JULIAN THE APOSTLE A Fourth-Century History - Phillip A. Malpas, M. A.

(Phillip A. Malpas (1875-1958) Between an early career in the British Navy, andagain during W.W. II, Malpas spent 20 years of uninterrupted study in the British Museum.His speciality was early Christianity and Gnosticism and many of his studies andtranslations were serialized in the Theosophical Path. A large number of his books andstudies remained unpublished, many of which probably perished in an Archives fire of PointLoma Publications. See Blavatsky Collected Writings, vol. 13, pp. 391-2.)

(Serialized in The Theosophical Path, vol. 39, no. 2 through vol. 41, no. 3; February,1931 through March, 1932)

"Thou shalt not revile the gods." - Quoted by Julian from Exodus, xxii, 28

The complete precept is: "And Yahweh said unto Moses, Thus shalt thou say....Thou shalt not revile the gods nor curse the ruler of thy people."

[[Hebrew text here from Exodus xx, 22, and xxii, 28.]]

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Contents

I. New RomeII. Pergamus and EphesusIII. Gallus CeasarIV. University-LifeV. The Mysteries of the Great MotherVI. Milan and the German WarVII. Events in GaulVIII. Julian AugustusIX. The Persian WarX. The Correspondence of a PhilosopherXI. Aftermath

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I. New Rome

About the year 330 A.D., the city of Byzantium on the Bosporus was reimbodied inthe New Rome. But the Emperor preferred to call it after his own name, Constantinopolis,

the 'city of Constantine.' The Roman world had grown so great that it could not stand asone Empire, and could live only by splitting into two, with a Rome for the West and a NewRome for the East. Certainly Constantine had done much to consolidate the unwieldyEmpire into one whole under his command, his imperatorship, but there had to be assistantCaesars and even co-Augustuses when at the end of his reign he found himself incapableof governing alone.

In 335 A.D. Constantine had divided most of the world among his three boys, ofwhom the eldest was just twenty-one. There was no question about the boys being namedafter their father: they were called Constantine, Constantius, and Constans.

Constantine the Second was given Gaul, Spain, and Britain, and such outlyingcolonies to the West. Constantius was near the heart of the Empire with dominions not sodistant from Constantinople. He included among his portion the rich lands of the nearEast: Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt. It was the best portion of all, for when you rememberthat Egypt supplied the heart of the Empire with corn, the master of Egypt was the masterof the Empire. Constans received Italy and Africa and the parts about Illyria-Albania, aswe may say.

So there was little question as to who should have the best chance to assume theimperial power at Constantinople when the blood-stained Constantine went to his account.This pious murderer's mother, Helena, had been a mere concubine, a nobody, and later,in a genuine marriage, his father had espoused Theodora, the daughter of the EmperorMaximian. There were six children of the marriage and some of them in their turn hadmarried and had children of their own. So there was no lack of heirs in case the threeboys, sons of Constantine, had not been available, or their father's illegitimacy had beeninsisted upon.

One of these legitimate half-brothers was Julius Constantius. This JuliusConstantius, by his first wife Galla, had two children, a son whose name is not known, andanother son named Gallus. Julian was the son of his second wife, Basilina. Thesecousins of the three Caesars were quite small boys when Constantine died; the Caesarsthemselves were mere youths. Julian had been born coincidently with the new city on theBosporus when it rose from the foundations of Byzantium. Julian and Constantinople, theNew Rome, were cradled together.

"Two births at once," declared an old philosopher. "They are twins: the boy and thecity, the city and the boy. I wonder what the future holds for them both and for their partin the world?"

Constantine was dead. The body lay in state in the palace at Nicomedia, some fiftymiles south of Constantinople.

Strange things had happened since Eusebius of Caesarea had engineered theCouncil of Nicaea in 325 and thereby fixed the political power of his church. This Eusebiuswrote a 'history of the church' which is still extant, but Socrates, another historian of milderpolitical tendencies, drily commences his own history with the remark that Eusebius was"evidently more intent on a highly wrought eulogium of the Emperor, than an accuratestatement of the facts."

The fact was that Eusebius had the novelist's mind and his hero was Constantine.It is amusing to read in his works how his ideas about striking events grow out of nothinginto 'history.' The trouble was that so many accepted his 'history' as gospel and madepolitical capital out of some of his fanciful incidents. One must forgive him for making

Constantine out to be such a hero. Actually the Emperor was just a plain murderer byhabit. At least nine murders can be placed to his credit. His own son was killed at hisbidding in the castle at Pola; he himself strangled his little nephew; he made soup of hiswife in a bath, and so on: the family seemed good subjects to practise on, in the pursuitof this interesting hobby.

Yet it became awkward when there was some talk of Constantine's being baptizedand joining the political church. They told him that if he were made a Christian he wouldhave to put on an appearance of piety and his murders would have to be stopped. At thesame time they needed him for their political prestige and protection.

A compromise was adopted, if we are to believe the records. "You can get thedoctor to tell you when you are dying; then you can be baptized, and you will be saved justas effectually as if you had been baptized years before. The advantage is that baptism willwipe out all your sins and you will start with a clean sheet."

The idea seemed a good one and eminently satisfactory to both parties. Of course,nobody put it in quite such crude words, but that is what it amounted to. The novelist'smind found an excellent explanation of the delay in a touching story that the Emperorwanted to be baptized in the water of the Jordan, and for that reason had put off theceremony until the last minute in the hope of visiting that muddy stream. Others said thathe was never baptized at all.

At any rate there was a flaw in the arrangements. When Constantine really did diethe story went that he was baptized according to plan, and expired, peacefully secure inthe knowledge of salvation. But the man who baptized him was the aristocratic Eusebiusof Nicomedia and not at all the Athanasian supporter, Eusebius of Caesarea. This wasserious, for the Bishop of Nicomedia was an Arian!

What of that? Everything. The whole foundation of the political church now restedon the defeat of the Presbyter Arius of Alexandria by the Athanasians. The bitterpersecution of Arius by Athanasius had all but ended in triumph for Arius, when, as it wassaid, the long arm of the persecutor reached from Alexandria to Constantinople and Ariusdied in agony in the market-place, poisoned, not long before the death of Constantine.

Unfortunately there were no government-analysts in those days and the incident andthe manner of this death were capitalized enormously by the Athanasians. For years theypointed to the place in the market of Constantinople, where the death of Arius hadoccurred, and this story kept the flock together mightily. The god of Fear held them inunbreakable bonds. The whole story is almost too miserable to repeat. Of course therewas no religion about it except the name and the claim; it was politics of a very primitive,semi-savage kind. Therefore, to find the Emperor Constantine, the corner-stone of thepolitical church, baptised by an Arian Bishop was a fearful blow.

The wily Armenian mind found a way out of the dilemma. Few were educated inthose days, and far more violent antitheses than these had been made to coalesce by thepower of words. Always a subtil writer, Eusebius of Caesarea blended the antagonisticfacts admirably in his books. So today Constantine is regarded by many people, eveneducated ones, as a 'good Christian,' while no condemnation is too awful for Arius.Athanasius still holds the platform and Arius is detested. And yet Constantine during hislifetime had favored the Arians and persecuted the Athanasians.

Whether Constantine was baptized on his deathbed, or not, they gave him a finefuneral. In a golden coffin covered with a purple pall his body was conveyed from

Nicomedia to Constantinople and delivered to the Athanasians, who buried him in theirchurch, forbidding any but Athanasians to enter the church where the ceremonies wereheld. The Athanasians claimed themselves to be the Christian church to the exclusion ofall others.

Such was the state of affairs when Constantius arrived to take charge of thegovernment of Constantinople in 337, A.D.

In reality it mattered little who had baptized the pious-tongued murderer. For twoor three years before his death an alteration was noted in his character. He degenerated;it looked as if the Law had put its hand upon him as an earnest of the reparation that hewould have to make at some time for his ill deeds. It would be going far to say that therecords declare him to have been insane, but he was not the man he had been.----------

ConstantiusConstantius was a young man of twenty-one; but for years, like his two brothers,

he had been carefully trained for Empire. Soldierly exercises, scholarly teaching, practicein the Caesarship, all had made him capable beyond his age.

He returned post-haste to Constantinople on hearing of the death of his fatherConstantine. No definite testament had been made by the Emperor as to the successionand there was a distinct possibility of trouble for his sons.

They knew perfectly well that their uncle Dalmatius, Constantine's brother, was thereal legitimate heir to their grandfather, so long as any right of heirship was recognised asexisting. Constantine himself was an illegitimate son. But he had taken the Empire andheld it with the help of schemers in exchange for their political support. Dalmatius hadbeen a quiet sort of man, perfectly content to let Constantine have the Empire; but that didnot mean that his sons would as lightly acquiesce in the succession of Constantine's sons.

When Constantius came to Constantinople to assume the purple, there werecouncils and consultations. The upshot was that certain orders were given and the soldiershad to carry them out. Their new master had studied certain methods of Constantine andfound them good. The excuse was transparent, but the soldiers were obliged to accept itwhile knowing it to be a lie. It was simple enough - that the relatives of Constantine's sonswere to be set up against them as candidates for the Empire. Therefore it was just andnecessary that they should die, to the last babe.

Theoretically, the soldiers of the guard took matters into their own hands and no onecould control them. Actually, they were made to do the filthy work and could not helpthemselves. First they killed Dalmatius and Annibalianus, the sons of Dalmatius, the realheir of Constantine's father. That finished the house of the elder son of ConstantiusChlorus.

With unsheathed sword the soldiers ran through the palace killing and murderinguntil they finally came to the children of the younger brother of Dalmatius, JuliusConstantius. They killed the eldest of the three sons and at last their glorious work wasalmost at an end. His two little brothers, Gallus and Julian, alone remained to be sent tojoin the celestial choir where political schemers could no more disturb them. They couldnot possibly escape, being merely a couple of small boys, and the very soldiers inured asthey were to rough deeds, drew the line at these two innocents, a baby of six and a very

sick lad of twelve, who looked as if he would soon die without any attention from thesoldiers or anyone else. They refused point-blank to carry out their 'duty' any further.

Even that mixture of leather and india-rubber, that tough and elastic compoundwhich Constantius called his conscience, felt a trifle nauseated by the foul massacre of allhis relatives within reach. His father, Constantine, had been made of sterner stuff; he hadnot hesitated to strangle his little nephew with his own hands. Constantius was moredelicate; he made the soldiers do the work and then said they had risen in revolt and didit of their own initiative, owing to their indignant loyalty to himself: the poor innocentConstantius had been unable to stop them. He had not missed any meals over the matter,but still he felt badly about it. It was almost as unpleasant and disagreeable a business asdrowning an unwanted dog. But then it made the family so select - what was left of it.

