Could Julian the Apostate have defeated Christianity?

Julian has continued to fascinate people down the ages. He tends to be viewed favourably. In life he must have had a lot of charisma to do many of the things he did. He has left enough of his own writing and there are enough eye witness accounts that you can feel that you have got to know him.  He is talented, engaged, idealistic and with a great sense of humour.  He is very likeable.  Add to that a hero’s death and an against the odds struggle against history he becomes irresistible.

But there seems to be an almost universal consensus that he was somehow doomed to fail. The forces he was opposing were simply too strong and ultimately the things which Julian cared about were beyond saving even by someone as talented as him. The almost total triumph of the Christians, who Julian described as a sect of fanatics despicable to mankind and odious to the gods, has given that triumph an air of inevitability. Julian was brave, but he was trying to do the impossible.  All his efforts were in the end nothing more than a futile gesture of despair in the face of inevitable defeat.

I am not sure Julian can be condescended to quite so easily. In a very short reign he gave the Church one heck of a scare. Had he lived longer it is quite likely he would have broken its political influence completely. Paganism was not remotely moribund and with the reforms Julian planned – including switching state sponsored charity from the Church to the temples – could well have emerged strong enough to halt the growth of Christianity and even push it backwards. Look at how easily Christianity was later to decay in Egypt and Syria under Islam. All it took was a higher rate of tax on Christians to turn them from a clear majority to an ignorable minority. Julian lost and the Church won, but it was luck rather than any inherent virtue of Christianity that was responsible.

Let’s assume that he had not been killed in Persia and returned able to claim success. He had created the bond with the eastern legions like the one he had already done with the western ones and he was ready to go. Let’s assume that he rules for another 30 years giving him a reign comparable to that of Constantine. His military abilities keep the empire together and his grip on the army makes his position secure.  What would he be likely to do?   My feeling is  that he avoids outright confrontation with the Christians, while continuing to come up with minor restrictions and controls that don’t make their lives impossible, but which limit their scope.  Julian had already enacted legislation to hinder Christian teachers. This was not the kind of measure that would provoke a riot but it would reduce the attractiveness of the cult to an influential group. Fines for prior damage to pagan buildings would be another neat trick. If you joined a particular church you might find yourself personally liable for repairing previous vandalism. It would be much better not to get associated with them in the first place or distance yourself if you had already got involved.

He also reforms and overhauls paganism giving it a centralised command structure. With state patronage the pagan organisations can start to provide welfare services strengthening their prestige and also giving the government a handy tool for development policy. It would be easy to use a structure like this to bond say barbarian settlers within the empire. It also makes pagan religious practise an attractive career option for ambitious Romans.

How does Christianity cope with a situation like this? It is hard to see what response it could possibly make. It would be faced not so much with a direct challenge as a steady weight dragging it down.  Relatively few people want to be martyrs – most just go with the flow. 

But there are some people who court death for the cause they believe in.  Could a bloody persecution have rebounded to the church’s advantage?  Could their courage and dignity in the face of persecution have had the effect of making the Church more attractive?

Martyrs are in my opinion the most overrated class of humans in history. They are few in number and their motives are rarely understandable. The idea that the early Christian martyrs inspired people to join up is a deep seated one and may have been true in some cases. But we only have Christian sources to confirm it. On the whole it seems unlikely. The same story is told of Protestant martyrs in English history. But there were Catholic martyrs as well and they don’t seem to have had the same effect. Admittedly there were fewer of them, but surely they ought to have inspired some followers? A massacre of Christians might have shown enough dignity to win more converts, but it has to be said that it is hard to think of any well documented examples where this has happened for any cause. In fact in the later history of the empire bloody disputes between Christians were common and in those cases bloody persecution worked pretty well as a way of enforcing orthodoxy.

In any event while alive Julian was studious in avoiding creating martyrs whether from principle or calculation or a combination of both. He was also a quick learner – so if he had switched to a more robustly anti-Christian policy he would no doubt have monitored the effects and modified them accordingly. 

But whether effective or counterproductive, direct persecution wasn’t the only tool in his pack anyway.  As the emperor his powers of patronage were enormous. If he was unwilling to use the stick, he had plenty of carrot to use as well. So even if the church was well entrenched there was every chance that Julian could have turned it back.

In fact I think the biggest assumption that people make is the one that is most wrong.  It simply wasn’t the case that Christianity had any superior qualities over Paganism.  

The biggest weakness of Christianity has always been that it is basically not very well thought out. It is a hodgepodge of beliefs from a number of sources with a confusing central dogma that was cobbled together to meet the particular political needs of Constantine at one point in time. It has patched things up a bit over the centuries and some highly respectable brains have done their best to try and get it to make some sense. In the short run this rarely matters very much. As any salesman will tell you, the trick is to sell the sizzle and not the sausage. With good organisation and not too much competition Christianity does just fine. But it is always vulnerable to heresies, spits and schisms simply because it is so easy to look at the holy canon and come up with your own interpretation. The history of Christianity is pretty much the history of its fragmentation. The early church was split between the Arians and the Orthodox with smaller breakaway groups in abundance. The split between the Catholics and the Orthodox was protracted but was complete by the eleventh century. The Protestants broke away from the Catholics in the fifteenth century – modifying the Bible in the process.  As recently as the Twentieth century we have seen the Evangelicals creating yet another new version of Christianity at odds with the rest of them.

At the time of Julian none of this mattered too much because the pagans were even more fragmented and in fact generally only worried about their own locality. But Julian’s neoplatonic framework offered a solution to this. If there is one true transcendent God who created all the lesser gods including all the regional ones, then there is no need for conflict between the different cults, and they could logically be united within a single framework.

This was clearly Julian’s plan and he had already laid down what he expected from the official priestly caste he intended to create. A state sponsored pan-pagan union would have all the advantages of the Christian church and would be quite likely to avoid the schisms. Julian was quite capable of finding the men he would need to write up a set of doctrines to fit his new conception of the old religion. His own writings could well have become part of the canon themselves.

So to my mind, Julian was not just an enemy of Christianity. He was the enemy. He was the one man in history who could have stopped it.

If he had succeeded much that was lost might have been saved. There is no reason why the great pagan statues of the ancient world could not have been preserved to this day. Much more of the literature of the classical age would have survived. Remember that we only know about the atomic theory of the Greeks by a handful of manuscripts. Some of Cicero’s writings only survived because the parchments were reused for standard ecclesiastical texts leaving tiny residues of the originals below.

The influence of Christianity on the development of Western thought and culture has been huge and about as negative as it is possible to imagine. I can’t believe that even the most devout church going enthusiast hasn’t at some point wandered around an art gallery and thought ‘not another bloody crucifix’. Christianity is very short of good stories. The story of Jesus himself is not only not very inspiring, it isn’t even particularly easy to work out what if anything it is supposed to mean. The cathedrals are impressive monuments and most people like them, but a big building is a big building and is really a monument to stone masonry rather than the religion that supposedly inspired it.

Above all it would bring us closer to our roots. Christianity has wiped out much of our traditional culture. I am writing this on a Wednesday. The name of the day preserves the name of Woden, but about him most of us know next to nothing. This is a huge shame. When there are major national occasions churches very naturally provide the focus for communities, but the dogmatism of Christianity is a huge barrier to us non-believers and to unorthodox believers. I envy the Japanese their national religion. Shinto is the model of the kind of national paganism I would like to have, that is encompassing and deeply rooted rather than divisive.

I don’t doubt that Julian’s pagan church would have had many of the same problems as the Church went on to have. It would have been a source of power and power breeds problems. The priests would no doubt have lined up with the most conservative elements in society and pursued their own interests. In this alternative version of history Christianity never gets into the position to do all the things like the crusades and the inquisition that have given it such a bad name. It is hard to imagine Julian’s reformed paganism being much worse, but it would probably still have been pretty bad. Julian might be remembered not so much as the man who saved us from Christianity but as the man who wrecked the toleration of early paganism. But the reality was that once the fanaticism had emerged it had to work itself out some way. It wasn’t inevitable that Christianity would triumph – and the emergence of Islam which now occupies much of the area where Christianity first spread proves this. But once the meme of highly organised fanatical centralised religions had developed, the choice was a stark one. Adapt to the new environment as Julian tried to do, or be wiped out as actually happened. It was Darwinian selection and you either grew teeth or got eaten.

But it would still have been better if Paganism rather than Christianity had triumphed. The dark ages would have been less dark and less long. Less blood would have been spilled. And we would have a lot more of our culture left. We wouldn’t have realised how close we came to losing it all, but that is the nature of history. Ultimately what if questions like this are pretty futile and we can never know how things would have turned out if events had been different. But there is one thing that a successful restoration of paganism would have achieved. Julian is known as Julian the Apostate as a deliberate slur by his enemies. But his admirers have coined the alternative name of Julian the Philosopher. I’m pretty confident that had he survived the war in Persia that is the name we would call him today. He would have liked that.

 
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The Death of Julian – Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Chapter 24 Part 2

Resting Place of Julian the Apostate (Thanks to Wikipedia)

Julian was a scholar who had read widely and could write well.  His tastes were philosophical but the skills he had acquired in the pursuit of truth could be used for more worldly objectives.  So when he invaded Persia he studied the records of Trajan who had fought across the same territory years before.  Laying siege to Ctesiphon he was able to locate and reopen a canal built exactly 250 years before, enabling the city to be surrounded.

But although sieges were pretty much a Roman speciality for reasons that remain obscure, this one did not go well.   And as time went on Julian’s position became steadily less secure.  The other columns failed to arrive to join the siege, and the Persian king was still at large with his army.  Without reinforcements and in the absence of a quick and decisive battle, the Romans were very vulnerable to a counter-attack by Shapur.  

In the end, Julian was forced to retreat. Retreating through enemy territory is always a risky business. Rather than go back the way he had come, he chose to destroy the fleet on the river with his supplies and fall back along a more northerly route. The Persians still didn’t dare attack in force but did start harrying the Romans.

