§ 4. JULIAN THE APOSTATE. 57
workmen either perished in the flames, or fled U'om the devoted spot in terror and despair. Thus, instead cf depriving the Christians of a support of their faith, Julian only lirnished them a new argument in the ruins of this fruitless labor.
The providential frustration of this project is a sjnnbol of the whole reign of Julian, which soon afterward sank into an early grave. As Csesar he had conquered the barbarian enemies of the Roman empire in the West ; and now he proposed, as ruler of the world, to humble its enemies in the East, and by the conquest of Persia to win the renown of a second Alexander. He proudly rejected all proposals of peace ; crossed the Tigris at the head of an army of sixty-five thousand men, after wintering in Antioch, and after solemn consultation of the oracle ; took several fortified towns in Mesopotamia ; exposed himself to every hardship and peril of war ; restored at the same time, wherever he could, the worship of the heathen gods ; but brought the army into a most critical position, and, in an unimportant nocturnal skirmish, received from a hostile arrow a mortal wound. He died soon after, on the 27tli of June, 363, in the thirty-second year of his life ; according to heathen testimony, in the proud repose and dignity of a Stoic philosopher, conversing of the glory of the soul (tlie inunortality of which, however, he con
appeared in the sky, nay, crosses were impressed upon the bodies of the persons present, which were shining by night (Rufinus), and would not wash out (Socrates). Of these writers however, Gregory alone is strictly a contemporary witness, relating the event in the year of its occurrence, 363, and that with the assurance that even the heathens did not call it in question. (Orat. iv. p. 110-113). Next to him come Ambrose, and Chrysostom, who speaks of this event several times. The Greek and Roman church historians, and Warburton, Mosheim, Schruckh, Neauder, Guericke, Kurtz, Newman, Robertson, and others, of the Protestant, vindicate the miraculous, or at least providential, character of the remarkable event. Comp. also J. H. Newman (since gone over to Romanism) : " Essay on the Miracles recorded in ecclesiastical history," prefixed to the Oxford Tractarian translation of Fleury's Eccles. Hist, from 381-400 (Orford, 1842) I. p. clxxv.-clxxxv. Warburton and Newman defend even the crosses, and refer to similar cases, for instance one in England in 1610, where marks of a cross of a phosphoric nature and resembling meteoric phenomena appeared in connection with lightning and produced by electricity. In Julian's cast they assumed that the immediate cause which set all these various physictJ fj^enta w motion, as in the case of the destruction of Sodom, was supernatural.
58 THIRD PEKIOD. A.D. 311-590.
sidcreJ at Lest an uncertain oi'inion);' but according to latei and soniewliat doubtful Christian accounts, with the hopelesa exclamation : " Galilean, thou liast conquered ! " * The parting address to his friends, which Amniianus puts into his mouth, is altogether characteristic. It reminds one of the last hours of Socrates, without the natural simplicity of the original, and with a strong admixture of self-complacence and theatrical affectation. Ilis body was taken, at his own direction, to Tarsus, the birthplace of the apostle Paul, wdiom he hated more than any other apostle, and a monument was erected to him there, wnth a simple inscription, which calls him a good ruler and a brave warrior, but says nothing of his religion.
So died, in the prime of life, a prince, who darkened his brilliant militaiy, executive, and literary talents, and a rare energy, by fanatical zeal for a false religion and opposition to the true; j)erverted them to a useless and wicked end; and earned, instead of immortal honor, the shame of an unsuccessful apostate. Had he lived longer, he would probably have plunged the empire into the sad distraction of a religious civil war. The Christians were generally expecting a bloody persecution in case of his successful return from the Persian war. We need, therefore, the less wonder that they abhoired his memory. At Antioch they celebrated his death by festal dancing-s in the churches and theatres.^ Even the celebrated divine and orator, Gregory !N^azianzen, compared him to
' Ammianus, 1. xxv. 3. He was himself in the campaign, and served in the body guard of the emperor ; thus having the best opportunity for observation.
" Sozomeu, vi. 2; Theodoret, iii. 25 (Nei/iVijH-as TaKiKali); then, somewhat differing, Philostorgius, vii. 15. Gregory Nazianzcn, on the contrary, wlio elsewhere presents Julian in the worst light, knows nothing of this exclamation, to which one may apply the Italian maxim : " Se non h vero, fe ben trovato." The above-named historians mention also other incidents of the death, not very credible ; e. g. that he tiirew toward heaven a handful of blood from his wound ; that he blasphemed the lieathcn gods ; that Christ appeared to him, &c. Sozonicn quotes also tlic groundlees assertion of Libanius, that the mortal .wound was iullictcd not by a Persi-in, but by a Christian, and was not ashamed to add, that he can hardly be blamed who had done this " nol)le deed for God and his religion " (5io Ibthu Kai ^p-nirKfiav V in/iviafi) I This is, so far as I know, the first instance, within the Christian church, cf the viiidi cation of tyrannicide ad majorem Dei gloriam.
» Theodor. 11. H iii 27.