Then came the report that the little Gallus, a boy of twelve, and Julian, a baby halfthat age, had been spared owing to the foolish sentimentality of army-officers. Of courseone could always complete the unfinished task; say that they were a danger, and therewould be a dozen hands to put poison in their milk or follow any preferred mode of gettingrid of such terribly dangerous people as these babes. Meanwhile it would never do topolish off the children, while the other murders were hot in the public mind. The 'revolt ofthe soldiers' had been quelled and the thing would be too plain altogether. Even devoteesof the new politics had to preserve some show of decency, or, rather, reason. Besides,Herod of the myths had never been a popular character to imitate.

So time passed and the boys still lived. Constantius began to have misgivings; theysaid his anger was modified. It was as good an excuse as any other. Actually, faintglimmerings of the Law of Karman, the law that every deed, good or bad, brings its ownconsequences with inevitable accuracy, was overshadowing his dull perceptions; he wasnot sure that more murders would not precipitate the reaction of the 'gods,' the ruling lawsand forces of Nature. You never know which will be the last straw in the pottle.

Julian's mother, Basilina - 'the little Queen' as we should say in English - died a fewmonths after he was born. He inherited from her a refined character quite foreign to thatof Gallus, whose mother, Galla, was of a different stamp. Basilina had been of goodfamily, well-to-do and aristocratic. In those days women of good birth were givenexceptionally liberal advantages in education and Basilina loved to study the resoundingverse of Homer and Hesiod under her tutor, the eunuch Mardonius. Julian calls him aScythian but that only means that he came from the barbarian fringe of the Empire. Thename is Syrian and he may have been a native of any of the lands east of Constantinople.But he knew his Homer, as did all the 'grammarians'; and there in Constantinople, not sovery many miles from the scene of the war for Troy, Mardonius read to his young mistressstories of Agamemnon and Achilles, of Hector and Helen and Ajax, of Ulysses and Calypsoin her Atlantic isle, of the gardens of the West where the Hesperides dwell and the goldencitrus glows, of gods and demi-gods and heroes. Then he would give her the scroll andshe in turn would read the rolling periods of the old 'blind' poet.

Perhaps Mardonius suspected, perhaps he knew, that 'blindness' - at least a little.For within the words of Homer's hexameters the seeing eye can find many a secret of theold gods and of the life divine. The poet was blind only because he chose not to see thesecret things of the temples and the gods, writing them down like camp-fire tales as thoughthey had no inner meaning. One such secret, seen through half-closed eyes, was the twin-truth of reincarnation and responsibility - the birth and rebirth of man, age after age, until

he has shaken off all Karman and created no new chains to bind him to earth. He thenrebecomes the god he was and needs no more to 'go out of the temple' of his divinenature.

There had been a sunny day long ago when Basilina had slept and dreamed. Andwhen she awoke her eyes were shining with a new light. She confided to her husband thedream that had come to her in her hours of sleep.

"I saw the invulnerable Achilles," she said. "He told me that he himself was to bemy son. I feel happy and at peace, my beloved husband!"

Julius Constantius was very gentle and very sympathetic. The god gives dreamsto whom he will, and those who read them do not always know the language in which theycome.

But surely this was a dream that none could fail to read - except Basilina. The boywould be Achilles - invulnerable by the power of the gods. And yet .... there would be thefatal heel, the one spot where the darts of powers malign could penetrate his invisiblearmor and destroy the champion of the armies of light.

Julius Constantius smiled and was silent.But the story filtered into history, as stories do, after Julian was born. Perhaps

Julian was Achilles - who knows? Surely he was one of 'fortune's favored soldiers,' neverfar from the center of the world's eternal battle. Now a warrior, now a king, and again asimple sage, a teacher of the people; an obscure citizen saving his people's liberties atsome crisis; a poor unknown writer of books, or a poet whose words should lead nationson to victory; a merchant of no great account shining as an example of honesty in a worldof fraud; a servant of some philosopher; a humble tender of the fields studying Nature atthe fountain-head; again a warrior and a prince.... the wheel turns in endless rotation.Now up, now down, but ever with his 'mind's eye' fixed on his shining star, Julian was oneof the 'sacred tribe of heroes' of whom the world catches a fitful glimpse from time to time,now here, now there, but whom the world often sees not when they do their greatest workfor human progress.

Basilina died soon after giving him to the light. His father educated him with dueregard to his position in life. The eunuch Mardonius had been his mother's tutor.Mardonius should be the pedagog of the little Julian and teach him the ceaselessthundering surge of Homer's heroic hexameters as he had taught it to his gentle mother.

Time came for school and Mardonius was Julian's escort when he was but sevenyears old. The strict and staid old teacher allowed no ill breeding.

"Keep your eyes in front of you, modestly downcast in the street; do not stare atpeople nor swagger and strut like the soldiers," was a precept early learnt.

If the little prince was invited into a house he must enter without haughtiness. If hewas wanted by one of the schoolmasters he should go before being called.

Other boys were noisy and full of energy. Julian had to exhaust his energies onHomer.

"I should like to play at soldiers," he would say to Mardonius. "All the other boysdo!"

"What nonsense!" replied Mardonius. "You can read all about soldiers in the Iliadand the Odyssey. You work at your books and do it in that way!"

So the little lad had to restrain his spirits. Sadly he gave up all thought of ever beinga soldier. How was he to know, or Mardonius either, that history would one day rank himamong the greatest soldiers of all time?

Anything grand or glorious he wanted to do, whether to travel or to see fine sights,the boy was told to seek in the pages of Homer, in the Iliad or Odyssey. Luckily he lovedbooks and this was a real substitute for the wider life. It bred imagination.---------

MacellumWhen Julian was twelve and Gallus eighteen, Constantius began to think once more

of the safety of his throne. The boys were always a possible source of danger.Constantius had no children; without heirs there was no safeguard for the succession ofthe royal house. Nominally, of course, the emperors were elected. Actually they werehereditary if they could continue to hold what they held. Otherwise Constantine the bastardwas the rightful emperor and his brothers of the legitimate line had no claims, nor had theirsons; in which case Julian would have been no danger.

Constantius was filled with more than a suspicion that his childlessness was due tohis having killed all his family except his two brothers - and they had now followed, onekilling the other and being killed himself in the course of war. That Constantius had notkilled Gallus and Julian was due to no lack of intention: a sort of lapsus gladii, as it were.The boys must be sent away.

There is a lonely castle in the mountain-fastnesses of Cappadocia, what we call theArghi Dagh today, midway between Tarsus and the Black Sea. A farm surrounds it andthe towns of Cappadocia are few and distant. One of them is Tyana, rich with thememories of the grand Apollonius who was born there in the year 1 A.D. Beauty is thereof a kind; the wild beauty of the mountains and the sky. But civilization there was none.This remote farm-castle they called Macellum.

To this mountain-farm with its grim fortifications, Gallus and Julian were exiled.There were slaves with them and around them, rough men who knew nothing of culture orrefinement. Mardonius alone represented the finer things of life to Julian, and he was notall a man but a slave like the rest. Julian's only real companions were his beloved booksand a dawning sense of the friendliness of philosophy in solitude.

Gallus mixed and played with the slaves. What else could he do? They taught himrough ways and boorish manners, low tastes, and violent tendencies. There were rumorsof boyish pranks and sometimes there was trouble for the boys. Once Julian was caughtplaying truant, not from school, but to school! He had heard of a divine philosopher in thecountry and, evading the watchful guards, paid him a visit. What with the aroma ofmemories of the glorious Apollonius and the devoted Saul of Tarsus and certain others,the wild country round about seemed by no means an unfriendly haven for the truephilosophers.

Plato and the philosophers were Julian's teachers; Nature was his nurse; themountains shaped his mind and symboled for the soul greater heights to conquer. Gallusmeanwhile loafed and 'killed time,' gathering bad habits from the slaves who were his solecompanions. Unlike Julian, he knew nothing of books and philosophers. He just grew wildand undisciplined.

For six long years the boys led this strange, solitary life as semi-prisoners in exile.Once only in that time had Constantius seen them for a glancing moment. Julian said inafter years that only his love for philosophy saved him during those lonely years of youth.Though he knew it not, they were an initiation such as all real philosophers pass throughat some time when learning to stand alone, with no man to stand between them andthemselves.

Constantius was still childless. As the years passed there came a time when hedefinitely decided that his childlessness was the price the gods, the powers of readjustiveNature, made him pay for his murders. It was impossible for him to govern the unwieldyRoman Empire alone and there were few whom he could trust. Around him were onlyChristians - of the political and not the religious kind - and he was none too sure of them.Or rather, he was only too sure of them. They were for ever plotting, and where they werewas always trouble of some sort, unless they were bought off at huge expense and a mostunfair distribution of temporal power.

So the Emperor sent for Gallus and made him Governor of Antioch. This city wasstill among the four greatest cities of the Western World, and it was madness to send asgovernor a young man of twenty-five who had spent the last six years as the equal andcompanion of slaves on an Anatolian mountain-farm. If Gallus failed, who shall blamehim? The wonder was, not that Gallus failed, but that Julian succeeded. AmmianusMarcellinus, who knew them well, compared them to the reincarnation of Titus andDomitian - a very apt comparison; possibly - who knows? - a reality.

Now a lad of eighteen, studious and accustomed to hardships, Julian had no moreillusions about Constantius. "Our fathers were brothers," he says, "sons of the samefather. And close kinsmen as we were, how this most humane Emperor treated us! Sixof my cousins, and his, and my father who was his own uncle, and also another uncle ofboth of us on the father's side, and my eldest brother, he put to death without a trial; andas for me and my other brother, Gallus, he intended to put us to death, but in the endinflicted exile upon us. From that exile he released me, but he stripped him of the title ofCaesar just before he murdered him."

From the day that Julian knew that all these kinsmen had been murdered to makethe throne safe for Constantius, he realized that the world held no pleasant places for him,and that he was in it for duty and duty alone. Almost his sole pleasure was in books andNature.

Constantius needed the political support of the Christians, though he was not yeta Christian himself - not officially, that is. If he had been initiated into this secret politicalsociety he would have had to show a regard for the outer rites; he would have to appearto be holy and undergo penances and prohibitions according to the ritual. There were real,genuine, religious, decent Christians, of course, but he would hardly have much chanceof being that kind. So he compromised by agreeing to support and favor the Christianswhile remaining unbaptized. He was not ready to die and he wanted a good timemeanwhile, with the occasional excitement of a murder or two untroubled by thoughts ofpublic repentances and penances. Then when ready to die he would be baptized in goodtime - say thirty minutes beforehand. It was an excellent arrangement in all its details, asanyone can see.

