§ 4. JULIA]!? THE ATOSTATE. 47
ever given up to the latter the reins of government in tha world. He considered it the great mission of his life to restore the worship of the gods, and to reduce the religion of Jesna first to a contemptible sect, and at last, if possible, to utter extinction from the earth. To this he believed himself called by the gods themselves, and in this faith he was confirmed by theurgic arts, visions, and dreams. To this end all the means, which talent, zeal, and power could command, were applied ; and the failure must be attributed solely to the intrinsic folly and impracticability of the end itself.
I. To look, first, at the positive side of his plan, the restoration and reformation of heathenism :
He reinstated, in its ancient splendor, the worship of the gods at the public expense ; called forth hosts of priests from concealment ; conferred upon them all their former privileges, and showed them every honor ; enjoined upon the soldiers and civil ofiicers attendance at the forsaken temples and altars ; forgot no god or goddess, though himself specially devoted to the worship of Apollo, or the sun ; and notwithstanding his parsimony in other respects, caused the rarest birds and whole herds of bulls and lambs to be sacrificed, until the continuance of the species became a subject of concern.' He removed the cross and the monogram of Christ from the coins and standards, and replaced the former pagan symbols. He surrounded the statues and portraits of the emperors with the signs of idolatry, that every one might be compelled to bow before the gods, who would pay the emperors due respect. He advocated images of the gods on the same grounds on which afterwards the Christian iconolaters defended the images of the saints. If you love the emperor, if you love your father, says he, you like to see his portrait ; so the friend of the gods loves tc< look upon their images, by which he is pervaded with reverence for the invisible gods, who are looking down upon him.
Julian led the way himself with a complete example. He discovered on eFery occasion the utmost zeal for the heathen
' Ammianus Marc. ixv. 4 . . . innumeraa sine parsimonia pfcudea mactans nt «B8timaretur, si revertisset de Partbis, boves jam defuturos.
48 THIRD PERIOD. A.D. 311-530.
religion, and performed, "svith the most scrupuUais deletion, the offices of a pontifex maximiis, which had been altogether neglected, although not formally abolished, under his two predecessors. Every morning and evening he sacrificed to the rising and setting sun, or the supreme light-god ; every night, to the moon and the stars ; every day, to some other divinity. Says Libanius, his heathen admirer : " He received tlie rising sun with blood, and attended him again with blood at his setting." As he could not go abroad so often as he would, he turned his palace into a temple and erected altarp in his garden, which was kept purer than most chapels. "Wherever there was a temple," says the same writer, " whether in the city or on the hill or the mountain top, no matter how rough, or difficult of access, he ran to it." He prostrated himself devoutly before the altars and the images, not allowing the most "S'iolent storm to prevent him. Several times in a day, surrounded by priests and dancing women, he sacrificed a hundred bulls, himself furnishing the wood and kindling the flames. He used the kuife himself, and as haruspex searched with liis own hand the secrets of the future in the reeking entrails.
But his zeal found no echo, and only made him ridiculous in the eyes of cultivated heathens themselves. He complains repeatedly of the indifierence of his party, and accuses one of his priests of a secret league with Christian bishops. The spectators at his sacrifices came not from devotion, but from curiosity, and grieved the devout emperor by their roimds of applause, as if he were simply a theatrical actor of religion. Often there were no spectators at all. When he endeavored to restore the oracle of Aj)ollo Daphneus in the famous cypresa grove at Antioch, and arranged for a magnificent procession, with libation, dances, and incense, he found in the temple one solitary old priest, and this priest ominously oft'ered in sacrifice — a goose.'
' Misopog. p. 362 sq., where Julian himself relates this ludicrous scene, and vents bis anger at the Antiochians for squaiuleiing the rich incomes of the tempi* ui>ou Christianity and worldly pleasures. Dr. liaur, 1. c. p. lY, justly remarks on Julian's zeal for idolatry : " Seine ganze personliche Erscheinung, dcr Mangel at