During one such attack Julian himself,  sharing his troops privations and dangers, fought off some attackers personally. Unfortunately in his haste to join the fray he had not put on his breast plate. He sustained a wound from a spear.

The wound did not prove fatal straight away, but despite the best efforts of his doctor Julian became steadily more ill until it became clear he was going to die. We have a good eye witness account of the events and it makes tragic reading. Julian, still a young man not long into thirties faced death with courage and good humour. His religious principles had been dear to him throughout his life and in this crisis must have helped him. He no doubt sincerely believed that he was due to go to meet the dieties who had helped and counselled him. And he was dying a warrior’s death.

The thing he didn’t do was to name a successor. This was no oversight, he consciously and expressly left the choice to the army. They were to chose the man they felt best suited to lead the empire. Again we see here his religious faith coming to the fore. He had been chosen by the gods to save the republic. The gods would no doubt find a new hero to take over his role.

There is no doubt that Julian’s death was greeted with dismay by the troops. He had not led them for long but his charisma was already working the magic that it had done before in Gaul and which even won him friends in worldly wise and cynical Constantinople. His request was to be buried in Tarsus, and this wish was respected. His body was later moved to Constantinople to the church that housed the remains of the rest of his family. I doubt that he would have been pleased by this, but it is fitting. He was the most remarkable member of that remarkable family. Their stories are all bound together and it seems right  that they have all ended up in the same place in this world even though they had very different destinations in mind for the next one.

Julian died a hero’s death and had lived a hero’s life. By dying so young he never had a chance to make any huge mistakes that might have tarnished his reputation. Would he have returned victorious from Persia to massacre the Christians? It seems very unlikely but he would have been remembered very differently if he had. Would his reforms have led to a bloody civil war? More likely, but he seems to have been worldly wise enough that he would probably have avoided it. Would his changes to paganism have turned it into a monolithic force as repressive as the Church was soon to become? That was possible, but we rarely blame people for what they might have done. So Julian remains an heroic figure. But a hero to who? Obviously not to the Christians. He described them as ‘a sect of fanatics despicable to mankind and odious to the gods’. They were even ruder about him. Despite having not martyred a single Christian it is Julian who has been singled out as the emperor who has been personally maligned. A string of totally fictitious stories are told of imaginary saints who are supposed to have suffered at his hands. And if that weren’t enough Julian’s own death is credited to St Mercurius who was keen enough to kill him that he came down from Heaven specifically for that purpose. And the character of Julian was traduced. The story arose that his last words were to acknowledge the final victory of the Gallilean. Even now half-wits regularly put that quote on Twitter even though it is manifestly and easily provable nonsense.

He obviously could be a hero to the Pagans, but Paganism was not to last much longer. There are some people around today who are trying to revive pagan beliefs, but the most popular form is Wicca. This is a folksy grass roots paganism which doesn’t really sit very comfortably with Julian’s rather grander neoplatonic conception. I don’t think there is any particular incompatibility between what the modern Wiccans believe and what Julian would have recognised. But their styles are miles apart. Wiccans don’t seem to be the kinds of people who would be impressed by an emperor, and certainly not a warlike one. Wiccans are in any case a tiny group, even though they do manage to get a good crowd out for the Solstice at Stonehenge every year. There are people who profess to follow the Hellenic gods, but they are an even tinier minority.

Julian has attracted admirers over the centuries, but none of them are really a good fit to the man himself. Free thinkers in the Renaissance liked the fact that he was opposed to the Church. But he was a conservative by temperament so he never really made it as an icon of modernity or progress. Atheists might find his opposition to Christianity appealling, but his deep religious convictions are at odds with the principles of the Enlightenment. Gibbon carefully avoids hero worship of Julian. He saw him as a hero, but also realised that he was a fanatic as well albeit an attractive one.  In fact, what he does is extremely clever. He criticizes Julian’s fanaticism and praises his piety using exactly the language that in his own time would be applied to the Church. Without ever saying so directly, he leaves you with the impression that at the end of the day Julian was not really the mortal enemy and antitheis of the Christians. In the end, this was a battle between two different forms of the same delusion. In many ways the real tragedy of his life was that such a brilliant and talented man’s life was devoted to a cause that was not really worthy of him.

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Julian Invades Persia – Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Chapter 24 Part 1

Roman Empire at Time of Julian the Apostate (thanks to Wikipedia)

Rome grew to dominate the world under the republic.  After the republic fell, the emperors for the most part were content to simply defend what they had.  But the tradition of conquest continued.  Claudius added Britain and Dacia and Mesopotamia were conquered by Trajan.  Several smaller scale campaigns outside the empire were undertaken too.  So in 363 when Julian, the last pagan emperor led a Roman army drawn from all parts of the empire out across the border to conquer a foreign enemy he was doing something that was rare but which was not unprecedented. It would have broken his young and idealistic heart to know that this would be the last time the empire as he knew it would mount such an attack.

The force of 90,000 men he led into Persia was large by any standards and may well have been a third of the empire’s entire strength. It was sophisticated, well organised and well supplied. Julian himself was an experienced general with a strong track record, and there were other effective commanders on his staff. This was the kind of military expedition at which the Romans had historically excelled. It was an effective force with good prospects for success. But what exactly was its purpose?

Throughout history wars have been fought for many reasons. Sometimes, but rarely, the reasons have been good ones. But generally when you look closely most wars are fought for motives very different to what is claimed. Often it is simple. An external enemy is a perfect way to bolster the position of a weak regime. This seems pretty clearly to have been what was behind Julian’s attack on Persia. It wasn’t that his position on the throne was particularly precarious. In fact it was strong enough. He had the support of a large chunk of the army, and no obvious rivals. He might expect opposition from the mainstream Christians. But this wasn’t all Christians. The previously persecuted Christian sects had benefited from Julian’s edict of toleration.  They were at the least not likely to want to overthrow him and risk getting persecuted again. He was strongly supported by the Jews and by the majority, the Pagans. So he was in no real danger.

But he was impatient to start rolling back the power of the Christians. And there was no better way to do this than by a successful campaign against the Persians. His Christian predecessor had been making heavy weather of fighting them. What better way to demonstrate the benefits of regaining the favour of the Gods than by a glorious victory that has cousin had failed to achieve. Julian would also be able to bind the eastern legions to himself in the same way he had already succeeded in doing with the western ones. With the army firmly behind him Julian would be sure to win if Christian dissent did break out into open civil war.

So the peace proposals from the Persian envoys representing Shapur, the King of Kings,  were dismissed. It would be war, and war on a colossal scale. The barbarians in Germany were still in awe of Julian so there was no danger from that direction. The full power of the empire was available to defeat its biggest single enemy. And although diplomacy had been rejected, this didn’t mean political weapons were abandoned. They had with them a Persian prince of the blood called Hormisdas, who could be put forward as the Roman candidate for the throne. There wasn’t any particular issue with the legitimacy of the incumbent, but it didn’t do any harm to have one of his relatives to hand if the need arose. In fact Hormisdas had been at the Roman court from an early age and had become fully romanised. He was not just a figurehead but was reliable enough to actually lead some troops as well.

Julian moved to Antioch to supervise the preparations. The plan was to launch a three pronged attack with support on one of them from the Romans’ allies the Armenians. In the event the Armenian contribution was never to materialise.  There was an issue here. Armenia had been the first Christian kingdom under the famous Tiridates and was still ruled by his descendents. The Armenian royal family were closely identified with the Christian cause and must have been alarmed by Julian’s pagan sympathies. It was probably not in their interest to support a campaign that was designed to promote paganism. Julian’s attitude towards the Armenians was haughty, but it may well have been his intention to stir up an argument with them. The Armenian regime can hardly have been one that Julian would have been keen on. The traditional Armenian culture had been eliminated by the Church. It was an example in miniature of what Julian was fighting against and a warning of the risk if he failed.

But militarily the betrayal by the Armenians should not have been hugely significant.  There were still plenty of men to overrun the Persians. The biggest problem on the Roman side was logistics – feeding and supplying forces on the scale of this invasion was a massive undertaking. But the Romans had a long tradition of solving this kind of problem. One of the solutions was to build a huge fleet of 1,000 boats that could be used on the river Euphrates to supply the troops.

At first everything went pretty much according to plan. The Persians avoided battle since they had no hope of winning. The three columns advanced opposed only by the hostility of the terrain. One column was led by Julian himself who in the tradition of Julius Caesar and Alexander led from the front. He shared the hardships of his men – in fact the army was well supplied so there wasn’t too much hardship to share at first. But while Julian had laid on ample provisions he had banned wine. He wanted a well disciplined army and did everything he could to ensure it. He regularly spoke to the men, enforced strict punishments for misbehaviour and lavished donatives as well.

The Persians could not hope to win a battle, but opposed as they could.  Rivers were diverted to flood the Roman camp. The Romans were delayed but not halted – their leader urging them on to great things.  As they penetrated more deeply they started to encounter walled cities. Perisabor for example was a substantial stronghold, the second biggest city in the province of Assyria, and well armed and defended.  But the ferocity of the Romans and their skill in siegecraft was legendary.  Battering rams were deployed and the defenders overwhelmed as the legions stormed it.  It was impressive and eye-catching.  And that was the point.  Julian remarked that he was providing material for the sophist in Antioch.  He referred to the great sophist of the age, Libanius.  Libanius was a famous teacher of sophistry and rhetoric who had over the years established a reputation founded on his way with words.  His insistence on maintaining his faith in the traditional religion had undermined his income but increased his prestige as a man of principle.  Needless to say, he was a favourite of Julian who must have had high hopes of the praise he could expect on his triumphant return.  Julian was too intelligent to be duped by the empty flattery his position attracted.  But justified acclaim from a man of courage, integrity and wisdom – that was worth having.  In fact, I sometimes wonder if the desire to impress Libanius might have been the single biggest motive for the Persian campaign.  Julian was a young man still eager for approval.  It might well have been as simple as that.

