
regular system, which occupies the whole extent of the believing
mind, the mythology of the Greeks was composed of a thousand
loose and flexible parts, and the servant of the gods was at
liberty to define the degree and measure of his religious faith.
The creed which Julian adopted for his own use was of the largest
dimensions; and, by strange contradiction, he disdained the
salutary yoke of the gospel, whilst he made a voluntary offering
of his reason on the altars of Jupiter and Apollo. One of the
orations of Julian is consecrated to the honor of Cybele, the
mother of the gods, who required from her effeminate priests the
bloody sacrifice, so rashly performed by the madness of the
Phrygian boy. The pious emperor condescends to relate, without a
blush, and without a smile, the voyage of the goddess from the
shores of Pergamus to the mouth of the Tyber, and the stupendous
miracle, which convinced the senate and people of Rome that the
lump of clay, which their ambassadors had transported over the
seas, was endowed with life, and sentiment, and divine power. For
the truth of this prodigy he appeals to the public monuments of
the city; and censures, with some acrimony, the sickly and
affected taste of those men, who impertinently derided the sacred
traditions of their ancestors.
But the devout philosopher, who sincerely embraced, and warmly
encouraged, the superstition of the people, reserved for himself
the privilege of a liberal interpretation; and silently withdrew
from the foot of the altars into the sanctuary of the temple. The
extravagance of the Grecian mythology proclaimed, with a clear
and audible voice, that the pious inquirer, instead of being
scandalized or satisfied with the literal sense, should
diligently explore the occult wisdom, which had been disguised,
by the prudence of antiquity, under the mask of folly and of
fable. The philosophers of the Platonic school, Plotinus,
Porphyry, and the divine Iamblichus, were admired as the most
skilful masters of this allegorical science, which labored to
soften and harmonize the deformed features of Paganism. Julian
himself, who was directed in the mysterious pursuit by
aedesius, the venerable successor of Iamblichus, aspired to
the possession of a treasure, which he esteemed, if we may credit
his solemn asseverations, far above the empire of the world. It
was indeed a treasure, which derived its value only from opinion;
and every artist who flattered himself that he had extracted the
precious ore from the surrounding dross, claimed an equal right
of stamping the name and figure the most agreeable to his
peculiar fancy. The fable of Atys and Cybele had been already
explained by Porphyry; but his labors served only to animate the
pious industry of Julian, who invented and published his own
allegory of that ancient and mystic tale. This freedom of
interpretation, which might gratify the pride of the Platonists,
exposed the vanity of their art. Without a tedious detail, the
modern reader could not form a just idea of the strange
allusions, the forced etymologies, the solemn trifling, and the
impenetrable obscurity of these sages, who professed to reveal
the system of the universe. As the traditions of Pagan mythology
were variously related, the sacred interpreters were at liberty
to select the most convenient circumstances; and as they
translated an arbitrary cipher, they could extract from
any fable any
sense which was adapted to their favorite system of religion and
philosophy. The lascivious form of a naked Venus was tortured
into the discovery of some moral precept, or some physical truth;
and the castration of Atys explained the revolution of the sun
between the tropics, or the separation of the human soul from
vice and error.
