Lavius Claudius Julianus C 331-363

His Reign.

Julian had already made a public avowal of paganism, of which he had been a secret adherent at the age of 2o. His reign was too short to show what precise form the pagan revival might have taken, how far his feelings might have become embittered by his conflict with the Christian faith, whether per secution, violence and civil war might not have taken the place of moral suasion, which was the method he originally affected. He issued an edict of universal toleration ; but in many respects he used his imperial influence to advance the work of restoration. Paganism was demanded of the teachers in the schools; without directly excluding Christians from the high offices of State, he held that the worshippers of the gods ought to have preference. In short, though there was no direct persecution, he exerted much more than a moral pressure to restore the power and prestige of the old faith. Julian himself became pontif ex maximus , and the new cult was organized on more or less Christian lines as a State church.

Having spent the winter of 361-362 at Constantinople, Julian proceeded to Antioch, to prepare for his great expedition against Persia. His stay there was a curious episode in his life. It is doubtful whether his pagan convictions or ascetic life, after the fashion of an antique philosopher, gave most offence to the so called Christians of the dissolute city. They soon grew heartily tired of each other, and Julian took up his winter quarters at Tarsus, from which, in the early spring, he marched against Persia. At the head of a powerful and well-appointed army, and accom panied down the Euphrates by a fleet, he advanced through Meso potamia and Assyria as far as Ctesiphon, near which he crossed the Tigris, in face of a Persian army, which he defeated. Misled by the treacherous advice of a Persian nobleman, he desisted from the siege, and set out to seek the main army of the enemy under Shapur II. (q.v.). After a long, useless march he was forced to retreat, and found himself enveloped by the whole Persian army in a waterless and desolate country, at the hottest season of the year. The Romans repulsed the enemy in many an obstinate battle, but on June 26, 363, Julian, who was ever in the front, was mortally wounded. The same night he died in his tent. The story that he was murdered by a Christian is unauthenticated. But though V icisti, Galilaee is a fabrication, it represents the facts. His work died with him.

From Julian's unique position as the last champion of a dying polytheism, his character has always excited interest. Taught from his youth to regard Christianity as a persecuting force, he found sympathy and intellectual companionship only among the pagan rhetoricians and philosophers, and was thus attracted to pagan ism. But the religion he attempted to foist on the world was not a paganism that had ever existed. The real pagans of the day, like Amnianus, were tolerant monotheists. Julian's creed was a curious mixture of active polytheism, combined with the emotional appeal of the mysteries, which had never in ancient times really coalesced with the formal public worship of gods, and held to gether by the Neoplatonist philosophy—surely the greatest feat of eclecticism ever performed, even by that eclectic system.

In other respects Julian was no unworthy successor of the An tonines. Though brought up in a studious solitude, he was no sooner called to the government of Gaul than he displayed all the energy, the hardihood and the practical sagacity of an old Roman. In temperance, self-control and zeal for the public good, as he understood it, he was unsurpassed. To these Roman qualities he added the culture, literary instincts and speculative curiosity of a Greek. One of the most remarkable features of his public life was the perfect ease and mastery with which he associated the cares of war and statesmanship with the assiduous cultivation of literature and philosophy.

works of Julian, of which there are complete editions by E. Spanheim (Leipzig, 1696) and F. C. Hertlein (Teubner

series, 1875-76), consist of the following: (I) Letters, of which more than 8o have been preserved under his name, although the genuineness of several has been disputed. Six new letters were discovered in 1884 by A. Papadopulos Kerameus in a monastery on the island of Chalcis near Constantinople (see Rheinisches Museum, xliii., 1887). Separate edition of the letters by L. H. Heyler (1828) ; see also J. Bidez and F. Cumont, "Recherches sur la tradition ms. des lettres de l'empereur Julien" in Memoires couronnees . . . publies par l'Acad. royale de Belgique, lvii. (1898) and F. Cumont, Sur l'authenticite de quelques lettres de Julien (1889). (2) Orations, eight in number—two pane gyrics on Constantius, one on the empress Eusebia, two theosophical declamations on King Helios and the Mother of the Gods, two essays on true and false cynicism, and a consolatory address to himself on the departure of his friend Salustius to the East. (3) Caesares or Sym posium, a satirical composition after the manner of Seneca's Apoco locyntosis. (4) Misopogon (the beard-hater), written at Antioch, a satire on the licentiousness of its inhabitants. (5) Five epigrams, two of which (Anth. Pal., ix. 365, 368) are of some interest. (6) Kara Xpc.a-7-cavwp (Adversus Christianos) in three books, an attack on Chris tianity written during the Persian campaign, is lost. Theodosius II. ordered all copies of it to be destroyed, and our knowledge of its con tents is derived almost entirely from the Contra Julianum of Cyril, bishop of Alexandria, written 6o years later (see Juliani librorum con tr•a Christianos quae supersunt, edit. C. J. Neumann, 188o). English Translations: Select works by J. Duncombe (1784) containing all except the first seven orations (viii. and the fable from vii. are in cluded) : the theosophical addresses to King Helios and the Mother of the Gods by Thomas Taylor (1793) and C. W. King in Bohn's Classical Library (1888) ; complete edn. and trans. by W. C. Wright, 1913-23.

I.

Ancient authorities: (a) Pagan writers. Ammianus Marcellinus (xv. 8–xxv.), a contemporary and in part an eye-witness of the events he describes (other historians are Zosimus and Eutropius) ; the sophist Libanius, and Claudius Mamertinus, the panegyrist, are less trust worthy. (b) Christian writers. Gregory of Nazianzus, the author of two violent invectives against Julian; Rufinus; Socrates; Sozomen; Theodoret ; Philostorgius ; the poems of Ephraem Syrus written in 363; Zonaras; Cedrenus; and later Byzantine chronographers. The impres sion which Julian produced on the Christians of the East is reflected in two Syriac romances published by J. G. E. Hoffmann, Julianos der Abtriinnige (188o, see also Th. Noldeke in Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenliindischen Gesellschaft [1874], xxviii. 263).

2. Modern: For works before 1878 see R. Engelmann, Scriptores Graeci (8th ed., by E. Preuss, 188o). Of later works the most impor tant are G. H. Rendall, The Emperor Julian, Paganism and Chris tianity (1879) ; Alice Gardner, Julian, Philosopher and Emperor (1895) ; G. Negri, Julian the Apostate (Eng. trans., 1905) ; E. Milner, Kaiser Flavius Claudius Julianus 0900 ; P. Allard, Julien l'apostat (1900-03) ; G. Mau, Die Religionsphilosophie Kaiser Julians in seinen Reden auf Konig Helios und die Gottermutter (1907) ; J. E. Sandys, Hist. of Classical Scholarship (1906), p. 356; W. Christ, Geschichte der griechischen Litteratur (1898), sec. 603 ; J. Geffcken, "Kaiser Julianus und die Streitschriften seiner Gegner," in Neue Jahrb. f. das klassische Altertum (1908), pp. 161-195 ; J. Geffcken, Kaiser Julianus (1914). The sketch by Gibbon (Decline and Fall, chs. xix., xxii.–xxiv.) and the articles by J. Wordsworth in Smith's Dictionary of Christian Biography and A. Harnack in Herzog-Hauck's Realencyklopiidie fiir protestan tische Theologie ix. 0900 are valuable, the last especially for the bibliography. (T. Ki.; J. H. F.)