It would also explain the rather theatrical behaviour of Julian as well.  After the capture of Perisabor there was some moaning that the donative wasn’t enough for such a deadly battle.  Julian addressed the issue head on.

“Riches are the object of your desires; those riches are in the hands of the Persians; and the spoils of this fruitful country are proposed as the prize of your valor and discipline. Believe me, the Roman republic, which formerly possessed such immense treasures, is now reduced to want and wretchedness once our princes have been persuaded, by weak and interested ministers, to purchase with gold the tranquillity of the Barbarians. The revenue is exhausted; the cities are ruined; the provinces are dispeopled. For myself, the only inheritance that I have received from my royal ancestors is a soul incapable of fear; and as long as I am convinced that every real advantage is seated in the mind, I shall not blush to acknowledge an honorable poverty, which, in the days of ancient virtue, was considered as the glory of Fabricius. That glory, and that virtue, may be your own, if you will listen to the voice of Heaven and of your leader. But if you will rashly persist, if you are determined to renew the shameful and mischievous examples of old seditions, proceed. As 

it becomes an emperor who has filled the first rank among men, I am prepared to die, standing; and to despise a precarious life, which, every hour, may depend on an accidental fever. If I have been found unworthy of the command, there are now among you, (I speak it with pride and pleasure,) there are many chiefs whose merit and experience are equal to the conduct of the most important war. Such has been the temper of my reign, that I can retire, without regret, and without apprehension, to the obscurity of a private station”

The resignation threat showed that he was confident of his position, but it also comes across as a bit melodramatic.  Or was the whole episode a photo opportunity artfully managed to project the image Julian wanted to the audience back home.  We’d call it spin nowadays.  But you can be a self publicist and still be a hero.  Julian was leading his army into enemy territory, and even if they were being done for show his military achievements were still real.  

The army marched deeper into the Persian empire.  There were more cities to be taken. And the logistics of the operation were formidable, with the army being supplied from a fleet of  boats sailing down the Euphrates in step with them.  All the obstacles were overcome.  All resistance was beaten down.  Until, in the middle of May they arrived at the capital.  The Persians attempted to prevent Julian reaching the city, but in pitched battle outside the Romans defeated them.  Julian could now lay siege to Ctesiphon itself.

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The Hymn to Cybele by Julian the Apostate

The Goddess Cybele praised by Julian the Apostate (thanks to Wikipedia for the image)

The Roman emperor Julian the Apostate is a one off in history. He was the nephew of Constantine, the man that introduced Christianity to the empire. But he spent most of his adult life trying to convert it back again. He was born a Christian and died a pagan. He was a philosopher by inclination. He could easily have been remembered as a leading exponent of Neoplatonism, but proved to be a great warrior when forced to become one. Above all, he was full of surprises.

So naturally I was interested when I found his hymn of praise to Cybele online. I couldn’t find out anything about how it came to survive or what else is known about it so all I can say is what I have gleaned from the document itself. It sounds like a speech given at a religious occasion. I assume it was given in Athens, since the Athenians are specifically praised in it. And given that bits of it are rather unpolished and rambling it sounds a lot like it was a record made by somebody as the speech was being given. Reading it aloud took about 40 minutes, about the length of time a reasonable speech might take. As such it is a pretty rare chance to listen to someone speaking in their own voice from the ancient world. And it is a speech from one of the most interesting characters from that world.

Very few people can talk to an audience off the top of their heads, so I imagine Julian had done some kind of preparation. Even so, his ability to talk on his feet is impressive. Accounts of him from his own time report that he was likeable and engaging, and reading this speech made that easy to believe. It is less easy to work out why he made it and to who. It sounds to me like he was consecrating a new temple, or more likely reconsecrating one that had been desecrated. Whoever was listening, Julian has high expectations of them. He doesn’t hold back on the full details of his Neoplatonic philosophy, and to follow him you would have to have a pretty good grasp of who Plato, Aristotle and Epicurus were and what their teachings were about.

We get to hear what Julian himself thinks of these leading lights of Greek thought. Epicurus is dismissed: he is just plain wrong. Aristotle has made himself ridiculous by diverging from Plato. It is Plato that is regarded as the authority. Porphyry, who had reinterpreted Plato’s ideas for Julian’s time, also gets a respectful mention.

Who is Cybele?

As we’ll see, Julian is interested in how Cybele fits into the general metaphysical system of the Neoplatonist philosophy to which he subscribed. But today we probably first have to answer the more basic question of who Cybele was in the first place, given that she isn’t one of the gods whose name is still a part of everyday speech.

The cult of Cybele goes back a long way, and she may well have originally been worshiped as an earth mother way back in prehistory. The origin of her worship was in Phrygia. This is the region of central Turkey roughly where the current capital of Ankara is. There are a lot of respectful and knowledgeable references to Phrygia and its culture in the speech, enough to make me think that there may have been some Phrygians in the audience, or indeed the speech may have been given somewhere in Phrygia. The Phrygians were closely related to the Greeks, and early on the Athenians had picked up the worship of Cybele from them. There was a temple to Cybele in Athens which also contained the public records.

Cybele comes to Rome

The Phrygians must have had a good marketing department, because when the Romans were in trouble during their war with Carthage they turned to Cybele for divine support. A statue of the goddess was commissioned from Phrygia and dispatched to Rome in a large ship. When the vessel approached the Tiber the city’s inhabitants turned out to greet it, led by the priests and senators. Unfortunately it got stuck in the mouth of the river, and nothing would move it. The rumour arose that the chief vestal virgin, Clodia, had not been sticking to the purity of her vows and this was offending the goddess. Stories like that tend to spread.

In order to clear her name Clodia wrapped her girdle around the statue. As a result the boat finally started moving getting the delivery back on plan. Julian was telling this story some five hundred years after the event but had no truck with people who were skeptical about it. Julian insists on taking the story at face value. There were plenty of testimonials attesting to it. It also fitted in with his idea that the gods took an active interest in human affairs, intervening when the need arose.

The Romans went on to be highly successful in their fight against Carthage. Cybele was obviously effective as a protector. She rapidly became one of the most popular gods in town. Augustus built a huge temple to her right next to his own palace.

The Meaning of the Cybele

But Julian is just as interested in her religious significance as her history. He asks, who is the mother of the Gods? He then proceeds to answer his own question in great detail. As a pupil of Neoplatonism he was intensely interested in the metaphorical significance of these kinds of myths. We get a lot of detail of the philosophical meaning of it all. This is pretty involved, going deep into Plato’s theory of forms and with references to Aristotle, Porphyry, Theophrastus and Xenagorus. And this isn’t simple name dropping. Julian has clearly read them and understood their arguments and feels quite able to put his own ideas forward in the same company. It is tough going, believe me. But he eventually gets where he wants to go. Cybele is identified as the greatest being created by the One, and the god who transfers creative urges from the Divine Mind down to the Earth.

Prayer to Cybele

Having warmed up with this, fairly major, metaphysical explanation he goes on to draw some conclusions about how one of the stories about Cybele could be used to explain the path of the Sun in the sky.  He then seems to get a bit sidetracked with quite a bit of rather unfocused speculation about the origin of particular dietary restrictions required by traditional religious practices. As we all know, the cleverest of speakers can wander off topic and end up forgetting what they are supposed to be talking about. But Julian pulls it back. He finishes with a simple and sincere prayer to the Goddess.

“Grant unto all men happiness, of which the sum and substance is the knowledge of the gods; and to the Roman people universally, first and foremost to wash away from themselves the stain of atheism, and in addition to this, grant them propitious Fortune, that shall assist them in governing the empire for many thousands of years to come! To myself grant for the fruit of my devotion to thee–-Truth in belief concerning the gods, the attainment of perfection in religious rites, and in all the undertakings which we attempt as regards warlike or military measures, valour coupled with good luck, and the termination of my life to be without pain, and happy in the good hope of a departure for your abodes!”

The West’s Lost Legacy of Paganism

The reference to the stain of atheism is poignant. Julian may have been making a general point, but I can imagine that he was speaking in a temple that still had signs of damage. Atheism referred to Christianity. Christians do not accept the Platonic concept of a single transcendent God who is the source of creation, so the atheist tag can be justified from Julian’s point of view though to our way of thinking it is a bit confusing. 

Many temples had been attacked and destroyed during the previous forty years, many converted into churches. Julian’s love and veneration for the gods of his country is evident, and he must have found the evidence of this desecration heartbreaking. But the buildings could be restored – the loss of the tradition was much harder to make good. This culture, once destroyed, could not be revived. Julian himself, being brought as a Christian must have felt keenly this break with the past. But at least as emperor, he could now save what was left. But it was not to be. His reign was not even to last two years, and when he was gone it was not long before the destruction resumed. Steadily more severe laws against pagan practice were brought in, stripping them of rights and forbidding their literature.Paganism did not die out, it was killed.

Much of our culture has been lost forever. Julian failed to save it, but at least he put up a fight, and a visible one. Julian will certainly never be forgotten. His Hymn to Cybele is both a window on a world that has been destroyed and a reminder that people cared deeply about it.

St Mercurios Killing Julian the Apostate

I can’t top the excellent blog post about this painting, so I’ll just add a link.

http://blog.interiorpaintsecrets.info/st-mercurios-killing-king-oleonus-st-mercurios-killing-emperor-julian-the-apostate/

If you want to follow my extended review of Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire from the beginning (and who wouldn’t?) it starts with Augustus founding the empire.

Julian and the Christians

Athanasius – nemesis of the apostate

Alexandria was one of the major cities of the Roman empire, and one that would have appealed to Julian.  It was founded by Alexander the Great, who was one of Julian’s heroes.   It was also the centre of a major pagan cult, that of Serapis.  (If you are wondering who Serapis was, he was created by the Greek founders of Alexandria as an amalgam of Greek and Egyptian elements so as to appeal to both ethnic groups.  Cynical manipulation of religion for political purposes has a long history.)  And the intellectual achievements of the Alexandrians rivaled those of Athens.  Basically it was his kind of place, or rather it would have been had it not also been an important centre of Christian thought as well.  