The clock of time pointed to the year 350 A.D., when Gallus was summoned to takethe title of Caesar and be married to Constantia, the Emperor's sister, before proceeding

to his governorship of Antioch. Seeing that Constantia was the widow of Annibalianus, hercousin and the cousin of Gallus, who had been murdered in the pogrom of 337, whenGallus was twelve years old, it seems likely that she was old enough to be his mother, orat least no schoolgirl. At any rate the wine of her youth had long turned to vinegar. Hercharacter was violent, cruel, and avaricious; in fact, she was not a pleasant person tomeet.

With the recall of Gallus from Macellum, Julian was also recalled. He was now aboy of eighteen, still in the student-stage. Tutors were chosen for him in Constantinople,and among them was appointed a sour Christian of the scheming political type. Of coursethere were many beautiful lives among the Christian poor and in country-places, but weshall come across none too many in the political swirl of the cities and around the throne;in high places almost none.

Julian's new Christian tutor, Ecebolius, could no more abstain from scheming andplotting than any other political. The real Christians kept themselves to themselves andhad nothing to do with politics. But that did not make the politicals less self-assertive andvociferous.

The famous Syrian sophist Libanius was then at Constantinople, and Julian, a boyof eighteen, exhibited a great liking for his teachings. As soon as the Christians saw thetrend of Julian's preferences, Libanius promptly disappeared from Constantinople, but waspermitted to reside and teach at Nicomedia, fifty miles away across the straits andeastward, along the coast of the Sea of Marmora. Ecebolius had secured the tutorship ofthe young prince and he wanted no Libanius poaching on his preserves.

But Julian had to be sent away from Constantinople, and the only convenient placewhere Constantius could send him was the palace-city of Nicomedia. The affairs of stateseemed to override the scheming of the politicals. So they prevailed upon Constantius toextract a pledge from the boy Julian that he would not visit nor listen to Libanius.

Where there's a will there's a way. In his solitude at the castle-farm of Macellum,Julian had learned to think. He had learned something of Hellenism, the Greek religion.He had learned to discriminate. Bishop Basil had told him many things, as had hisguardians. But thought is free and the boy had not hesitated to play truant to visit someHellene philosopher, difficult though it was to elude his guards.

He would not listen to Libanius nor visit him. Those were the exact terms of thepromise that had been forced from him. Constantius had stolen all his father's andmother's fortunes, as he had done with those of Gallus, with small exceptions. But therewas still a little pocket-money. Julian had treated the slaves and farmers on hisgrandmother's estate with such good sense and generosity that when it was taken fromhim and others put in charge, they stood secretly loyal to him and saw that it was kept ingood order for his return - a rare tribute to his humanity. Now he was able to draw a littleprofit from the place, but not much. It was a small estate of four fields along the coastwhere the sweet-scented grapes hang from the vines and where the farm-hands withreason were very faithful to their little master. It was wine from this that brought in enoughto pay confidential shorthand-writers and student-friends to report Libanius and his lecturesand bring copies of the reports to him day by day. Julian read them with the greatestdelight. The old policy of fear and violent repression always defeats itself in the long run.Precisely because of the efforts made to deprive him of the good old philosophy, now inits public aspect so degraded but still at heart what it always had been, his mind was forced

to contemplate it with the greater concentration and devotion and the more closely was hebound to study and compare it.

It was delicious to get away from the turmoil of the city for a few days and seek thepeaceful seclusion of the Sea of Marmora and to read and dream in the sunlight. Juliandescribes it as:

"A small estate of four fields, given to me by my grandmother. It is situated notmore than two and a half miles from the sea, so that no sailor with his chatter andinsolence disturbs the place. Yet it is not wholly deprived of the favors of Nereus, for it hasa constant supply of fish; .... and if you walk up on to a sort of hill away from the house, youwill see the sea of Marmora and the Islands, and the city that bears the name of the nobleEmperor, Constantinople. You will not have to stand on seaweed or brambles to do so,nor will you be annoyed by the filth that is always thrown out on sea-beaches and sands,filth that is unpleasant and not fit to speak of; but you will stand on smilax and thyme andfragrant herbage. Very peaceful it is to lie there and glance in some book, and then whileresting one's eyes, it is very agreeable to gaze upon the ships and the sea. When I wasstill hardly more than a boy I thought that this was the most delightful place for the summer,for it has excellent springs and a charming bath and garden and trees.

"When I had grown to manhood I used to long for my old manner of life there andvisited it often, and our meetings there did not lack talk about literature. Moreover, thereis there, as a humble monument of my husbandry, a small vineyard that produces afragrant sweet wine, which does not have to wait for time to improve its flavor. You willhave a vision of Dionysus and the Graces. The grapes when on the vine, and when theyare being crushed in the press, smell of roses, and the new-made wine in the jars is a 'rillof nectar,' if one may trust Homer. Then why is not such a vine as this abundant andgrowing over very many acres? Perhaps I was not a very industrious gardener."

Those five years were full of ups and downs for the boy-prince. At nineteen hedefinitely left the Way of the Christians' which he had been made to follow while yet a child,unable to choose for himself. But he kept his decision secret.

The immediate occasion of Julian's sloughing off the shell, was the fact that he hadfound a Teacher, one of 'Those who Know.'--------

II. Pergamus and Ephesus

Pergamus is the city where the famous pergament or parchment ousted the oldpapyrus of the Egyptians in days gone by. This was one of the little group of cities wherethe seven lodges, or ecclesiae, or churches of the 'Apocalypse of John' were situated inthe early days of the new movement, some two hundred years before Julian's time.Deceived by the bald translation, 'the seven churches which are in Asia,' few Westernersfigure to themselves that these churches are all included in an oblong one hundred andforty miles long by seventy wide - a couple of hours' journey by train between the mostdistant of them if the country were fairly level. In a flat country, on good roads, you couldvisit every one of them in a fast motor-car between lunch and supper. They were littlelodges of the new secret society of the 'Way of the Kingdom of Heaven,' perhaps

consisting of a dozen or two members, of whom one or two in each might have somesmattering of education.

In those days they hardly realized their destiny as the nucleus of a politicalrevolution that was to capture and dominate the Western world, though there were amongthem political dreamers and agitators. Ephesus, the magnificent city of DianaMuitimammia - the Virgin-Mother Nature with the hundred breasts to nourish all humanityand creation - was the center of many secret lodges of all sorts and varieties of Gnosticism;with its glorious temple and its priests in attendance; with its unrivaled secret libraries andrituals of many cults, some of which one Saul or Paul, a Jewish preacher, had persuadedthem on one of his evangelistic missions to bring to the bonfire. Some had even beenburnt, but the majority were taken home again when the fascination of his fierydenunciation had cooled, leaving a few odd volumes to be consumed as an advertisementfor future generations of the power of the new exoteric propaganda.

Ephesus, the open gateway to the East with its plaza de toros or rather plaza deleones; with its baths and its port, with its traffic, its silversmiths and goldsmiths, itsphilosophers and sophists and teachers - who of them imagined that in the nineteenthcentury after the historical birth of Apollonius in the greater world, and of John Hydranosin the lesser world of Galilee, explorers should gloat over finding the site of what was onceEphesus, boasting of the exploit because of the difficulty of finding more than a few tracesof forgotten masonry?

Two centuries! Not so long a time as the world goes, but the sands run fast in theage of iron. There was that curious old mystic who tried to re-edit the ritual, mixing with itnew semi-political and sectarian bias. To the little lodge in Pergamus, his mystic self hadwritten to his workaday self: "To the President of the Pergamuslodge, write, These thingssaith he which hath the sharp sword with two edges.... Thou holdest fast the Lodge-word,my 'name,' and hast not denied my ritual. But I have a few things against thee becausethou hast there - is it not the dwelling of Satan, the opposer, those of the cult of Seth, ofTyphon, the ass-god - them that hold the doctrine of Balaam who taught Balac to cast astumbling-block, a scandal, before the children of Israel, to eat things sacrificed to idols,and to act as they do in the vaults under the arches in the foulest parts of the cities? Andthen you have those among you who follow Nicholas, whose teachings I hate.... "

So much was in the melting-pot. It was difficult to sort out one thing from another.The visionary editor of old rituals in new covers was a Jew of Jews of the secret kabalistictradition. The Christians who ate the meat of the sacrifices he loathed, and also those whofollowed the excesses of young men. Far more than this, 'marriage' was an abominationto the old ascetic, even when approved by Nicholas. In his visionary ritual-stuff heintroduces a gross of thousands of people who shall be 'saved' - but he takes care that notone of them shall be married.

That was what this 'John' said of the innocent Nicholas. Yet the rivals of John in abook they called the Practices of the Apostles (they had to call it something) wrote of thisNicholas that when the Hellene-Jewish religionists of the new lodges protested that thereactionary Mosaic Jewish lodge-officers were neglecting the primitive landmarks of 'carefor the widows,' a most sacred duty with all Jewish lodges and communities, Nicholas wasselected out of the multitude as one of seven men "of honest report, full of the Holy Ghostand of Sophia" (the Greek Holy Ghost), to superintend this most important work.

So much for Pergamus and the little new lodge there. The kabalist-editor is no lessdenunciatory with Ephesus. Some very great early Christian (one may be permitted toguess the man specially aimed at) had been tested and the Ephesians had found him aliar. They had brought their books to him to be burnt, but they had taken them away againas soon as they had 'found him out.' Therefore these Ephesians were to be commendedfor listening to him no more, whoever he was. But there was yet cause for complaint, forthe 'first works' had been allowed to lapse. Therefore, unless they were resumed, thecandlestick of Ephesus should be removed from its place, and that quickly. Still, it was agreat point in favor of the Ephesus-lodge that they hated Nicholas and his leaning towardsmarriage. It was an uncompromising ascetic who was writing.

The rituals were becoming daily more mixed and the lodges hated one another asonly brothers in ritualism can. The few writings that escaped into publicity show theseantipathies and antagonisms in every line, but there was ever at work a unifying force thatmade them all at least seem to be one. For centuries a movement went on that took everywriting that proved awkward and burnt it. Paul's example at Ephesus had that effect, atany rate. Letters, rituals, books, were changed, pruned, had passages interpolated, werecopied with omissions and additions, and then burnt. In two things alone did therevolutionists make a mistake. In the first place, they passed many a secret allusion, notknowing the code in which it was written, or not even knowing it was in code: and in thesecond, they never knew that their astonishing efforts were countered by those of secretsocieties compared to which theirs were mere crude and ignorant revolutionary clubs. Allthat they destroyed - every word - was known and copied and stored safely away for futuregenerations hundreds and thousands of years later, to use in studying the curious mystic-material madness of the age, long after its death and decent burial.

Such were the signs of the interior ebullition going on in Pergamus and Ephesus inthe second century A.D. They were signs of the breaking-up of the old cults; but one whoknows how to read the signs of such ebullitionary periods knows that the quiet, peacefulcultivation of real religion is never far away for those who belong to it in reality.

