§ 4. JULIAN THE APOSTATE. . 41
Notwithstanding this great conversion of the goTcrnment and of public sentiment, tlie pagan religion still had many adherents, and retained an important influence through habit and superstition over the rude peasantry, and through h'terature and learned schools of philosophy and rhetoric at Alexandria, Athens, &c., over the educated classes. And now, under the lead of one of the most talented, energetic, and notable Roman emperors, it once more made a systematic and vigorous effort to recover its ascendenciy in thg Roman empire. But in the entire failure of this effort heathenism itself gave the strongest proof that it had outlived itself forever. It now became evident during the brief, but interesting and instructive episode of Julian's reign, that the policy of Con- Btantine was entirely judicious and consistent with the course of history itself, and that Christianity really carried all the moral vigor of the present and all the hopes of the future. At the same time this temporary persecution was a just punishment and wholesome discipline for a secularized church and clergy.'
Julian, surnamed the Apostate (Apostata), a nephew of Constantino the Great and cousin of Constantius, was born in the year 331, and was therefore only six years old Avhen his uncle died. The general slaughter of his kindred, not excepting his father, at the change of the throne, could beget neithei love for Constantius nor respect for his court Christianity. He afterwards ascribed his escape to the special favor of the old gods. He was systematically sj)oiled by false education and made the enemy of that very religion which pedantic teachers attempted to force upon his free and independent mind, and which they so poorly recommended by their lives. We have a striking parallel in more recent history in the case of Frederick the Great of Prussia. Julian was jealously watched by the emperor, and kept in rural retirement almost like a prisoner. With his step-brother Gallus, he received a
^ So Gregory of Naz. regarded it, and Tillemont justly remarks, Mem. vii. 322 : " Le grand nombre de pechez dont beaueoup de Chretiens estoiect coupables, fut cause que Dieu donna a ce prince la puissance imperiale pour les punir ; et sa maliof ftit comme une verge entre les, mains de Dieu pour les corriger."
42 THIKD TEKIOD. A.D. 311-590.
nominally Christian training under the direction of the Ariac bishop Eucsebius of Niconiedia and several ennuchs ; he waa baptized ; even educated for tiie clerical ordcr^ and ordained a lector.' He prayed, fasted, celebrated the memory of tlie martyrs, paid the nsual reverence to the bishops, besought the Ijiessing of hermits, and read the Scriptures in the church of ISicomedia. Even his plaj'-s must wear the hue of devotion. But this despotic and mechanical force-work of a repulsively austere and fiercely polemic type of Christianity roused the intelligent, wakeful, and vigorous spirit of Julian to rebellion, and drove him over towards the heathen side. The Arian pseudo-Christianity of Constantius produced the heathen anti- Christianity of Julian ; and tlie latter was a well-deserved punishment of the former. With enthusiasm and with untiring diligence the young prince studied Homer, Plato, Aristotle, and the Neo-Platonists. The partial prohibition of such reading gave it double zest. He secretly obtained the lectures of the celebrated rhetorician Libanius, afterwards his eulogist, whose productions, however, represent the degeneracy of the heathen literature in that day, covering em2)tiness with a pompous and tawdry style, attractive only to a vitiated tastt. He became acquainted by degrees with the most eminent representatives of heathenism, particularly the Neo-Pl atonic philosophers, rhetoricians, and priests, like Libanius, JEdesius, Maximus, and Chrysanthius. These confirmed him in hia superstitions by sophistries and sorceries of every kind. He gradually became the secret head of the heathen party. Through the favor and mediation of the empress Eusebia he visited for some months the schools of Athens (a.d, 355), where he was initiated in the Eleusinian mysteries, and thus completed his transition to the Grecian idolatry.
This heathenism, however, was not a simple, spontaneous growth ; it was all an artificial and morbid production. It was the heathenism of the N(!0-Platonic, jjanthcistic eclecticism, a strange mixture of philosophy, poesy, and superstition, and, in Julian at least, in great part an imitation or caricature
• Jul. ad Albon. p. 271 ; Focr. n\. 1 ; Sozom. v. 2 ; Theod. iii. 2.