When we last looked at Alexandria, the popular but wily and politically motivated Athanasius had been banished and replaced as archbishop by somebody willing to go along with the Arian sympathies of the then emperor Constantius. That person was George of Cappadocia who was just as unsuitable but for totally different reasons.

George had come from a poor background and made his fortune, or the start of it, supplying the army with bacon. When Athanasius was banished by Constantius George became the patriarch in his place with the support of the Arian faction. His exact position on the divinity of Christ hasn’t been recorded, but his businesslike approach to maximising his income has.   In an age where honesty was a rare commodity, he took corruption to a degree which earned the contempt of just about everyone.  His targets had included the pagans as well as his co-religionists, coming up with the claim that the church actually owned the land in the city and so everyone with any property was liable to pay him ground rent.  Even people with a complete disinterest in the theological disputes of the time – which was probably most people – would not have failed to have an opinion on that kind of thing.   He clearly needed to be sorted out, and the removal of George from his post was announced in Alexandria at the same time as Julian’s accession to the throne. 

So George ended up in prison.  But as is often the case in these kinds of situation, events went at their own pace, not the one the authorities tried to set.   With the removal of the Arian appointee who should turn up and reclaim the vacant seat but Athanasius.  This was definitely not what Julian had in mind and he had to send a rapid clarification explaining that when he had said that dissident bishops were restored to their seats, that didn’t include known criminals like Athanasius.  

Julian was well aware of the abilities of Athanasius and the last thing he wanted to do was to let him loose to provide the church with effective leadership.  Meanwhile developments in the crisis continued.  The pagans who had suffered badly at the hands of George’s extortion could not wait for the natural course of justice. They stormed the jail and killed George themselves.  Gibbon suggests that after his death George became the origin of the famous St George, dragon slayer, paragon of knightly virtue and patron saint of a great many places including of course England.  This was a reasonable enough idea in the light of what Gibbon knew, as this was then the earliest use of the name George.  Since then a couple of churches dedicated to a St George that predate George of Cappadocia’s death – one by 16 years – have been discovered.  This clears St George of being a dodgy bacon trader, which for a patriotic Englishman like myself is a relief, though it does mean that we have no idea who he actually was or whether he even existed.  But potential non-existance has not harmed his career as a saint and he continues to attract fans from most Christian denominations and even some Muslims. 

Getting back to Alexandria, it is hard not to sympathise with the pagans, but no state can tolerate people taking the law into their own hands no matter how provoked they might be.  And Athanasius had prudently kept the Christian faction out of the action, enabling the episode to be portrayed, quite accurately, as one where a Christian had been killed by a pagan mob.   This was a potentially dangerous situation.  Julian’s response was self indulgent and inflammatory.  He mildly rebuked the pagans saying that although they had good cause they should not have behaved in such a way.  But given their Grecian heritage and their love of the gods he generously pardoned them.  Having given his own side a license to kill, he then moved against the man who might have been able to diffuse the situation.  Athanasius was banished again – though he must have been getting used to it by now.  

Athanasius was a tricky character and was just about the polar opposite of Julian. Where Julian was full of intellectual curiosity, Athanasius was unimaginative but effective.  Julian cared about ideas, Athanasius was a political operator.  Above all, Athanasius was intent on destroying everything Julian wanted to save.  It is no wonder that Julian wanted him out of the way and preferably dead.

But Athanasius was at least able to deliver some kind of peace deal, so it might well have been better to have at least tried to negotiate with him.  Much might have been gained by a more measured approach trading a degree of acceptance for the Church for the promise of good behaviour by its members.  But compromise was not the spirit of the time and Julian was set on confrontation.  

And confrontation there was.  Temples were attacked by the Christians even though they no longer had any official blessing to do so.  There is something uniquely horrible about the deliberate destruction of other people’s religious images.  The destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas by the Afghan Taliban in 2001 is recent enough to recall just how horrific such behaviour is.  These huge monuments were dynamited on the orders of extreme muslim clerics in a triumph of righteous indignation over fellow feeling and respect for others. The statues were 1500 years old and can never now be replaced.  The classical world was full of monuments as old in their time as the Budhhas were in ours. The destruction of many of these by the Christians must have been profoundly shocking for the sincere pagans and non-believers alike.  With a pagan back on the throne the Churches were now attacked.  If Church sources are to be believed, which they generally aren’t, the Christians themselves were attacked too.  But the attacks on pagan monuments continued as well.  In Pessinus the alter of Cybele was overturned almost in the presence of Julian himself.

We are familiar with the pattern of sectarian violence from so many places around the world. In fact as I am working on this piece, from Egypt itself comes a transparent attempt by somebody to convert a political crisis into a religious one by carrying out attacks against the Coptic Christians.  The Egyptians seem unwilling to go along with this and their pro-democracy protestors are remaining non-factional.  This is greatly to their credit.  It is impossible to give the same credit to Julian.  This was his reaction to trouble breaking out in Edessa. The Arian Christians had attacked the Valentinian Christans and the magistrates had struggled to restore order.  Rather than follow judicial procedure to identify and punish the specific wrong doers, Julian simply confiscated the Church’s property in Edessa. The money was distributed among the soldiers.   Meanwhile Julian engaged in the sort of thing that many democratic politicians probably wish they could get away with by telling his opponents exactly what he thought.   “I show myself,” says Julian, “the true friend of the Galilaeans. Their admirable law has promised the kingdom of heaven to the poor; and they will advance with more diligence in the paths of virtue and salvation, when they are relieved by my assistance from the load of temporal possessions.”  His light tone did not continue. “Take care, how you provoke my patience and humanity. If these disorders continue, I will revenge on the magistrates the crimes of the people; and you will have reason to dread, not only confiscation and exile, but fire and the sword.”

The Roman Empire wasn’t a cuddly place and being equally ferocious to all parties would probably have been tolerated, and even approved of.  But pagan atrocities were indulged while Christian ones were not.  It is hard not to interpret this as indicating that Julian was quite prepared to use violence to achieve his religious ends.  I suspect he did not have any plans for a widespread violent crackdown on Christianity, but I think that was not for any other reason than that he thought it wouldn’t be the most effective means of achieving his ends.  At the same time as handling day to day politicking with his opponents he also brought in a policy that would have had a long term weakening effect.  He banned the use of the classical Greek texts by teachers unwilling to accept that the Gods in those texts were true.  This had the effect of preventing Christians from teaching.  This was a serious blow against the propagation of Christianity.  Getting them young is still one of the main strategies used to keep the faith going. It rankles with me that my taxes subsidise what are known as ‘faith based schools’, or schools which promote irrational nonsense as I like to think of them.  Julian’s move was a subtle one, because the study of the great works of ancient literature was a passport into the civil service, so passing up on it would be a tough thing to do. 

Julian also applied financial pressure, again using what looked like a long term strategy to starve out Christianity rather than directly confront it.  The Church had already lost the patronage of the state more or less from day one of his reign, and this was bad enough. He also stopped people leaving their property to it – which cut off another major source of income.  

His third prong was a very clever one.  Individual Christian leaders were made liable for repairing the damage done to pagan places of worship.  It was hard to argue with the justice of this.  It also had the effect of hitting the Christian leadership without offering them the chance of martyrdom.  Perishing by the sword for refusing to renounce your beliefs has a certain romantic appeal.  Ending up potless due to criminal damage charges doesn’t have the same resonance.  

So Julian’s campaign against the Christians was well thought out and implemented with energy.  If it had a weakness it was that Julian was sincere in his paganism.  He was intelligent and worldly wise, but he underestimated the strength of his opponents, probably because he thought he actually had the heavens on his side.  He also grossly overestimated the strength of his own faction.  Converts are often very zealous.

This was made most clear in his visit to Antioch.  He went to Syria to visit the famous temple of Apollo.  This had been founded by one of Alexander the Great’s generals and was renowned as a beautiful location five miles outside the city itself.  The vast statue of Apollo filled a huge portion of the temple overawing worshippers.  It was located in a shady grove of laurels and cypresses offering shade from the harsh Syrian sun, with numerous streams flowing through keeping the leaves in the trees green and making it even more idyllic.  The laurel tree was sacred to Daphne, who in legend had been loved by Apollo, but who got herself turned into a laurel to escape his clutches. There was also a spring which supported a shrine to Daphne and which was famous as an oracle that rivalled that of Delphi. The situating of places of worship for Apollo and Daphne so close together had an obvious romantic attraction for young couples.  Gibbon manages to put it decorously.

“the senses were gratified with harmonious sounds and aromatic odors; and the peaceful grove was consecrated to health and joy, to luxury and love. The vigorous youth pursued, like Apollo, the object of his desires; and the blushing maid was warned, by the fate of Daphne, to shun the folly of unseasonable coyness.”   

Julian knew all about this famous religious centre and was anxious to see it.  No doubt he imagined white robed youths celebrating with music and dancing overseen by a cadre of priests presenting burnt offerings to the beneficent deities in heaven.  And where better to get council on the momentous events in which he was playing a part than in the prophetic springs of Daphne.  But his information was out of date.  When he arrived he found that it had fallen into disrepair and neglect.  There was only one priest in attendance.  And he could only rustle up a single goose as a sacrifice.  For the devout Julian it must have been a heart breaking visit.  And there was worse to come.  The site had been desecrated by having a Christian saint interred on the holy ground.  Rebuilding the temple would be a long job, but the sacrilegious burial at least could be dealt with quickly.  He ordered the body to be removed and sent to a church in the city of Antioch.

The saint in question was Saint Babylos who was supposed to have been killed during the persecution of Decius.  The return of his body was turned into a major demonstration by the Christians who turned out in great numbers to accompany the bones and sing hymns leaving Julian in no doubt that they had a very high level of support in the city.  That night a huge fire broke out destroying the temple of Apollo.  There is some doubt raised by some accounts as to whether the Christians were indeed responsible for the fire.  Right.  If it was an accident, you have to say that was one heck of a coincidence.  Julian at any rate had no doubt that his religion had suffered a terrorist attack and reacted.  