Time marches slowly, by some standards, in such matters, though rapidly in others.In two hundred years the cult of the material Kingdom of Heaven had grown enormously,overshadowing the whole of the Western world. But in the darkest spots there were brightbeacons of eternal light shining for all who had eyes to see.

And Julian's eyes were opening. He found reason to visit Pergamus. Whatever thereason given, the real motive was to be near the old philosopher Aedesius who lived there.Julian became quite friendly with two of the disciples of Aedesius, Chrysanthius andEusebius. As men do, they talked and told him of the people and things they knew.

"Our Aedesius is a great man," said Chrysanthius one day. "But there are otherswho are also great, especially in Ephesus. There is Maximus, for instance."

"What of him?" asked Julian."He is a philosopher, but a practical theurgist also. They tell strange tales of his

miracles, as the vulgar call them, not knowing better. Maximus himself always insists thatthey are merely examples of the use of unknown laws of Nature and denies that there aresuch things as miracles."

"What are his marvels like?""Once he made a statue of Hecate smile and the torches in her hand burst into

flame of their own accord."

No more than the psychic works that have taken place for ages past, of course; butan intuition told Julian that these, in this case and for him, were signs of the deeperknowledge that he sought, signposts as it were, but certainly not aims in life, as so manyill-advised men make them and thereby ruin their chances of advancing beyond them.

Eusebius and Chrysanthius told Julian other things of the grand occultist ofEphesus, whose occultism, of course, was genuine occultism, only disguised from thepublic stare and interference by these psychological foolishnesses.

"They say Maximus has a way with the oracles that the gods cannot resist longunless the matter is very urgent," said Eusebius.

"How?""It's like this. If he consults the oracles and they are unfavorable, he just goes on

consulting them until they grow tired and give him the answer he wants!""Then he might just as well never consult them at all," laughed Julian. "If he forces

them to give the answer he wants, what's the use?""Oh, he knows his business!" was the reply. "What really happens, I expect, is that

by doing it in that way he finds out the right time to do a thing, or if it is altogetherunfavorable, finds out the right time to do a thing with the least risk of ill-success."

"I should think they would refuse to answer him when they felt that way," musedJulian.

"Perhaps they do," said Chrysanthius. "But I suspect there is a deeper reasonsometimes. By continuing his consultations it is possible that he may be able on occasionto command the gods themselves and turn unfavorable circumstances into favorable ones,by his personal effort and merit."

"It's like astrology," said Julian. "The dabbler in such things, the kind of idiot wholoves to call himself an occultist without having the least idea of what occultism really is,uses astrology to find out when conditions are favorable for doing a thing or not. But thereal astrologer finds out by his art what forces are against him and when they arestrongest. Then he deliberately sets to work to conquer those forces at their weakest, ifhe needs to do so; or if it is something undesirable to waste energy and effort upon, heleaves it alone altogether, if he can. The ordinary man can't do that and that is the reasonwhy not one person in a million ought to put his fingers into such hornets' nests ofpsychological practices."

"I think myself that Maximus is the one man in ten million," said Chrysanthius. "Heforces the gods to give him the conditions he wants, if it is in their power to do so, of course- they have their limits. He commands fate; he refuses to be under the influence of thestars when he chooses to resist it; and he uses his astrology to find out the strength of theforces he has to contend with."

"A man does not become like that without teachers," remarked Julian, thoughtfully."Where did Maximus learn what he knows?"

"Everybody knows that," said Chrysanthius. "He was pupil of the great Iamblichus,the leader of the Neo-Platonists of Alexandria. And you know that that grand school ofdivine philosophy and purity of life was founded by the saintly Theosophist, AmmoniusSaccas, a hundred years ago."

"I think Maximus is the man I am seeking," declared Julian.

It did not take him long to pack his belongings. They were mostly books, anyway.Ephesus was only an eighty-mile journey southward and the road was good. Sayingfarewell to Aedesius and Eusebius and Chrysanthius, he went by the first public coach.

Maximus, the Neo-Platonist adept, was nearly seventy. Julian was a little more thantwenty. The old man possessed a remarkable voice and appearance; his eyes wereextraordinarily brilliant and piercing. He had a long white beard and wore his white hairlong also, as was the custom with the initiates.

Modern superficially-educated scholars express surprise that Maximus was such adevotee of the occult sciences and yet that his chief work was a commentary on Aristotle'sLogic. Well, why not? Maximus was an occultist as well as a student of occult sciencesand as an occultist all knowledge was his province. Because today there are about amillion dabblers in so-called 'occult' follies to every genuine occultist, and the latter nevershows himself to the public (that's what the word means in part - a man who can keephimself to himself!), that is no reason why there should not have been occultists who reallycould divine the future by the help of the gods, even though, then as now, there werehundreds of silly dabblers quite seriously thinking that they were occultists, or at least onthe road to being such. And the world as usual confuses the two, not knowing the truth ofthe matter.

Julian had found his teacher. In later days, on the battlefield, in the camp, at thedesk, the young disciple carried the precious letters from his master. He slept with themunder his pillow; he submitted his literary work to Maximus for approval. At all times hewrote an account of his doings to the Ephesian adept. For Maximus was his spiritualfather, initiating him into the holy mysteries of Mithras, the Sovereign Sun.--------

The Mysteries of Mithras, The Unconquered SunThere were circumstances of Julian's life and character which made him an

acceptable candidate for the Mysteries of Mithras. The most important of all was that hischaracter was clean. This enabled Maximus to reduce the customary time of probationand preparation; or rather, Julian's life, young as he was, had already been a preparationfor the sacred Cycle of the Mysteries. He did not escape, but merely anticipated, thepurifications of heart and mind and body necessary for the real neophyte.

Since Vedic times the Mysteries of Mithras, the Sovereign Sun, the UnconqueredEl or Elios (Elias, Helios, Elion), had remained an inviolate secret, more so than manyothers of those whose legends and ritual fell into writing. Therefore all that is said of themis vague, external, exoteric, with glimpses of interior splendors through chinks in the outergarment, just as sunspots give glimpses of an inner machinery of the Sun's outer robes -so brilliant as to look dark to the eye in comparison with that outer cloak.

These mysteries had descended through the Zoroastrians and Persians and hadspread to Babylon, where the Chaldaeans modified them slightly in order to meet theirexoteric rituals. They identified Mithras with their Shemesh or Shamash (the later localizedShemesh-on or Sams-on with his glorious 'hair' - the sun's rays in their strength). It wascustomary to say that the rites of Mithras had passed into Rome with the Cilician piratescaptured by Pompey. They brought these Mysteries fully matured to the Eternal City,during the century preceding the common era - about the time of Julius Caesar. So secretwas the cult that it is said to have attained no importance in Rome for nearly two centuries -

which simply means that the public knew little or nothing of the cult for that time. Betterknown were the Egyptian Mysteries of Isis, who in Rome and Greece became respectivelyCeres and Demeter, with suitably modified ritual. So similar were many of the observancesand legends that Mithraism found a very congenial soil where the Mysteries of the Virgin-Mother of the Gods were celebrated, the ritual of the bread and wine and the resurrection.In two centuries these Mysteries had spread rapidly in the army, and also among travelingmerchants and slaves, many of whom were Asiatics.

But Rome was ever a center of the mystic cult, and the Emperor Commodus hadbeen initiated. Constantine, under the influence of a rival cult, destroyed its hopes to agreat extent. Otherwise it might more than probably have become the religion of Europeuntil the present day. In fact, much of it, in a mutilated and misunderstood sense, did.

The lodge-rooms of Mithras were not very large, being usually found in well-populated towns and cities where accommodation was limited. The entrance was from thestreet into a vestibule. Steps led down into the 'Cave' which the lodge-room represented.

Julian was led with bandaged eyes into the 'Cave' and, amid due gravity ofceremonial, the veil was removed and he found himself among the assembled brethren.Soldiers, slaves, merchants, citizens, all were equal on the rectangle that formed the lodge.Women were not admitted to the rites.

In another degree, Julian became the 'Soldier,' the 'Warrior.' In this degree he learntdependence on the god within, not without, the human heart. He had to be saved fromdarkness and materiality to the light of spirituality by 'the god' who was his Real Self anda part of all other selves, as a drop is part of the ocean. He was enlisted to fight theeternal, and only true, war against his lower, selfish self. In this degree his forehead was'marked,' - he was 'christened.'

The 'Lion'-degree raised the candidate to the height of the vault of heaven. Leo, thelion, is the sign of high summer, when the Sun reigns in his sovereign glory both in theouter heavens and in the human heart. A communion-service of bread and wine wascelebrated. One small lesson it inculcated was that the spiritual Sun is the giver andproducer of food spiritual, as the material, visible sun is the giver of food material: cornand wine. And Mithras is the Sovereign Sun. In the age-old legend of the ritual, thisbanquet typified that 'Last Supper' of Mithras and Helios, before Mithras, the conqueror ofdeath, rose to reign with the Father-Sun in his celestial kingdom. Far back into the nightof Persian and Indian symbolism and story the ritual-legend spread its perennial roots.

Another legendary ritual-story symbolized the stepping over a fossa, or ditch, filledwith water, in a peculiar way reminiscent of the 'three strides of Vishnu.'

Much use was made of candles and lights; there were solemn oaths and repeatedformulae. The priest could only be the 'husband of one wife.' A second marriage after hiswife's death was regarded as bigamy, exactly as it was among some of the earliestChristians. There were virgins and ascetics. Perpetual fire burned on the altar of the sun.The priest turned to the East to greet the sun at its rising, as he did to the south at noon,and to the west at nightfall. Bells and music were prominent in the ceremonies. Each daywas consecrated to a planet, the Sun-day being the Lord's day and the most sacred of all.The 25th of December was celebrated as the birthday of the new-born Sun in the 'Cave.'As the quickener of all creation in Spring, Mithras was the Redeemer of the World. Hisfight against the giants of Autumn and Winter, his death and resurrection, were all

celebrated, and Julian went through the ritual-cycle, for he was himself Mithras, theUnconquered Sun, just as all candidates were, in their due degree.

All these ceremonies varied in importance in degree of the candidates' intuitions.To some mere ceremonies, they were to others pregnant with vital meaning, lessons toenable the candidate to mount the ladder of self-directed evolution towards his ownunveiled essential divinity.

Moral rectitude was of prime importance. Without it, what chance had the intuitionto act clearly? Courage, watchfulness, striving for purity, all were necessary in theincessant combat with the forces of evil and animalism within oneself. There was no timefor the true warrior of Mithras to be critical of others. He had more than enough to do tobe his own keeper. Resistance to sensuality was an eternal aim, and ascetism waspractised by some. 'Mithras' the god within, was ever on the side of the faithful, who werecertain of the final victory both in this world and the next if they kept up the struggle, trueto their inner 'Mithras.' The unconquered soul ascended like the summer sun - to its formercelestial home by seven gates or degrees, while the unworthy soul descended to therealms of Ahriman, Typhon, the symbolical 'Devil,' or material Nature.