The theological system of Julian appears to have contained the
sublime and important principles of natural religion. But as the
faith, which is not founded on revelation, must remain destitute
of any firm assurance, the disciple of Plato imprudently relapsed
into the habits of vulgar superstition; and the popular and
philosophic notion of the Deity seems to have been confounded in
the practice, the writings, and even in the mind of Julian. The
pious emperor acknowledged and adored the Eternal Cause of the
universe, to whom he ascribed all the perfections of an infinite
nature, invisible to the eyes and inaccessible to the
understanding, of feeble mortals. The Supreme God had created, or
rather, in the Platonic language, had generated, the gradual
succession of dependent spirits, of gods, of daemons, of
heroes, and of men; and every being which derived its existence
immediately from the First Cause, received the inherent gift of
immortality. That so precious an advantage might be lavished upon
unworthy objects, the Creator had intrusted to the skill and
power of the inferior gods the office of forming the human body,
and of arranging the beautiful harmony of the animal, the
vegetable, and the mineral kingdoms. To the conduct of these
divine ministers he delegated the temporal government of this
lower world; but their imperfect administration is not exempt
from discord or error. The earth and its inhabitants are divided
among them, and the characters of Mars or Minerva, of Mercury or
Venus, may be distinctly traced in the laws and manners of their
peculiar votaries. As long as our immortal souls are confined in
a mortal prison, it is our interest, as well as our duty, to
solicit the favor, and to deprecate the wrath, of the powers of
heaven; whose pride is gratified by the devotion of mankind; and
whose grosser parts may be supposed to derive some nourishment
from the fumes of sacrifice. The inferior gods might sometimes
condescend to animate the statues, and to inhabit the temples,
which were dedicated to their honor. They might occasionally
visit the earth, but the heavens were the proper throne and
symbol of their glory. The invariable order of the sun, moon, and
stars, was hastily admitted by Julian, as a proof of their
eternalduration; and their eternity was
a sufficient evidence that they were the workmanship, not of an
inferior deity, but of the Omnipotent King. In the system of
Platonists, the visible was a type of the invisible world. The
celestial bodies, as they were informed by a divine spirit, might
be considered as the objects the most worthy of religious
worship. The Sun, whose genial influence pervades and sustains
the universe, justly claimed the adoration of mankind, as the
bright representative of the Logos, the lively, the rational, the
beneficent image of the intellectual Father.
In every age, the absence of genuine inspiration is supplied
by the strong illusions of enthusiasm, and the mimic arts of
imposture. If, in the time of Julian, these arts had been
practised only by the pagan priests, for the support of an
expiring cause, some indulgence might perhaps be allowed to the
interest and habits of the sacerdotal character. But it may
appear a subject of surprise and scandal, that the philosophers
themselves should have contributed to abuse the superstitious
credulity of mankind, and that the Grecian mysteries should have
been supported by the magic or theurgy of the modern Platonists.
They arrogantly pretended to control the order of nature, to
explore the secrets of futurity, to command the service of the
inferior daemons, to enjoy the view and conversation of the
superior gods, and by disengaging the soul from her material
bands, to reunite that immortal particle with the Infinite and
Divine Spirit.
The devout and fearless curiosity of Julian tempted the
philosophers with the hopes of an easy conquest; which, from the
situation of their young proselyte, might be productive of the
most important consequences. Julian imbibed the first rudiments
of the Platonic doctrines from the mouth of aedesius, who
had fixed at Pergamus his wandering and persecuted school. But as
the declining strength of that venerable sage was unequal to the
ardor, the diligence, the rapid conception of his pupil, two of
his most learned disciples, Chrysanthes and Eusebius, supplied,
at his own desire, the place of their aged master. These
philosophers seem to have prepared and distributed their
respective parts; and they artfully contrived, by dark hints and
affected disputes, to excite the impatient hopes of the
aspirant, till they delivered him into
the hands of their associate, Maximus, the boldest and most
skilful master of the Theurgic science. By his hands, Julian was
secretly initiated at Ephesus, in the twentieth year of his age.
His residence at Athens confirmed this unnatural alliance of
philosophy and superstition. He obtained the privilege of a
solemn initiation into the mysteries of Eleusis, which, amidst
the general decay of the Grecian worship, still retained some
vestiges of their primaeval sanctity; and such was the zeal
of Julian, that he afterwards invited the Eleusinian pontiff to
the court of Gaul, for the sole purpose of consummating, by
mystic rites and sacrifices, the great work of his
sanctification. As these ceremonies were performed in the depth
of caverns, and in the silence of the night, and as the
inviolable secret of the mysteries was preserved by the
discretion of the initiated, I shall not presume to describe the
horrid sounds, and fiery apparitions, which were presented to the
senses, or the imagination, of the credulous aspirant, till the
visions of comfort and knowledge broke upon him in a blaze of
celestial light. In the caverns of Ephesus and Eleusis, the mind
of Julian was penetrated with sincere, deep, and unalterable
enthusiasm; though he might sometimes exhibit the vicissitudes of
pious fraud and hypocrisy, which may be observed, or at least
suspected, in the characters of the most conscientious fanatics.