Or to be more accurate, overreacted.

The cathedral in Antioch was closed and its wealth was seized.  To try and find the culprits – and some valuables that had been hidden – a few church officials were tortured and one of them beheaded.  Torture was standard legal procedure at the time, so nobody thought much about that, but the beheading was a bit harsh.

It was not ordered by Julian and he later condemned it.  There are a number of martyrs in the Catholic canon who are supposed to have been killed by Julian, but this is the closest he got to ever actually killing a Christian simply for his faith.  Having said that, Julian’s actions raised the temperature of the issue. This led to many avoidable deaths.

But although Julian was not the monster his enemies later portrayed him as, it has to be said that his time in Antioch was the low point of his career.  He had been popular in Gaul, where Christianity had not yet made much progress and his paganism was not much of an issue.   In Constantinople and Egypt faction fighting was already in progress and so he had ready made adherents and supporters simply by choosing a side. Antioch wasn’t like that.  Religious change had been a bit more steady and organic there.  It had been a haven of peaceful coexistence of pagans and Christians before Julian’s visit.  He was probably unconcerned about upsetting the Christians, though even on the narrowest of tactical considerations provoking a group that posed no threat while there was already trouble elsewhere was hardly a good move. But he didn’t really hit it off with the pagans either.  Being traditionalists they didn’t really take to his novel brand of paganism and he ended up arguing with them as well.  In turn they mocked his beard, which given his power was a braver mover than it sounds.  When Julian finally left on his way to Persia he left made a promise never to return. I doubt many were too disappointed.  

Julian never did return to Antioch as we’ll see in the next episode.

If you want to follow my extended review of Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire from the beginning (and who wouldn’t?) it starts with Augustus founding the empire.

Julian and the Pagans – Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Chapter 23 Part 3

Constantine’s adoption of Christianity and the ramifications of it triggered off a full scale religious crisis in the empire that was to last for the whole of the fourth century. As Julian came to the throne Christians were already fighting other Christians and it was only a matter of time before other religions resorted to violence as well. What would Julian do about it? To everyone’s surprise his first edict was one of tolerance. His approach looked good on paper.  Everyone was free to follow whatever spiritual path that suited them.  Full religious freedom was good news for most people on a personal level. Jews and pagans had a whole series of irksome restrictions lifted. The previously non-favoured brands of Christianity also were able to worship in freedom.

Announcing universal freedom of worship and stopping religious persecution was a great start. Letting people believe what they choose so long as they respect other people’s right to do the same is a very sound policy. Tolerance is a good thing for its own sake. But it was also just what the empire needed. The energy being consumed by religious fanaticism was desperately needed to defend the empire from the very real external threats it faced.  If Julian could have succeeded in creating genuine religious tolerance he would have been the greatest emperor that had ever lived at any time in any empire. Given the previous history, in particular the partial policies practiced by Julian’s uncle Constantine and his sons, it was never really going to be possible. But even an unsuccessful but sincere attempt would have been admirable.

But what Julian did next made it crystal clear that he was not an even handed monarch concerned only for his subjects’ well being. By identifying himself so strongly with one particular faction it was impossible for Julian to appear completely impartial. And he didn’t try very hard with the pretence either. Characteristically, he did something that nobody else in his position would have done and which nobody would have expected. He wrote a book. His three volume work ‘Against the Galileans’ attacked the very core of Christian belief. Nobody likes being criticised. It hurts a lot more when it is, as this was, done very well. And when it comes directly from the hand of the man in charge with the power of life and death it is still more alarming.

Knowing Julian, it is entirely possible to believe that he thought that his book would actually win people back to their old gods. This seems naive at first, but it might have served just that purpose. It was after all a pretty powerful message about how to win the favour of the new ruler. This message was not lost on the professional career bureaucrats that were now a feature of the imperial organisation. They were less concerned about whether a doctrine was true than whether it is expedient. So it isn’t surprising to see some officials switching to paganism with the new regime, and later switching right on back when the tide turned again. It is always worth remembering that even at times of great religious controversy the vast majority of people couldn’t care less and simply follow the line of least resistance. These people don’t make it into the pages of history books, but they probably enjoy their lives more and in most cases those lives last longer.

In any case, Julian was soon promoting his fellow pagans calling on his religious network to staff his court as far as he could. Apart from his immediate circle Julian did not immediately purge the Christians. It wasn’t really possible given that they were so well established in the government organisation. In any case his official line was that all his subjects were free to chose their religion. But the sincere Christians were no doubt disgruntled even when they weren’t actually being replaced. The Christians had been highly influential for 40 years and had no doubt got used to it. Their position changed very quickly. They had enjoyed favourable legal treatment, direct revenues from the government and the pleasure of being able to persecute their opponents. All these great advantages disappeared overnight.

However, they remained a formidable power, particularly in the East. By now, they may even have actually formed a majority in the provinces of Syria and Egypt. Julian’s response was to try and create what we would probably nowadays call a rainbow coalition against them.

Julian was to show favour to traditional pagans, not just the neoplatonic elites. This was natural enough. But he was also indulgent to Mithraism and to the Jews. In contrast he attempted to foster the divisions between the Christians, which must have seemed like an easy strategy. In the event, in the face of a common enemy the Arians and the Orthodox were able to some extent to bury their differences for the time being. Looking back on this it isn’t hard to see how this revealed the true motives of the different factions, whose deep seated theological differences suddenly became less important once who got to benefit from the imperial largesse was no longer at issue.

He certainly indulged his own particular religious inclinations to the full. His particular special deity was the Sun, and he sacrificed personally to him at sunrise and sunset. But he didn’t neglect the stars and the Moon, which he also regularly worshiped. He assisted in ceremonies when he was able to, taking the role of a simple functionary in the temple. He would bring the wood, and sometimes carry out the sacrifice of the animal and with his own hands examine the entrails. And if his personal life was Spartan, there was nothing modest about his worship. Oxen would on some occasions be sacrificed by the hundred.

Augustus had acquired for himself the role of Pontifex Maximus some three hundred and fifty years before. The wily founder of the empire had used this position in charge of the Roman’s state religion as a means to bolster his power and authority. Julian took it seriously as a sacred duty. He supported temples throughout the empire with the liberal grants that had previously been funding the official church. The revival of the ancient religion was popular with lots of the subjects of the empire. One pagan writer praises the revival of religious practices that could now be performed openly and without danger recording the rapture of the votaries as the sacrifice gained the favour of the gods and provided them with a congenial supper.

Julian surrounded himself with advisors on heavenly matters, many of whom were drawn directly from the circle who had initiated him into the cult in secrecy all those years before. This might well have been his biggest mistake. At least one of his confidants was later put on trial to explain his sudden acquisition of great wealth. It turned out that even Platonic philosophers find the allure of wealth hard to resist. But Julian needed these people for what he probably regarded as the most important project of his life. His aim was to put the pagans on a footing that would enable them to resist Christianity in the long run. Paganism wasn’t really a single religion. It was a whole load of different cults, some quite closely related to each other, some less so. Julian had a Neoplatonic framework that gave them all a single theoretical underpinning. But that was all it was, just a theory. There was no reflection of this theory on the ground in the organisation of the temples and other religious activities. Julian proposed to fill this gap. He had in mind a hierarchy of priests all reporting back into him as the Pontifex Maximus. The state had funded a lot of religious activities in the past and Julian proposed to put the whole thing onto a much more organised footing. He certainly had some very clear ideas about the way the priests should behave. They would have to be upstanding moral characters, beyond reproach. They needed to chose their friends wisely. This being Julian, he was interested in what they had in their libraries. Philosophy and history were okay. Satires were not approved of.

This brings up one point that Gibbon only makes the most fleeting of references to. Julian was in no way narrow minded and was supportive of other religions and was a huge enthusiast for learning in general. That his chief animosity was directed towards the Christians is understandable. Their intolerance of anyone else’s beliefs was the biggest threat to his vision after all, quite apart from the fact that for a lot of his life they had been trying to kill him.

But he also disliked the Epicureans, the Skeptics and other atheist philosophers. They weren’t organised and didn’t cause any trouble so they never became an issue. Unlike the Christians these people had no problems at all going through the motions of worship for the sake of a quiet life. Previous pagan emperors had not given them a second thought. The fact that Julian was highlighting them shows how deeply he had imbibed his ideology and for me makes clearer than anything else how for all his desire to restore the past he was far more a radical than he was a conservative. It is also ironic that the belief system that was ultimately to triumph was the one that made the least noise. As is often the case, it is the quiet ones you have to watch.

Julian was well aware that one of the Christians’ big plus points was their distribution of charity indiscriminately. It must indeed have infuriated both him and other pagans. Taxes were raised from everybody then passed to the church for distribution to the poor, building up the reputation of the church in the process. Julian planned to take this idea and simply transfer it to the temples. So you can see why he was concerned about the character of the people who he was going to have on the front line of this new project. This was in fact the weakest point in the plan.

Julian might have been at least partially blind to the defects on his own side, but he was well aware of the ins and outs of Christian controversy and had a keen idea of how this weakness could work to his advantage. He invited the leaders of the main Christian factions to the palace for dinner. This would have been a politically sound and statesmanlike thing to do, to reach out to the different groups in his empire and to establish a relationship with each of them. But he invited them all at the same time, knowing full well that they were at loggerheads with each other. On cue, arguments broke out and voices were raised. Julian was as keen as anyone on a good argument and would no doubt have liked to join in, but his voice was soon drowned out by the noise of the assembled clerics. In the end he resorted to shouting ‘hear me, hear me. The Alemanni have heard me. The Germani have heard me!’

Julian was contemptuous of the Christians and it is not hard to agree with him. Given that they set such a low base it wasn’t hard to outclass them, but it has to be said that while Julian’s behaviour wasn’t as bad it wasn’t a huge amount better.