Julian passed through the degrees of the 'Persian,' the 'Sun-Path,' the 'Father.'Maximus was his initiator.

One peculiar degree - whether Julian went through it symbolically or actually, whoknows? - was that of the 'Baptism of Blood.' In a narrow chamber under a wooden gratingthe candidate stood naked while the Mithraic Bull was slain above. The candidate waswashed in the blood of the dying bull. The scene typified the revivification of Nature, theresurrection and baptism by which all things live through the sacrifice of the life of the Sun-God. The knife symbolized the penetrating ray of the sun piercing the earth, the bull. Allis highly symbolical and needed no actual blood, but there was a degraded time when thisdegree was enacted in its full exoteric sense.

All these ceremonies had a way of creeping out of the 'heart' into the 'head' of asystem in its degradation and publicity. The bread of nature and wine of nature's blood,became the real flesh and blood of various nature-gods; the 'baptism of blood' becamereal blood in many old temples and some new ones; the external sun became a real godto the ignorant priests and their yet more ignorant followers; the symbolic resurrection ofthe soul and spirit from the flesh became the resurrection of the flesh in some lodges;'Mithras' became an external god, an external universal god, if one can really imagine sucha thing as a universal god outside, instead of ho theos, the god within all men. Thesedegrading ideas all followed from the breach of the old rule of absolute silence until acandidate had shown himself so capable of exercising his intuitions as not to fall into acrude materialization of things which are not really concerned with words or objects ofsense.

Mithras was for ever combating Ahriman. Ormazd is the supreme 'God'; Ahrimanis the opposition-power of evil. Mithras is the middle-god, as one may say, the real manon his way upwards but capable of being pulled downwards by his lower tendencies. Thelife of the earth springs from 'the shedding of the blood' of the sun, typified by the Bull.Mithras becomes the creator of life. Ahriman produces a drought to destroy the work ofMithras. Mithras defeats him by smiting a rock with an arrow and drawing water from itsstony heart. Ahriman next sends a deluge on the world, from which 'one man' escapes,with his 'cattle,' in an ark or boat. Finally the world is destroyed by fire, and only the people

of Ormazd escape. His work accomplished, Mithras enjoyed a 'last supper' with the 'Sun'and was taken by him in his celestial chariot, the chariot of Helios or Elias, to the habitationof the Immortals, whence he continued to protect the faithful.

There are three 'lights' or torchbearers in the lodge, representing the morning-sun,the day-sun, and the evening-sun, or alternatively the vernal, summer, and autumn sun.What they represent in the make-up of man himself one may guess.

Confused and incomplete to the 'pro-fane,' those 'outside the fane or temple,' all thissymbolism fell naturally into place with Julian, under the guidance of the grand oldEphesian adept, Maximus. Prepared by many a previous life of service and effort, Julianwent straight to the kernel of those things, ignoring the outer "husks that swine do eat."These symbolisms and ceremonies were nothing to him but sign-posts, reminders,textbooks, of the great drama of the soul which he and no other for him, not even Maximus,had to go through, live through, fight through. And it is this effort, this hidden life, thatmade Julian a man among men and a friend of the gods.

Henceforth all life to him was different. His feet were on the royal road and therecould be no swerving nor looking backward. Maximus was his link with greater men, andhe realized that the chain stretched endless to the realms where the gods abide - andbeyond. If others above him thus helped him he must in turn reach down and lend ahelping hand to those who knew less than he.

Henceforth Julian's life was a life of duty and purpose lived in the secrecy of his ownsoul. Self had to be ignored so far as the law of action and reaction operative in all Naturepermitted.---------

III. Gallus Ceasar

At twenty-five, Gallus was recalled from the castle-farm at Macellum to be made'Caesar,' a title less than that of Imperator or Emperor, but next to it. At the same time hewas given in marriage to the Emperor's sister Constantia. Perhaps 'sacrificed in marriage'would be more accurate. She was no longer a young woman and her temper was vile.Her first husband had been killed in the family-massacre of 337 when the twelve-year-oldGallus was so unexpectedly saved with his little brother Julian, then six. That was thirteenyears ago.

Gallus was no saint. In most families where a real saint is born there seems to beanother who gathers to himself all the evil qualities which the saint has shed. He was nota bad man, perhaps, but just a type of the wrong kind of man for preferment in the Empire.

Constantia, his wife, was a very unpleasant lady. Described as a monster in humanform, violent, cruel, and avaricious, she was the dominant partner in this unbeautifulalliance.

If Constantinople was the capital of the Roman Empire, with Rome on the semi-retired list and Milan the court-residence, Antioch was the great capital of the Syrian East,as Alexandria was that of Egypt. Rome, Constantinople, Antioch, Alexandria - these werethe great capitals of the world of Western civilization. Of these Antioch was the outpost ofthe East. Persia, Mesopotamia, and the Isaurian mountains were the turbulent fringe ofthe Roman 'sphere of influence,' giving constant trouble and never really subjected. But

Antioch itself was now a hotbed of unrest. Centuries before, the history of secret societiescatches a little glimpse of one 'Paul' being sent with relief from the lodge-members of oneof the new sects of Gnosticism at Antioch to the famine-starved lodge-brethren atJerusalem. Now, Antioch was itself in the grip of famine and the profiteer, two birds of thesame flock.

The rich claimed bad trade; the poor accused the rich of withholding supplies forthe sake of profit. "Panta gemei, panta pollou! Plenty of everything, everything dear!" wasthe cry of the people, the hoi polloi, of Antioch.

"We entrust the government of Antioch into your hands!" declared Constantius toGallus.

It was a doubtful trust for Gallus. The gods had to be appeased for the murders byConstantius, and therefore it was right to prefer Gallus; but the task was dangerous for anuntried, untrained, undisciplined young man. If Gallus lost his life, so much the better forthe peace of mind of Constantius. If he succeeded, so much the better for his Empire. Ineither case Constantius would profit more than Gallus.

At Macellum Gallus learned no statecraft, no soldiering. His companions wereslaves. He could not even attach himself, like Julian, to the crystallized thought of greatmen in books, and make it live. He knew nothing of tact, nothing of the arts of pleasingmen, even when he meant well.

"The people cry out at the price of corn, and there is enough corn for all," he said."The question can be settled by a stroke of the pen. Let prices be fixed by decree!"

It all seemed as simple as an agitator's argument from a platform. But in practiceit was not so simple.

"He will ruin us!" complained the profit-mongers. Every one of this powerful ringbecame a bitter enemy in a day. The mob were delighted and Gallus felt that they werebehind him. He threatened some of the merchants and sacrificed several of the worst ofthem to the rage of the fickle mob. The taste of mob-favor seemed good to the young manwhose world had been a mountain-farm instead of a place among men. Like Nero, hethought he was enhancing his prestige by devotion to the boxing-ring, - just the kind ofslavish sport which would have endeared him to the low slaves of Macellum.

Law, justice, equity - what did he know of them? If the innocent had no money andthe guilty passed him surreptitious shekels, why, the guilty naturally won their case and theinnocent were condemned. He reveled in that resource of the weak and ignorant -espionage. Dressed like one of the mob, he would wander about the streets of Antiochand pick up bits of mischievous gossip. It was his idea of good government. His wifeConstantia did not fail to make things worse.

A sign of bad government is the multiplication of officials. A sign of worsegovernment is when those officials are of a mean class. Constantius was surrounded byeunuchs and sycophants, spies, parasites, informers, office-seekers, and slaves in highplaces. The trade-union of half-men and bloodsuckers round Constantius was uneasyabout Gallus and Julian. These two were ever a threat to their vested interests andenormous revenues. They took care that Constantius should hear about the troubles ofGallus in no flattering terms. At least one official with Gallus was an official spy on hisactions.

In the vague but deadly efficient way in which such things are done, the word wentout that Gallus must be destroyed. To nine out of ten of the vultures round Constantius

it was a perfectly genuine tide of feeling against an incompetent and dangerous official.The engineers of such things never show their hands. But they put the machinery inmotion none the less powerfully and subtilly.

The first move was to break down the protection round Gallus. An order came toreduce the troops under his command.

Next, Domitian, an official of the court, was sent to engineer the recall of Gallus fromAntioch. Proud and haughty and full of the spirit of the court-functionary, Domitian took ahigh hand. Gallus was merely a provincial governor, even if he was a Caesar. "I am hereto arrange for your return to Milan," he said, bluntly and brutally.

Gallus was furious. "Seize that man!" he commanded."Nay, Caesar, he is an ambassador from the Emperor!" protested a quaestor in the

hope of averting serious trouble.Gallus was always crude; his education had never taught him better. "Call in the

soldiers!" he ordered.The imperial party resisted the outrage on their office, and in the melee Domitian

and the quaestor were killed."There is a plot on foot!" declared Gallus. "Investigate the matter at once and

punish the plotters. Torture the witnesses if need be!" This violence inflamed mattersmore than ever.

Ursicinus, the governor of Nisibis, was a really straightforward man. He was sentby Constantius to investigate matters on the spot. With him came one AmmianusMarcellinus, who noted all that happened in his copious diaries. The trials were beingdisgracefully conducted and Ursicinus might have done much to restore tranquillity. In fact,he might have ended by inspiring Gallus with some notions of good government. The realplotters, always far more intelligent and cunning than their pale shadows, who suffer forthem like puppets in a marionette-show, decided to head off the possibility of justicegaining sway. They pulled the strings at court and Ursicinus was recalled.

Constantia may have been bad, but she was clever. She left her husband to visither brother Constantius, the Emperor, at Milan. What game she would have played, whatinfluence she would have had on the course of history, what her ambition was, cannot beknown. She died on the way before she left Asia. Perhaps her influence was feared bythe plotters round the throne and the euthanasia - out of a cup had its share in facilitatingher exit - who knows?

Gallus with Constantia was intelligently guided. Without her, his nature simply wentback to what one might expect of a boy brought up as he had been among the pigs ofMacellum. Some subtil enemy in the guise of a friend sowed the seed of Imperial ambitionin his brain. He actually began to consider the possibility of supplanting Constantius asEmperor. By right of birth, if there was such a right, he was certainly justified. By right ofpower he was not - he had none. The sly and subtil agents of the court-emasculatespersuaded him to leave Syria and visit the Emperor in Italy. It was the first step on hisjourney to Avernus.

Who shall blame him for his follies without first blaming the brute who exiled him toMacellum in the Cappadocian wilds? Like many a young fool, Gallus had not shaken offthe Nero-idea of being a 'sportsman' and so acquiring the favor of the mob. Passingthrough Constantinople he held a chariot-race.