From that moment he consecrated his life to the service of the
gods; and while the occupations of war, of government, and of
study, seemed to claim the whole measure of his time, a stated
portion of the hours of the night was invariably reserved for the
exercise of private devotion. The temperance which adorned the
severe manners of the soldier and the philosopher was connected
with some strict and frivolous rules of religious abstinence; and
it was in honor of Pan or Mercury, of Hecate or Isis, that
Julian, on particular days, denied himself the use of some
particular food, which might have been offensive to his tutelar
deities. By these voluntary fasts, he prepared his senses and his
understanding for the frequent and familiar visits with which he
was honored by the celestial powers. Notwithstanding the modest
silence of Julian himself, we may learn from his faithful friend,
the orator Libanius, that he lived in a perpetual intercourse
with the gods and goddesses; that they descended upon earth to
enjoy the conversation of their favorite hero; that they gently
interrupted his slumbers by touching his hand or his hair; that
they warned him of every impending danger, and conducted him, by
their infallible wisdom, in every action of his life; and that he
had acquired such an intimate knowledge of his heavenly guests,
as readily to distinguish the voice of Jupiter from that of
Minerva, and the form of Apollo from the figure of Hercules.
These sleeping or waking visions, the ordinary effects of
abstinence and fanaticism, would almost degrade the emperor to
the level of an Egyptian monk. But the useless lives of Antony or
Pachomius were consumed in these vain occupations. Julian could
break from the dream of superstition to arm himself for battle;
and after vanquishing in the field the enemies of Rome, he calmly
retired into his tent, to dictate the wise and salutary laws of
an empire, or to indulge his genius in the elegant pursuits of
literature and philosophy.
The important secret of the apostasy of Julian was intrusted to the fidelity of the initiated, with whom he was united by the sacred ties of friendship and religion. The pleasing rumor was cautiously circulated among the adherents of the ancient worship; and his future greatness became the object of the hopes, the prayers, and the predictions of the Pagans, in every province of the empire. From the zeal and virtues of their royal proselyte, they fondly expected the cure of every evil, and the restoration of every blessing; and instead of disapproving of the ardor of their pious wishes, Julian ingenuously confessed, that he was ambitious to attain a situation in which he might be useful to his country and to his religion. But this religion was viewed with a hostile eye by the successor of Constantine, whose capricious passions alternately saved and threatened the life of Julian. The arts of magic and divination were strictly prohibited under a despotic government, which condescended to fear them; and if the Pagans were reluctantly indulged in the exercise of their superstition, the rank of Julian would have excepted him from the general toleration. The apostate soon became the presumptive heir of the monarchy, and his death could alone have appeased the just apprehensions of the Christians. But the young prince, who aspired to the glory of a hero rather than of a martyr, consulted his safety by dissembling his religion; and the easy temper of polytheism permitted him to join in the public worship of a sect which he inwardly despised. Libanius has considered the hypocrisy of his friend as a subject, not of censure, but of praise. "As the statues of the gods," says that orator, "which have been defiled with filth, are again placed in a magnificent temple, so the beauty of truth was seated in the mind of Julian, after it had been purified from the errors and follies of his education. His sentiments were changed; but as it would have been dangerous to have avowed his sentiments, his conduct still continued the same. Very different from the ass in Aesop, who disguised himself with a lion's hide, our lion was obliged to conceal himself under the skin of an ass; and, while he embraced the dictates of reason, to obey the laws of prudence and necessity." The dissimulation of Julian lasted about ten years, from his secret initiation at Ephesus to the beginning of the civil war; when he declared himself at once the implacable enemy of Christ and of Constantius. This state of constraint might contribute to strengthen his devotion; and as soon as he had satisfied the obligation of assisting, on solemn festivals, at the assemblies of the Christians, Julian returned, with the impatience of a lover, to burn his free and voluntary incense on the domestic chapels of Jupiter and Mercury. But as every act of dissimulation must be painful to an ingenuous spirit, the profession of Christianity increased the aversion of Julian for a religion which oppressed the freedom of his mind, and compelled him to hold a conduct repugnant to the noblest attributes of human nature, sincerity and courage.