A glaring example of the way he was anything but even handed in practice was his handling of the army.  The army of the West had taken Julian’s enthusiasm for paganism in general and sacrifices in particular to heart.  I imagine modern soldiers might be tempted too.  It involved chanting and dancing girls followed by roasting an ox which the participants got to share a portion of.  It sounds a bit more fun than a sermon and prayers.  The eastern legions had not had the same experience and were used to fighting under Christian symbols.  Julian had these replaced with the traditional ones obliging Christian soldiers to commit sacrilege when going about their normal duties.  This seemed to go well and there is no indication that Julian was in any danger of a Christian inspired religious mutiny.  His successful exploits against the barbarians in the west stood him in good stead here.  But to really cement his hold over the true power in the empire a successful campaign against the Persians would be just the trick.  With that under his belt Julian’s position would be strong enough to cope with any crisis, up to and including a civil war.

Given the raised passions it wasn’t long before a crisis arose. In fact it was almost straight away, and in exactly the place that would have been predicted – the hot bed of religious controversy and strife: Alexandria.  That is where we we’ll be going for the next podcast.

If you want to follow my extended review of Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire from the beginning (and who wouldn’t?) it starts with Augustus founding the empire.

Julian and the Jews: Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Chapter 23 Part 2

It is hard not to admire the way that the Jews have succeeded in maintaining their culture and identity for many thousands of years. This has been achieved in the face of some pretty big practical difficulties. They have rarely had the support of a state and have often been subject to some pretty severe persecutions.

For instance, when Julian became the last pagan to come to the throne they were going through one of their bad patches. The Christians had not that long ago broken away from the Jewish tradition and the two faiths had the kinds of issues that might be expected from a pair that had just been through a messy divorce. Prior to the rise of Christianity the Jews had fallen foul of several of the emperors as a result of a number of brave but not tremendously successful revolts. Hadrian had banned them from Jerusalem. The ban was still in force and on top of that Constantius had imposed extra taxes on them.

So having suffered at the hands of the traditional pagans and the newly established Christians, it is unlikely that they had much hope that the new pagan emperor was going to be any different to what they had been used to. They would probably not have guessed that they were about to get just about the most pro-Jewish gentile leader in history. Nor would anyone else. But Julian was a man who was always full of surprises.

I think the best way to think of him is to imagine someone today growing up in a strongly working class area, Pittsburgh, Sheffield, somewhere like that, with left wing parents. Say they were union officials or something like that. He shows promise, goes off to college and comes back an ardent libertarian free marketeer. He baffles everyone. He knows all the foundational texts of socialism. Unlike all the traditional believers he has actually read Marx. He knows all the arguments back to front so there is no point trying to win him back. But he is equally bizarre to his new friends on the right. They haven’t read people like Hayek either, and can’t keep up with free market jargon, so are often just as baffled as to what this guy is on about.

This is how I see Julian. In his time religion was the major point of controversy rather than politics, but he had basically crossed from the side you would expect him to be on to being a partisan for the other side. This gave him a radically different perspective on things to just about everyone around him. He wasn’t brought up a pagan. He had to study it and learn it. So he didn’t pick up the traditional disdain of the polytheist for the monotheism of Judaism. In fact far from it, he had studied the old testament carefully and had worked out his own ideas about what the teachings of Moses really meant. I have a feeling that under other circumstances the Jews might well have been much happier without that level of interest from an outsider. But Julian was in a position to help them and did so when he dropped the extra taxes the Jews had to pay – which must have opened their ears. He also proposed to let them return to Jerusalem.

At this time Jerusalem had already acquired its status as a religious tourist destination and the Christian holy places were generating healthy trade revenues. There was little evidence of its long history as the centre of worship of the Jewish faith. The temple on Mount Zion had been destroyed with typical Roman thoroughness by Hadrian. The ruins had been removed and the ground ploughed up. In news broadcasts about the current problems in the Middle East it is often pointed out that the temple mount is sacred to three different religions – Islam, Christianity and Judaism. In fact there is a fourth one with a claim. After the destruction of the Jewish temple by Hadrian a temple to Venus had been built. Let’s keep that one to ourselves shall we? In think they have enough trouble out there already. The removal of the Jews from Jerusalem had been the Christians’ big break and its development as a point of pilgrimage was a nice little earner. So it isn’t surprising that they found the destruction of the Jewish temple to be something of a sweet moment for them. The story grew up that Jesus had predicted the destruction of the temple and that it would never be rebuilt. It must have been a comforting prophecy for the traders making a living there.

As prophecies go it must have seemed like a pretty good bet. After all a Christian emperor was in on the act. And even in the event of a pagan emperor they were hardly likely to trouble to rebuild a temple to a god they didn’t acknowledge to please a small group of habitual malcontents and troublemakers. Nobody anticipated an emperor like Julian.

Lots of people find thinking outside the box a bit difficult. Julian on the other hand rarely seems to have thought inside the box. He looked at Jewish scriptures through his neoplatonic lens. Where other people might see an incompatible monotheistic religion with troublesome requirements that were a potential for public disorder, Julian recognised another imperfect but still valuable reflection of the One. The only trouble was that the Jews were not fulfilling the requirements Julian had picked up in the texts for performing sacrifices. On enquiring it turned out that the problem was a practical one – without a temple in Jerusalem there was no sacred place to carry out the sacrifices in. A tough problem for most people, but Julian was an emperor. He could order the temple to be rebuilt. This would not just bring the Jews more closely into line with his religious ideals, it would disrupt the Christian’s revenues from the holy places. So that was good too.  And it would also flatly contradict the Christian prophecy. What’s not to like?  And that is without even considering the long term benefits of creating a reliably anti-christian institution bang in the middle of the Christian heartland.

Julian took this project very seriously, putting Alypius in charge of it. Alypius was a native of Syria who at the time was running the province of Britain and was one of Julian’s closest friends. On top of this high level state backing the Jewish community shared in the enthusiasm providing further funds, labour and equipment to clear the ground and to lay the foundations for the re-establishment of the centre of their religion. Unfortunately despite all this the whole thing turned out to be in vain and nothing was achieved. Six months after the start of the project Julian was dead, and with him any hope of its successful completion died as well. The Christian writers were quick to attribute the failure to the the direct intervention of God. There had been earthquakes to upset the clearing and digging and firebolts had been shot down from Heaven actually burning some of the workers.

It would be easy to dismiss these testamonials from Christian sources. They tend to lie a lot. But pagan sources tell the same story. It is notable that God seems to have adopted Jupiter’s signature means of communicating his displeasure on this occasion. It could well be that the pagans were just as cheesed off with imperial resources going to such an eccentric scheme as the Christians were. Julian really was one of a kind and it is hard to imagine anyone else conceiving of the idea in the first place, let alone actually instigating it. Julian’s promise to return to share in the worship at the newly consecrated temple was never to be fulfilled. But like much of his life, it is almost impossible not to speculate what might have happened if he had succeeded. A Jewish temple that survived the fall of the empire and which lasted to the present day would almost certainly have had some kind of effect on history, whether for good or bad it is hard to say. Might it have been a focus that allowed a Jewish state to be created centuries earlier than the present one? And if it had would that have helped? Given the grim nature of the history of the Jews it could hardly have made things much worse. But that has to be speculation. What is certain is that there was never going to be another emperor like Julian.

If you want to follow my extended review of Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire from the beginning (and who wouldn’t?) it starts with Augustus founding the empire.

Against the Galileans by Julian the Apostate

Not many leaders in history write books.  Quite a few don’t read books.  Those that do put pen to paper rarely write anything of more than historical interest.  But even among the small number that do stand up to scrutiny, Julian the Apostate’s lengthy polemic ‘Against the Galileans’, his critique of the Christianity of his time, is a completely unique document.  There really is nothing to compare it with.



It must have been a therapeutic book to write.  For ten years he had hidden his paganism.  As the nephew of Constantine, the man who brought Christianity to the empire, and possible heir to the throne it would have been suicide to admit it.  Now he was the emperor himself he could say what he really thought, and boy did he ever do so!  Being brought up as a Christian in the middle of all the controversies of the time, he knew his enemies and their literature well.  In fact that is an understatement.   He was as knowledgeable of Christian doctrine as any bishop.  More so probably.  He knew Christianity well and had long been aware of its flaws.  Against the Galileans isn’t simple nit picking, it is a full out and out assault on every aspect of the beliefs of the Christians from the bottom upwards.

His first problem is with God.  As a pagan Julian had adopted Plato’s conception of the God.  The Christian version just doesn’t stack up against the Platonic one.  The God of Plato is supreme and transcendent, the definition of creativity and perfection.  God is beyond good and evil and is the unique source of all knowledge.  Matter is not simply created by God, it is the manifestation of His soul and provides an imperfect and incomplete vision of the forms in His sublime mind.


Compare that to the rather workaday God of the book of Genesis who seems to be bedeviled with project management issues and has severe problems in the design department.  He fails to get it right first time on several occasions.  He ends up having to flood his own handiwork and intervene personally to stop mankind doing undesirable things.  He starts getting things wrong from day one in the Garden of Eden by neglecting to provide Adam with a companion.  (Actually strictly speaking that is day six.)  When he belatedly adds her she instantly gets herself and Adam into trouble by eating forbidden fruit – though why the forbidden fruit needed to be created in the first place isn’t explained.


As to the plan of creating a man with no conception of good or evil in the first place, what, Julian asks, is the use of someone who can’t tell good from bad?  In any case, Julian has noticed that in Genesis God creates relatively little in the way of new material – his main activities are devoted to rearranging stuff.  To Julian this is indicative that God doesn’t really have the full capabilities of a genuine creator.  It all sounds much more like a low level regional god who has been puffed up beyond his pay scale by overenthusiastic supporters.


Moses is demoted to the role of a tribal leader pushing his own people’s deity against those of  the neighbours’.  The ten commandments are dismissed as commonplace.  With the exception of the requirement to stick to one god, any religion has much the same set of guidelines. 