But Constantinople was still the capital of the Empire, even if the Court was at Milan.The thoughtless 'sport' looked uncommonly like popularity-hunting in the Empire-capital.Constantius was not allowed to minimize its importance. He was furious when told of it bythose around him who desired to destroy Gallus.

Gallus meanwhile, unsuspecting, passed over into Europe. At first authorized totake an escort of so many officials, so many soldiers, so many public carriages, thenumbers were gradually cut down. Stage by stage, post by post, along the Western road,the days saw his honors dwindle, his escort melt, his public conveyances diminished innumber. Finally at Petavio he was met by one of his former subordinate officers, with aposse of soldiers.

"The Emperor does me honor!" he said."Not so," was the reply. "I am under orders to arrest you and take you to a fortress."It was the last straw. Gallus was taken like a common malefactor to the tower of

Pola in Istria, where he had plenty of time to reflect on the sinister fact that it was here thatthe saintly Constantine had murdered his own son Crispus many years before.

The omen was not false. Treated like a pickpocket, Gallus defended himself bylaying the blame of all the trouble at Antioch on his wife, the sister of Constantius. Quitelikely the defense was largely correct; but that did not save him. His head was cut offwithout more ado.

When he died, at the age of twenty-nine, his brother Julian was twenty-three ortwenty-four. There is nothing good to be said for Gallus except that he was a weak anduncontrolled young man. But it has been a great boast of the political enemies of Julianthat Gallus never went back on the 'religion' in which he had been brought up, as Juliandid. One is inclined to remark that it is a pity he did not! The eunuchs and money-suckersof the court had triumphed. There remained only Julian for them to eliminate.--------

At MilanAppearances were terribly against Julian. It was said that he had corresponded and

plotted with his brother; that he had designs on the Empire on his own account; that hehad met his brother at Constantinople and there schemed out conspiracies with him. ThenConstantius knew perfectly well that Julian had broken out of bounds at Macellum to gohunting after philosophers and absorb their doctrines. That was the only time that Julianhad ever seen his cousin the Emperor. The dreary life among slaves in that mountain-castle and farm might have made any one but such a boy plan for relief; but Julian hadalways kept to his books and his thinking and philosophy; he was no plotter by nature. Allhis property had been taken by the Emperor except a small estate of his grandmother's.He truly had reason for a grievance, but he maintained a wonderfully discreet behavior.He neither denounced his dead brother nor did he defy the Emperor, but kept aphilosophical silence.

Constantius at Milan sent for Julian and kept him there for six months without seeinghim. Julian was lodged in a suburban villa. His discretion was marvelous. There werespies, plotters, enemies, everywhere. One of the spies was 'Paul the Chain,' so calledbecause he had the most wonderful way of linking together the most minute circumstancesto make a chain of accusation against a victim. Another was Mercurius, a Dacian, called

the 'Count of Dreams,' because he did not hesitate to build an accusation upon nothingmore substantial than the airy fabric of his nightmares.

These precious informers would have made short work of Julian had he not founda friend at court. The Empress Eusebia, a Macedonian of exceptional talent, mostdiscreetly befriended the young man and helped him. But he had to be extremely cautious.Once he wanted to write a letter and thank her for her kindness; but first he wisely took theadvice of the oracles. With Julian and such men as he the oracles were still reliable.

"When I came to Milan I resided in one of the suburbs," says Julian. "ThereEusebia sent me on several occasions messages of good-will and urged me to write herwithout hesitation about anything that I desired. Accordingly I wrote her a letter, or rathera petition, containing such expressions as these: "May you have children to succeed you;may the God grant you this and that if you only send me home as quickly as possible!"

He was homesick for the pleasant meadows of the estate in Bithynia where hisgrandmother had lived, near the blue waters of the Bosporus, and far from the stiflingatmosphere of the court.

"But I suspected that it was not safe to send to the palace a letter addressed to theEmperor's wife," he goes on. "I besought the gods to inform me at night whether I oughtto send a letter to the Empress. And they warned me that if I sent it I should meet the mostignominious death. I call all the gods to witness that what I write here is true. For thisreason therefore, I forebore to send the letter."

From that night there constantly recurred to Julian's mind a very philosophicalargument. He had been trying to run away from his place of duty and in doing so hadnearly run into mortal danger. The gods, knowing the past and therefore the future (thedoctrine of Karman) are always wiser than we.

"I immediately reflected," he says: "Would you not be provoked if one of your ownbeasts were to deprive you of its services, or were even to run away when you called it, ahorse, or sheep, or calf, as the case might be? And will you, who pretended to be a man,and not even a man of the common herd or from the dregs of the people, but onebelonging to the superior and reasonable class, deprive the gods of your services and nottrust yourself to them to dispose of you as they please? Beware lest you not only fall intogreat folly, but also neglect your proper duties towards the gods.... Seek to possessnothing, seize nothing, but accept simply what is vouchsafed to you by them. And thiscourse I thought was not only safe but becoming to a reasonable man, since the responseof the gods had suggested it. For to rush headlong into unseemly and foreseen dangerwhile trying to avoid future plots seemed to me a topsy-turvy procedure. Accordingly Iconsented to yield. And immediately I was invested with the title and robe of Caesar. Theslavery that ensued and the fear for my very life that hung over me every day - Hercules!how great it was and terrible! My doors locked, warders to guard them, the hands of myservants searched lest one of them should convey to me the most trifling letter from myfriends; strange servants to wait on me! Only with difficulty was I able to bring with me tocourt four of my own domestics for my personal service, two of them mere boys and twoolder men, one of whom only knew of my attitude to the gods, and, as far as he was able,secretly joined me in their worship."

"I had entrusted a certain physician with my books," says Julian, "since he was theonly one with me of many loyal comrades and friends. He had been allowed to leave homewith me because it was not known that he was my friend. And this state of things caused

me such alarm and I was so apprehensive about it that though many of my friends reallywished to visit me, I very reluctantly refused them admittance; for although I was mostanxious to see them, I shrank from bringing disaster upon them and myself at the sametime."

The months that Julian had spent at or near Milan were the autumn and winter of354 and the spring of 355. It was high summer of 355 when, sick of it all, he managed toget permission, through Eusebia, to retire to his grandmother's little seaside-estate inBithynia, not far from Nicomedia. He had actually started when he was suddenly recalledand sent to Athens as an undergraduate. Constantius had suddenly made up his mind thatit was better to keep an eye on Julian and have him within reach than have him makingfriends in Asia Minor. And there could be no greater bond for him than that of books andstudy. To Athens he should go. The Empress Eusebia was his friend and possiblysuggested the course taken. It was not until his university-days were over that he wasrecalled to Milan and made Caesar. His own narrative passes over what has been calledthe one thoroughly happy time of his life - his student-days at Athens.---------

IV. University-Life

In the old days, before Julian had been forbidden to hear or see Libanius theSophist, there was one story that the boy never forgot and the Syrian never tired of telling.It was of the Sophist's university-days at Athens.

"First I landed with the rest at the Piraeus and then my troubles began. I had madeup my mind to enter the school of my own countryman, Athenodorus, and I promisedmyself happy times at his lectures. It was the realization of my life's desire.

"Naturally we had to go to a tavern to get a meal after landing, and to tidy ourselvesup a bit. You can imagine what a pleasure it was to find it full of real university-students.Athens was more than four miles away from the port, but the students seemed to makenothing of that.

"We soon found the reason. They had come down to kidnap us! Yes, really!"It was this way. The professors were not too well paid - professors never are - and

they had to take fees from their pupils. Some of them had no other income at all. Well,there were many students who couldn't pay - they had no money. Yet it was necessary tohave as big a following as possible or the professor's reputation was gone. So this is whatthey did. The students who paid nothing made it their business to increase the number ofpaying students by persuading them to join their own school. And their ways were notalways too gentle.

"They would come down to the port, the Piraeus, and to every tavern on the way -even the taverners were bribed to assist them with their glowing advertisements of this orthat professor. Then, when the newly-landed student fell into their hands, they argued andpleaded, and bullied and teased him until as often as not they had cajoled him intoforsaking the professor he had intended to join and into joining their own school.

"Sometimes there were contests between rival schools and nothing less than freefights between the students. They were real fights too. Many a man, as you can see,bears the scars of wounds he gained in his student-days.

"When I landed I had thought there would he no difficulty in finding Athenodorus andjoining his school . But at the tavern they caught me and tried to persuade me that therecould not possibly be a better professor than their own choice, one Alexander of Athens.I said politely that I had already made my choice. They would have none of it. I mustchoose their own professor and no other. I protested. They grew warm. Finally - you canbelieve it or not as you like - they actually kidnaped me until I was forced to assent. Andwhen I had once joined them it was as much as my life was worth to leave their school."

And Libanius sighed as he thought of his missed opportunity and his forceduniversity-training. It was his pet grievance throughout his life. Still, he must have had agood professor in spite of the rough way in which he entered his school. He had earlybeen left an orphan, to run wild, and it was not until his fifteenth year that he fell prey to anovermastering desire to study rhetoric and literature. But having passed through theundergraduate course he became an instructor for four years in the university; then hespent a short time at Constantinople before going to Nicomedia for five years as arenowned teacher. Finally he spent forty years at Antioch as the acknowledged prince ofthe rhetoricians and sophists. Eager though he had been to begin, this record surely tellsa story of good tutorship under the professor whose band they forced him to join. Manyof the writings of Libanius are still in existence.

Fortunately for Julian he came recommended to a special teacher of whomMaximus at Ephesus had told him. As a paying student and one under the aegis of theEmperor himself, he was hardly considered good game, and was left more or less alonein his choice of school. Not so one Claudius, a young fellow a couple of years older thanhimself.

This Claudius was obviously a delicate young man and not well fitted for the rough-and-tumble of undergraduate life. At the tavern where they went to breakfast after landing,and to shake off the effects of their seasickness, Claudius found himself the object ofattentions from two contending parties. First they persuaded him, then they threatened,then they used their hands - it was the eternal student-argument in all its stages - "positiveassertion, flat contradiction, personal abuse, personal violence." In other words, the rivalschools commenced a free fight to secure the unfortunate Claudius. The latter becamehimself mixed up in the fray and seemed to be faring badly, when Julian intervened.Already it was known that he was the cousin and protege of the Emperor and his word wasnot to be despised; in fact, that is why he had been left in comparative peace. Claudiuswas permitted to go with him to Athens and the contending schools left to seek other prey,not without each vowing loud threats of vengeance on the other. "We will see if there isany justice to be had from the magistrates, you see if we won't!" - the usual empty threatswhich would be forgotten by the afternoon, of course.

The lonely Julian had found a friend in the first hour. Claudius was really a decentyoung fellow and he seemed grateful to his champion. Himself, he was not fit for suchstudent-fights.