Having put God and Moses in their place,  Julian next finds fault with a few of the individual stories. Anyone who flicks through the Bible knows that it isn’t hard to find the completely unbelievable in its pages.   For example Julian forensically examines the account of the tower of Babel, one of the times God needs to come down to Earth to sort things out in the world that he had created.  There was a danger that the tower being built would enable men to get into Heaven.  It is easy to imagine quite a number of counter strategies open to an omnipotent being faced with this situation.  The one God settles on is to give men lots of different languages to hinder future co-operation.  This seems a little on the mild side.

Julian points out that even with the advantage of  a common language, it would be an impossible task even for the whole of mankind to make enough bricks to even reach the Moon let alone Heaven. He doesn’t quote it, but he is probably using the very accurate figure calculated by Aristarchus some 600 years before.


That Julian is abreast of this kind of detailed scientific information and the authors of the Bible aren’t is telling.  We are used to the idea that science has vastly outstripped the compass of the Bible but it is worth remembering that in straight scientific terms the Greeks were ahead of the Bible before it was even written.


Saint Paul was well aware of this shortcoming and pops a warning against listening to philosophers into one of his letters.


Of course it is possible to treat a story like that of the Tower of Babel as simply a  fable.   But Julian is equally unimpressed looking at it that way.  It might account for the differences in language, but it fails to explain why the people who speak such different languages also have different cultures and appearances.  

Julian treats us to a quick review of how he, and presumably other educated Romans, saw the characteristics of the various races – he is generally quite positive about them all.  Modern day Germans will no doubt be intrigued that their ancestors are described as being courageous and loving liberty, but badly organised.  He attributes the differences between peoples to their different national gods. And he makes the rather obvious point that the Hebrews had not exactly flourished as might have expected for a race that had singled out for special treatment by the Almighty.  They had failed to produce not only any respectable philosophers but hadn’t even managed a decent general and consequently had not prospered greatly. 




Julian is a mystic not a skeptic: he is more than happy to accept the supernatural as an explanation and to take the writings of the Bible at face value where there is no particular reason to doubt it.  He just doesn’t rate it much.  The miracles of Christ are dismissed as crummy rather than untrue.  It is hard to disagree.  Turning water into wine seems a bit prosaic for someone who is supposed to be God.  Feeding 5,000 people with five loaves and two fish is a handy talent for a poorly organised party thrower, but hardly resonates with the role of creator of the universe.  The non-catering related miracles are even more random and uninspiring unless you find pigs jumping off cliffs particularly exciting.


That the Bible has not been very well edited and is full of inconsistencies and contradictions is too obvious to miss and has amused generations of readers, but as far as I can tell Julian was the first to publicise them.  He points out the striking difference between John and the other gospels.  He derides the inability of Mathew and Mark to even agree on the same flagrantly bogus genealogy for Joseph.  And what is the point of tracing him back to King David anyway?  If Jesus was the son of God, the credentials of the man who happened to be married to his mother would be irrelevant.


Julian is respectful of Jewish culture.  He goes to some lengths to justify an assertion that Moses required the Jews to sacrifice to their God.  This enables him to minimise the differences between the Jews and other races, especially as he has demoted their God to a minor one.  I have a feeling that Jews of the time reading it would not have been entirely happy with this interpretation.  But it was an attempt by Julian to reach out to a group that whatever else they might be, were reliably anti-Christian.  I imagine that they would go along with it as it meant that they could worship freely and even to rebuild their temple in Jerusalem which Hadrian had destroyed.


For sheer novelty value Against the Galileans must have been a sensation.  Emperors just didn’t do that kind of thing.  And for the powerful Christian faction to be so openly attacked, mocked even, must have stunned adherents, opponents and the uncommitted alike.  It was a radical text in more ways than one.  The Romans had always been notably tolerant of religious diversity.  Julian gives this tolerance a solid justification.  He does this by interpreting all religions in a Platonic framework.  But this was very new – previous generations of pagans had felt no need to justify their behaviour.  It also written in such away that explicitly invites contrary views to be expressed.  Julian is seeking to win an argument by reason, not laying down the law.  Reading it, it is easy to forget that he was an absolute ruler.  Maybe he had a vision of an empire where people were free to debate.  Maybe one of his motivations was to open up this discussion and others as well.


The full text of Against the Galileans has not survived: it would be great to have more.  The Church was soon to have an almost total monopoly on the reproduction of manuscripts and nothing so scandalous had any chance of being kept in circulation.  My review is of the little of it has been reconstructed from a rebuttal written by some otherwise worthless bishop (Cyril of Alexandria if you really want to know) and a few other fragments.  It would be wonderful to have the whole thing.

But we have enough to give us an insight into the mind of one of the most original figures in history.  Julian failed to save paganism, but it wasn’t for lack of good arguments.    

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References

Colossians 2:8.

http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/julian_apostate_galileans_1_text.htm

Julian the Apostate – Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Chapter 23 Part 1

Religion is often accused of causing most of the wars in history.  This is hardly fair.  People are quite capable of picking fights without any divine inspiration, even if religion is a handy justification to cover your true motives.  And religious leaders sometimes take a role in solving problems, which evens up the balance sheet a bit.  But the charge is not totally groundless. Religion itself can be the problem, and the religious trauma of the late Roman Empire is the textbook case.

The pattern is one that is familiar from looking at the news today.  One group commits an outrage against another in order to provoke a reaction.  The reaction is then used to justify the other group’s case and to strengthen the authority of its leadership. All political leaders know how to use a good enemy.  The cliches appear. ‘There is a war on.’  ‘If you are not for us you are against us.’  Nowadays we say that people are radicalised.  The process takes on a life of its own with the cycle of crimes, martyrdom and repression being retold and reinterpreted.  It can take centuries to work itself out to a final conclusion, by which time hardly anyone has any idea of why they were fighting in the first place. 

Using violence to promote their religion was the major innovation of the early Christians, and one that worked very well for them.  As it usually does, it led to a cycle of violence from other groups which probably peaked at about the time Julian became emperor.  But it changed Christianity as well.  It had originated as a group of friends of a charismatic leader.  It had developed into a handy scam run by frauds and hucksters.  Now it was changing again into an organised cult of thugs and fanatics.  When they acquired power under Constantine they changed again and started attracting the ambitious and the politically ruthless.  We’ll be hearing less and less about female pastors and bishops being elected and more about their appointments and their intrigues. 

Although Christians remained an overall minority in the empire, they were now centre stage and making the running.  But there was plenty of opposition, at least potentially.  The pagans were suffering from the destruction of their temples.  Both pagans and Jews were being harassed by regulations explicitly designed to make their lives difficult.  The possibility of full scale civil war was very real.   The fighting so far was limited to the struggles amongst the Christians themselves. The Donatists in North Africa were in open rebellion.  The orthodox were being persecuted by the Arians.  Blood was flowing freely.   An empire with enemies on the Rhine, the Danube and the Euphrates had opened up a fourth internal war.  The world had gone crazy.   Someone had to bring it back to its senses.

What were Julian’s options? He could continue the policy of favouring the Arians and trying to impose their creed on everyone else. This was the most straight forward, but it meant continuing to devote military resources to violent repression.  The least difficult policy politically would have been to switch support to the orthodox Christians.  This would have got him the support of the strongest single faction and I think this can be considered to be the ‘default’ position. This would have been the surest way of achieving stability, though it meant conceding a lot of power to the church hierarchy. 

The hardest thing to achieve was the most desirable. The long term health of the empire would most benefit by bringing an immediate end to the faction fighting between the groups.  Was there any way to do this? The ideal would have been an official separation of church and state keeping politics and religion apart and leaving every citizen to genuinely chose their own belief system, much like the admirably secular constitution of the United States.  Advanced as Roman civilisation was, it wasn’t ready for that. But there was an option that wasn’t too far off it. How about a tolerant paganism that recognised and supported diversity of belief?

Julian’s initial proclamation was ideal.  He gave all subjects of the empire full freedom of religious expression.  This sounded promising and could have been the basis for a realistic settlement.  The pagans could restore their temples, and the banned Christian heretics could return to their posts.  The Christians lost their right to torment each other, which actually made a considerable number of Christians beneficiaries of Julian’s policy.  Handled well, it could have marked the beginning of a new era of peace and mutual tolerance.  But to do this, in an age of intolerance and fanaticism, Julian would have had to rise above faction fighting.

Unfortunately,  Julian for all his virtues was not that man. And when you look at what he had come to believe, and how he had come to believe it, it isn’t hard to see why.   Although he is best remembered as being the last pagan emperor,  he was not a traditional pagan with beliefs inherited from his ancestors.  He was called an apostate as an insult by his enemies, but an apostate he was according to the dictionary definition.   He was brought up as a Christian but consciously rejected that religion.  This is pretty inflammatory behaviour, as Sir Salman Rushdie could confirm.

You can of course reject a religion – many people do it every day – but you can’t reject your upbringing. He had been brought up in the typical fanaticism of the time.  When he converted to paganism he took the fanaticism he had been trained in over to his new religion. Basically, he was as crazy as the rest of them.

Maybe he would have been able to cure himself of this with time.  He was a resourceful and intelligent man and seemed to have remarkable self control, and above all he was always willing to learn. But time was the thing he never had.  But as it was the empire was now run by a man for whom the religious controversies of his time were not a problem to be managed, they were his chief preoccupation and he had chosen the side he was going to support.

People who actually act on their religious impulses are rare.  True believers are scarce enough to begin with, and they tend not make a huge impact on the world.  Following the actual teachings of most religions would more or less guarantee you a blameless but obscure life.  History is generally made by people for whom this world rather than the next is what is on their mind.  But there  are one or two rare exceptions.  St Paul springs to mind.  He seems to be both sincere and worldly enough to understand how things work.  Actually as an aside for non-Christian listeners – which I imagine is all of you by now – St Paul is well worth a read.   He isn’t anything like the impression you get of him from the people who like to quote him a lot.  Neither man would welcome the comparison, but Julian shows the same genuine devotion to his beliefs combined with a shrewd practical appreciation of how the world actually works.

Julian’s paganism was acquired not inherited but by the time he became the emperor was deep rooted.  He had been to obliged to study the Bible as a child.  I think it was simply the shortcomings of that book that put him off.  This is a common enough experience.  Many atheists say that the Bible is the book that they would most recommend to someone they wished to dissuade.  I don’t think any further explanation is really necessary.

There was probably no particular point at which he rejected Christianity, but we can say precisely when he aligned him clearly with paganism.  At the age of 20 he was initiated, in deep secret, into the Eleusinian mysteries.

The mysteries were a secret initiation rite into a cult based in Eleusis.  The origins are lost in prehistory and by the time of Julian were over a thousand, maybe two  thousand years old.   The rites were secret.  Betraying the secrets was punishable by death so not surprisingly, not much is known about them.  But this doesn’t stop Gibbon from speculating.

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.

Despite the secrecy the mysteries had been quite respectable.  The temple had been under the protection of the emperors and the emperor Hadrian had been initiated.  Marcus Aurelius had rebuilt it when it was damaged in a barbarian raid.  But with the rise of Christianity they had fallen from favour and Julian was taking a huge risk by getting involved.  Who knows, maybe the Christian hierarchy did get wind of it.  That might explain why they were so keen to get rid of him.

One modern theory about the Eluesinian initiation rites is that there may have been psychoactive substances involved. If so, this might explain why Julian was to spend the rest of his life literally talking to the Gods themselves.  He knew them well enough to be able to recognise them as individuals, and often sought their advice.  This is one of those things makes Julian closer to the Christian emperors that he despised than the traditional pagan predecessors of an earlier age.  It is hard to imagine Augustus or Vespasian chatting intimately to Zeus.  It sounds much more like Constantine who knew Christ well enough to get direct personal messages.  As conservatives throughout history have found, you can never really escape the times you actually live in.

I have speculated that it was reading the Bible that put the intellectual Julian off of Christianity.  But that doesn’t explain why he turned to paganism.  Paganism wasn’t really one religion, it was a patchwork of gods, concepts, practices and superstitions accumulated over many centuries and absorbed from many cultures.  It didn’t really have a theology, more a haphazard menu of options you could pick and chose from.   At first sight it is hard to imagine how this chaotic jumble would appeal to an intellectually rigorous philosopher.  Even if Christianity was philosophically a bit rubbish at this stage in its development, how was this any better?

But there was a strand in paganism that fitted the bill perfectly.  Julian attached himself to the school of the Platonists.  Their version was based  on the work of Plato but with a lot of refinements.  Paganism, in its Platonic form, makes a lot more sense than Christianity does.

If you have a notion of paganism like the one I was taught at school, where the Jews were pioneers of monotheism as some kind of unique innovation which Christianity built on, prepare for a shock.  Platonic Paganism was monotheistic.   The universe was the creation of a single entity – the One. The One was the prime mover and creator of everything.  However he – or more properly it, the One is beyond gender – chose to operate through lesser beings that he endowed with free will, most important amongst which were the Celestial Gods.  There were seven of these, corresponding to the seven objects in the sky that can be seen to move against the solid background of the fixed stars, the five planets visible to the naked eye plus the Sun and the Moon.  In fact the ancients referred to all seven as planets – the word literally means wanderers.  Even today, each of the seven days of the week has its corresponding planet and deity.

The Greek philosopher Ptolemy had worked out a very beautiful cosmology based on each of the planets occupying its own sphere that rotated above the Earth.  His calculations allowed the movements of the planets to be predicted with great accuracy.   This is now looked back on as an early triumph of science, which indeed it is. But it also fascinated the Platonists.  Porphyry, one of its leading thinkers, wrote a review of Ptolemy’s work.  Down here on Earth everything is change and decay.  The next sphere up is the Moon which is unchanging but whose face still looks a bit random.  Further up the Sun is a more splendid being but one who still interacts a lot with the Earth, drawing up the water to create the rain etc.  Moving up the spheres get slower moving and more ethereal until you end up in the seventh heaven next to the unchanging eternal stars.

The movements of the planets, if the sun and moon are included, do have a correlation with events on earth such as the seasons and tides.  It isn’t so far fetched a notion then to suppose that a careful study of the skies might predict what was to happen on earth.  Now that Ptolemy could tell you what was going to happen in the sky, the way was open to divining the future here on Earth.  This idea is still to some extent alive in the horoscopes that daily papers still publish.

The fact that the seven heavens all had their own god gave a plausible way to use this information to sway things your way.  Maintaining good relations with the gods was clearly key, and so it was crucial to keep the temples up and running and sacrifices regularly made.

The system of the Platonists has an appealing elegance to it.  The free will accorded to the Gods and their ability to act independently neatly overcomes the many logical problems you get with an omnipotent being.  Take the existence of evil for instance – always a tough question for a believer in a debate.  How do you square all the bad things that happen with an all powerful loving God?  The Platonists could take this in their stride.  Sure, the One is perfect, but that doesn’t stop Jupiter from cocking up from time to time.  He’s only a powerful immortal god after all – he can’t be expected to know everything.  And the different deities have different areas of expertise and agendas, so although they are all working to fulfil the vision of the One, some conflicts and misunderstandings between them is inevitable.

It also makes prayers a lot more sensible.  Praying is psychologically a very satisfying process, but one that flies in the face of logic if you are either an atheist or a believer in an omnipotent being.  In the first case, nobody is listening.  In the second, He knows already so why bother?  For the pagan it is simply good sense.  If you can contact a being that is in a position to help you, why wouldn’t you give it a go? 

So four hundred years or more after the death of Plato his followers were coming up with new and creative interpretations of his work, and modern ways of looking at religion.  In retrospect modern academics have coined the term Neoplatonism to describe it.  Gibbon doesn’t use this term and it wouldn’t have had any meaning at the time so I am not going to use it either – I just mention it because if you want to look into it further that is probably the best term to stick into Google to get started.

That the thinking going on around paganism was both original enough to justify a name to distinguish itself from traditional Platonism, and even that paganism at this stage had intellectual developments associated with it in the first place are completely at odds with the notion that the pagans were a moribund bunch bereft of ideas that were easy meat for the new Christian religion to replace.  The Platonists were in fact the cutting edge of the philosophy of the time and the Ptolemeic system was the most advanced science.

In fact it was Christianity that was lacking in coherence.  In the third century a lot of the work of trying to make Christianity make some kind of sense was still in the future.  When Julian was on the throne, Saint Augustine was still a toddler and very little work had been yet been done on exactly what framework Christianity fitted into. Much later, when Christianity no longer had any rivals to fear a lot of the ideas from the Platonists would end up getting incorporated into the faith, but for now they were enemies.

Julian had found himself right at the heart of the Neoplatonist project.  The leading figure in the reworking of Platonism was Plotinus who had died about a century before Julian’s reign.  He placed the emphasis on the One as the source of everything and was uninterested in anything about this world except in how it would help lead to a truer experience of the One.  He was big on the nature of the soul.  His view was that the soul played a large part in creating the material of the world in which it lives. The soul was made up of a higher spiritual part and a lower earthly part.  The passions and vices of the lower world were to be avoided as distractions, and which could lead to forgetting our true spiritual home in union with the One.  This was the philosophical basis of Julian’s enthusiasm for self denial and spartan living.  One of the leading pupils of Plotinus was Porhyry who made many contributions including preserving and publicising the work of Plotinus.

Porphyry may well have been a Christian early in his life.  There is no reference to this in his own writing but it has the ring of truth about it.  A later account has it that he had been put off Christianity when he was attacked by a group of Christian thugs.  He certainly wrote a treatise against them later.   This was destroyed on the orders of Constantine.  Both Plotinus and Porphyry used philosophy as a way of interpreting the universe and were not keen on the arts of theurgy.  But Porphyry’s pupil Iamblichus took the opposite view and regarded the matter of the world as spiritual in itself.  This gave him a more practical frame of mind and allowed him to freely use the framework of Platonism to practice divination and magic.  Iamblichus enjoyed a phenomenal reputation in his own day and basically for as long as his magic powers were still believable.  He is usually referred to as the divine Iamblichus.

Julian had studied under Aedesius, himself a pupil of Iamblichus .  The Platonists had been persecuted by Constantine, another sign that paganism was far from moribund, but they were still writing and teaching discretely.  Julian had found a group that was secret, intelligent, opposed to Christianity and which must have offered the camaraderie of shared beliefs and shared danger.  He must have been in his element.

Although pagans were the majority, the committed Platonists were a very small grouping within them albeit an influential one.  Julian’s conversion was potentially their big break and word of it spread to the votaries in every province.  I don’t see any reason to doubt Julian’s sincerity – he was running a huge risk by associating with them at all let alone signing up – but it did give him an empire wide network of contacts and potential supporters.  It was nowhere near as efficient as one of the Churches would have been, but it was something.

So the adoption of Platonic paganism gave Julian a coherent set of beliefs that guided his actions and shaped his lifestyle.  It also gave him a programme and a goal for his reign.  And it gave him a cadre of supporters to draw on in governing the empire.  He could also call on the support of the gods, which would have been handy had they existed. Its hard to know to what extent his beliefs clouded his judgement, but it is a tragedy that such an able man should let phantoms influence him.

I get the impression that Julian also felt it gave him the support of the majority of his subjects.  In this he was deluding himself.  His experience in Gaul where there was no opposition to his paganism might have misled him. He seems to have been surprised by the level of support for Christianity in the eastern half of the empire and by how solid that support was.  He was also to be disappointed at the low levels of motivation of the pagan in the street.   The pagans were appalled by the destruction of their temples and worried that policies likely to offend the heavens would be dangerous.  But except in the east they didn’t show any particular animosity towards the Christians.  But we’ll get onto all that in the next episode.