On arrival at Athens - a matter of four miles or so - they were met by two otheryoung men about the same age as Julian or a little older. One gave his name as Gregory,

a native of Nazianzus in Asia, and the other was Basil, son of the Cappadocian BishopBasil whom Julian had already met in his exile at Macellum. Claudius and they had beenfriends before, and they were overjoyed to meet one another in the university town.Claudius introduced his new friend Julian to Gregory and all four became friends; yetJulian never liked Gregory much; there was about him a bluster and an ignorance shieldedby loud-voiced assurance that made him not very likable. However, as college-friendshipsgo, they were good friends enough. But Basil was of a more refined student-type andJulian liked him. He was more of a gentleman than Gregory with his rough manners.

Julian knew that the recommendation of such a wise teacher and philosopher asMaximus could be relied upon. He found his new tutor Anaximenes was all that he coulddesire. But he had not yet been initiated into the student-body. That was an ordeal thatcould not long be delayed. In fact, the sooner it was over the better.

Claudius and he were to go to the baths the next day - the gossipping and luxuriousmeeting-place of the city. Certainly one bathed there, but it was more like a general clubthan anything else. You went there to meet your friends, to talk, to loaf, to exercise, or fora hundred reasons. Basil told Julian how Gregory, several years before, had saved himfrom the rough ordeal of initiation into this student-club by persuading the undergraduatesto let him off the trying ceremonies on account of his delicate constitution. This was alsodone in the case of another sick man, Eunapius, but there were few who had such escapesfrom their first visit to the baths in due form.

The new students did not quite know what was in the wind, but they were preparedfor a certain amount of rough treatment. With a large body of undergraduates they wentto the doors of the bathhouse and strangely enough found them shut. One of the partyknocked and a student opening the door from the inside asked what was wanted.

"We want to come to the baths!""Well, you can't!" and the door was slammed.They knocked again and made a tremendous din on the doors. Again the doors

were opened."Go away!""We won't go away! We are going in! Come on boys! Rush the place!" The

newcomers formed up like a football-scrum and made an attack on the baths. But beforethey could make an entry a similar crowd of defenders suddenly appeared at the doorsfrom the inside and in a twinkling there was as pretty a free fight as you would wish to see.Faces were cut, heads were hit, flesh was torn, and more than one limb was broken. Itwas no small ordeal for the young students to go through.

But they showed spirit and did their part, until the defenders agreed that they hadbeen plucky enough to win recognition. Then they were allowed to enter as men 'free ofthe baths.'

There were police in Athens, but most of them were about as useful as the oldLondon 'Charleys' who used to cry the hours at night and were the sport of any youngsterwho wanted some one to attack. There were the soldiers, but they were only used forserious riots. Somehow there was a certain amount of law and order, but none too much.Some of the professors were themselves the law. They used the cane freely. Libaniusdid. But that was an unprofitable business, because an offended student, far from hishome and parental authority, might desert his tutor and the latter find his band of studentsdepleted.

Yet the magistrates did function, as Julian learnt within a day. Those were crowdeddays at Athens for the young student.

Julian and Claudius found themselves subpoenaed as witnesses at the courts in acase then on trial before the Proconsul.

The matter was simple enough. One tutor and his band of students accusedanother tutor's band of attacking them and maltreating them. The defense was a counter-accusation of precisely the same nature. Which means in shorter words, that the defensewas, "They began it!"

Julian and Claudius had never dreamed that the hooligans who had made such arow in the tavern two days before over the newcomers had really intended to prosecutetheir antagonists. It didn't seem 'sporting.' But there it was. They had made a police-courtcase of it!

The rival rhetoricians had long rolls of attack and defense. They were famoussophists and the public looked forward to some fine legal speeches running into hours,perhaps days, for all they knew.

But the Proconsul knew better. He was no Greek sophist and yet he admiredrhetoric as much as any of them. It was the subject par excellence of that day in Athens.Where in old Rome the gladiatorial shows absorbed the whole attention of the public, andin modern Spain the bull-ring excludes all other matters, or as in London the boxing-ringoccupies all minds, in Athens it was the rhetorical contest that counted. Oh yes, indeed,it was going to be a fine case!

The prosecutor and defendant and the witnesses, among them Julian and Claudius,duly appeared. The case was outlined and the prosecutor prepared to smash hisopponent with what he had written - there were yards of it.

"Just one minute!" said the Proconsul with a twinkle in his eye. "I understand thatyou claim that you are a serious and capable teacher of rhetoric and that the defendant'sparty interfered with your students; that they are a sham and know nothing of rhetoric andtherefore have to recruit their numbers by physical violence? Is that so?"

"Something like that," murmured the prosecutor, at a loss to see where the cat wasgoing to jump.

"Now silence again!" went on the Proconsul, turning to the defendants. "You sayon the other hand that the prosecutor is a fraud and that he persuades students to cometo him who ought to come to you, the only real and genuine professor of rhetoric?"

"That is an admirable view of the situation!" flatteringly replied the defendant. "Nowonder he and his hooligans assault my brave and innocent scholars!"

"Yes, I know it is an assault-case," remarked the Proconsul. "But it will help a gooddeal if we can come down to motives and the rights of the parties. Now this is what we willdo. Either one of you is right and the other wrong, or there is no case. The whole thinghinges on whether one school is bogus and has no right to persuade students away fromthe other. Well, that is easily enough tested. You shall choose one student and he shallargue the case. The one who fails will prove that his professor is what the other says heis - no good. You can have an hour's water each, if you like."

The usher set the water-clocks to an hour so that the pleaders should know whento stop, and the case began. The public scented something highly novel in this contest.

The prosecutor - Julian had seen it - was a bully, more ready with his fists than histongue. He was no sportsman. He knew he had no case, and the knowledge

overwhelmed him. He stood almost tongue-tied and made the lamest speech that hadever been heard from an Athenian rhetorician.

The fun-loving Greek public laughed and jeered at the floundering youth, onlymaking him more silent and tongue-tied than ever. The Proconsul waxed sarcastic.

"I see you teach the Pythagorean philosophy of silence!" he remarked to theprosecuting sophist.

Then the defendant undergraduate had his turn. He was really excellent. Heimplored the compassion of the audience; he praised the excellencies of his teacher; heappealed to the sense of fair play of the Proconsul; he became personal in his allusionsto the prosecutor; he spoke like one inspired, and ended in a flowery burst that broughtthe house down with applause. The Proconsul jumped up in his seat, shaking his robe inhis excitement.

Instead of a court-case it might have been a scene in a show where some gladiatorhad throttled a lion, or a daring toreador had made a hit, or some Bill Bluggins haddelivered a knock-out blow in the ring.

The audience cheered, the professor wept tears of pleasure at his pupil's success;his party were acquitted, and the prosecutor's hooligans (they were each just as bad as theother really, except in rhetoric!) were sentenced so many stripes on the bare back.

It was a great introduction to university-life for Claudius and Julian! And you maybe sure that the successful young orator, Proaeresius, never looked back from that day.Years afterwards Proaeresius made another memorable speech before the Emperor andby so doing won from him a remission of the taxes which his home-islands had to pay toAthens. That was a speech that made history; he became a formidable power in the land.

Well, of course that meant enemies. And once those enemies succeeded in havinghim exiled. But the Proconsul was relieved and the new Governor recalled him to pleadhis cause. He was invited to speak for himself and see if he could justify himself beforehis enemies.

Well, did you ever hear of such a chance as that? He invited his enemies to choosethe subject on which he should speak. He asked no handicap. They chose one - a difficultone, you may be sure.

Proaeresius spoke with golden eloquence for the motion proposed. Could any oneafter such a glorious speech ever dare to oppose the theme? It seemed impossible. ButProaeresius did it himself. While the shorthand writers sweated and their hands flew overthe tablets he spoke with still greater eloquence against what he had just said, and itseemed amazing that any one could have ever spoken for it. It was wonderful.

But he did not stop there. He began again while the shorthand slaves followed himword for word as fast as they could read. He re-repeated each of his speeches so exactlythat there seemed to be no single word missing or out of place.

Such a scene had never been witnessed in the history of Athens. Proaeresius wasacclaimed with almost divine honors and was escorted home with military pomp andpageantry. If only his old teacher could have seen that day! It was the day when wordswere worshiped and his pupil had proved himself the king of words.

But all of that came later. Just now we must return to Julian and Basil and Gregory.Claudius went to another tutor, and they saw little of him.

Those were happy student-days for the three friends. But Julian had other thingsto think of than only his books. Maximus had a purpose in sending him to Anaximenes asa tutor. It was:

The EleusiniaGradually in that intuitional way which a divinity-student of the hidden life of the soul

always cultivates, it dawned upon Julian that Anaximenes was one of those who could puthim in the way of initiation into the real Eleusinian Mysteries. He had already passedthrough the Mysteries of Mithras, such as they were, under the guidance of Maximus; buthe had also desired with a great desire to study those of the Eleusinia. Julian was anexceptional man and he had had an exceptional life enabling him to appreciate theMysteries better than most. Of course, ages ago, the process of denaturing the Mysterieshad been begun by their guardians. One by one the deeper and more real Mysteries hadbeen dropped, or rather concealed. The exoteric doctrines took the place of the true soul-doctrines. Pure-souled hierophants died off and others took their place. By the time thatthe Eleusinia had been degraded into a State-tax-paying money-machine there were noMysteries and no hierophants worth the name. It is the story of all churches of all religions.Men, women, and even babies, were 'initiated' just as ignorant people are baptized in somereligions today without ever having the faintest knowledge of the Jordan Maximus, thespiritual Nile, the Ganges, the Eridanus, the Stream of Spirituality that Descends fromAbove. They only know the material font, the piscina of the temples and churches.Eusebius had invented the rather clever excuse for Constantine that he had been aChristian all the time, but had put off baptism until he could be baptized in the little Syrianriver Jordan; all alike had forgotten what the real Jordan of John Hydranos was. All wastinsel, money, materialism.

What had Julian to do with all this? How could it help his soul-life?Well, ages after the Great Pyramid had become derelict there were initiations that

took place there - real initiations of the freedom of the soul and its divinity. The labyrinthexisted and perhaps still exists to show the initiate the old formulae of the soul, inshrinedand written in imperishable stone. Julian with his sharpened soul-intuition knew perfectlywell that the real Eleusinia were not dead, but merely withdrawn into the secret recessesof sacred things. If he could only find a genuine initiator, he could face the mystery andpartake of its purifying rites. Maximus had told him that there would be no clashing withthe Mysteries of Mithras, since he would have been voluntarily permitted to enter the newrites. Gradually the way opened for him and he deliberately asked Anaximenes to guidehim to the true initiator.

It was done. The punishment for revealing the Mysteries was death. Thepunishment for revealing the name of the hierophant was also death. Therefore historyhas never known who initiated Julian into the Eleusinia, the Mysteries of the Mother of theGods, the Mysteries of the Celestial Virgin, Ceres, Demeter, Cybele, Isis of the ten-thousand names.

But the exoteric Mysteries or fragments of them have escaped into publicity and wecan follow some of the exoteric formulae through which Julian passed. Of the soul-processes which he went through we know nothing, for the soul is known to the soul alone,and words have little to do with the matter.---------

V. The Mysteries of the Great Mother, The Virgin-Goddess

Julian had passed through the initiations of Mithras, the Sovereign Sun, and wastherefore duly and truly prepared, worthy and well qualified, to undergo the trials andpreparations for the Mysteries of the Eleusinian Goddess, the Mother of the Gods, theGreek Isis, the Virgin-Mother, as she had been known for ages. He was not called uponto spend long years in self-purification, because he had already undergone greatpurification of soul. Previous lives had done their part in shaping him, as the rough ashlar,so to say, for the soundless tool of the builder and the service of the great architect, if wemay use the symbolism of the Temple-builders of all ages.

The Mysteries of Mithras were the Mysteries of the Sun in its journey through theheavens; so were the twelve labors of Hercules; so were the Mysteries of the Goddess-Mother Demeter at Eleusis. They were all symbolical representations of the same thing.Many years after the commencement of the Christian era the devotees of the Christos inall religions - including the Nazarenes, today called Christians, in the West - had the samesymbolism. Their Christos was the sun - the early Church Fathers say so - and of coursehis adventures were the same as those of Hercules and the rest: the passage of the sunthrough the signs of the zodiac. But it was no mere 'sun-myth': it was vastly more.

Some initiates knew this, and were satisfied. They let their knowledge stop there.The universal symbolism of the sun in its course is so grand and is the key to so many ofthe wonders of science - the whole history of the atom, for instance - that they were wellcontent to know so much. But other initiates were intuitional enough to see that thesethings were no more the real thing than the parchment describing history is history itself.They realized that they had to live through the same adventures themselves in the secretand sacred shrine of the heart where no priest save their own inner Christos can possiblycome. They were themselves the Hercules, the Sun, the Christos, and all that others couldgive them was the plan and chart of the sacred journey to the Holy Seat whence the soulhad come. The shades and degrees were endless - they are endless.

In this way we get the sublime conception of the drama. Originally the stage wasthe church of all mankind. The drama was the symbolized adventure of the soul, whetherit be Hercules, Bacchus, Ceres, Krishna, Buddha, Mithras, Osiris, Cybele, Attys, Adonis,Job, or any other probationary Christos - or Chrestos in the process of becoming theperfected Christos. All decent people could attend in silence, and the drama could beenacted without words, while the audience, if they knew enough, silenced the clamoringsand vaporings of the brain-mind. The soul, according to its degree of clear vision, receivedthe message of the soul - for soul is understood by soul alone. All the vast congregationcould leave the archaic theater in silence, each having received precisely what his degreeof purity of body and mind and soul was capable of permitting him to receive.

That was the true drama and will be, in course of time, the only drama that matters.The fact that there is any other kind of drama merely indicates that Osiris lies dead, cut intofourteen pieces by his brother Typhon; that Prometheus is chained to his rock with theeagle forever gnawing at his vitals; that the initiant is lying 'dead' in the tomb, that thebrain-mind of humanity is reigning on the usurped throne of the soul. In time, that usurperwill be dethroned and made the slave, as it is and should be, of the King, the Soul, once

more. The Osiris will be resurrected, Prometheus will be unbound, Christos will arise, theDrama will come into its own again.

Meanwhile, since nations cannot do this - they have not attained the harmony, thetrue expression of brotherhood required for that - individuals must keep the way open bytheir lonely pioneer efforts to reach the peak of Everest. And Julian was such a one. Incountless other lives he had fought his way to the front rank of humanity's eternal battleand if Maximus had made him go through tests and trials and lonely waitings in thepreparation-chamber, as Jesus had perhaps done in the Great Pyramid, it was no morethan a symbolic repetition of the tests and trials and temptations and fierce fights with thebrain-self that he had triumphed over, age after age, in body after body.

Is this fancy? Certainly it is not. Such things, in the astonishing economy of natureon all planes, are reflected in plain black and white even in material life, for the dull brainto see. Study the nine-months' evolution of the unborn child and you shall find it writtenin indelible characters. The vegetable becomes the animal, the animal grows to a humanchild - "the stone becomes a plant, the plant an animal, the animal a man, man becomesa god," is the wise old saying. Shall the soul do less than the physical body, that littlespeck of dull earth?

There is no fear or favor in the real Mysteries. What you get you have fought for,with your selfish self as the enemy. When the Eleusinia, like John's baptisms in aftertimes,were opened to the public for money, they received exactly what they paid for: anafternoon's pleasant entertainment. For Julian that was an abomination. He was calledby an enemy, "The Great Mind." If he had known anything about the soul, that enemyshould have rather called him a man on the way to becoming a Great Soul. And such mencannot be judged by the mere mind any more than the actions of a philosopher can bejudged by a frog croaking in a pond.

The real Mysteries were characterized by silence. The soul needs few words.Julian was conducted by the messenger of the Gods, Hermes or Mercury. Other

gods were there, each fulfilling a part in the ceremonies. Bacchus or Iacchos, Cybele,Vulcan, Adonis, all were represented; the old literary myths faded away from sight and theaspirant perceived new and glorious meanings unfold and fade away as others came intoview on the screen of the purified mind. Had he been a Hindu, these powers would havehad other names, but they would have been the same powers. Isis, Osiris, Hathor, Pthah,Ra, Tum, would have been the names in Egypt, perhaps. In Mexico, yet other nameswould have been used. If one wanted to localize the universal symbolism it could alwaysbe done.

Julian became himself the symbolical Sun, being instructed what to do by hisinitiators. How can we separate or describe the different scenes and degrees of thatversion of the drama of the soul? We can only catch fleeting glimpses of the film as it reelsbefore our imperfect vision.

There is the degree or figure of Aries the Ram, the pushing month that forces itsway into the year. Taurus the Bull with its horns does the same with added force and vigor- the Mysteries of Mithras give the story of the bull and its symbolisms. Castor and Pollux,the twins; now surely that is an impossibility for a man, say Julian, to represent twins? Notat all; it is the grand secret of the divine and the demon ever struggling for the mastery inman; man is truly a twin; the final purpose of the mysteries is so to purify the demon-side

of man that it becomes one with its father, if you like, the heavenly twin, both, with the lightof the spirit, forming the glorified Christos.

The Crab and the Lion, the Sun in its full force of summer-strength and glory; theMan at the Royal Arch of his career as man, symbolized also as the Rainbow of Peace.Will he rise higher, out of the Zodiac altogether, soaring beyond the heavens, or will he beconstrained to return along the Sun-path as the Alaskan Indians in their age-old symbolismof the same mysteries describe it?

He does not break away from the Sun-Path. Next he encounters, he becomesrather, celestial Virgo with the wheat-ear in her hand, or the sheaf of corn with thecornucopia falling like a running stream of plenty upon the summer-earth. There is Librathe Balance, the Scales. The Man, the Sun, is tried in the balance - and found wanting;he falls slowly towards the dark and dull months of autumn and winter, the tomb of theChristos, or rather the Chreest, the mummy. Scorpio wounds him in his most vital spot ashe still struggles to escape from the four walls of heaven to the liberation of the divinitywhich he once was, and which he will by his efforts again attain. Wounded and staggeringhe seeks to escape from the other door of heaven and is struck by the arrow of the giantArcher, Sagittarius; he falls towards the watery signs and passes through the realm ofCapricorn the 'sea-goat'; Aquarius, the man with the pitcher of water leads him on to theplace where he is to celebrate the first mysteries of death in the upper room; Pisces, theFishes, seal the mysteries of the loaves of Ceres, the Virgin with her sheaves and the "twosmall fishes" which form the unending supply of celestial food for the aspirant to theperfection of the soul.

It is all dim and confused to the public, to the brain-mind; it is as clear as the noon-day sun to the soul. The Unconquered Sun traveling through the Signs which form theZodiacal Band, rising to his full physical strength, attaining the balance, the turning-point,retreating and struck by the powerful blows of the giants that guard the Eastern andWestern doors, he sinks fainting to his death and burial in the tomb of dull December. Hisbody lies hidden beneath the horizon and the only indication of his tomb is the crown ofthorny acacia on the pallid brow of the dead Sun, the crown of thorns, the black emptyspaces where the once-bright rays have ceased to exist.

Then comes the grand eternal lesson. The Resurrection! Even Death has no powerover the Unconquered Sun.

The Sun slowly rises again from the tomb, after three days, and the building of theTemple begins anew.

Not all who in later, degraded days witnessed the grand Mystery of the Solar birth,growth, fall, death, and resurrection, knew that the Sovereign Sun is the Christos-Spirit inman, the real Man himself on his upward way towards his own essential divinity; not allknew that the resurrection has more than one meaning; that it means reincarnation in thebody; that it means the final and greater reincarnation of the Divine Man in the Spiritual'body,' to the exclusion of a material body, after a lifetime of 'days' in many bodies, one foreach 'day' of that 'lifetime'; not all knew that the lesson was one of self-directed evolutionfor the real man, the soul, and that every grain of action and thought sown must be reapedand the doctrine of responsibility worked out to the last straw.

Yet these things were known in a vague way. Even today we meet the excuse forfutile plays on our degraded stage, that they teach that we cannot escape from theconsequences of crime - a long-distance reminiscence of the old true soul-dramas that did

really teach such responsibility. If such doctrines were brought into conversation it wasdone sub rosa, and not among the crowd in public places. They were among the thingsthat we read of when an Initiate tells his disciples that "there are many things I have to tellyou but ye cannot bear them now." They are there plainly enough for all with the leastintuition to see, in the confidential letters to lodges which have been made public by friendand enemy; they are there for all to see in the scarcely-disguised gospels and rituals ofevery race.

To quote one instance alone, Jesus the Nazarene talks for pages in privateconversation with his candidates for initiation about reincarnation and how souls mustsuffer for deeds ill-done in other bodies, until they are purified for the greater reincarnation,as you may say, the inverse incarnation, for it means the final liberation from the body; assaid by an initiate of the Jewish Kabalist mysteries: "To him that overcometh I will give awhite stone with a new name written. He shall become a pillar in the Temple of my Godand shall go no more out!" That is, he shall no more need to incarnate in fleshly bodies,for his "sins shall be forgiven" - he shall have himself paid the uttermost farthing ofsuffering for sins committed and shall have received the last personal reward he wants forgood deeds done. Henceforth he will be free from desire of reward or fear of punishment.

All this and more is what the real Mysteries of Eleusis taught under the unspeakablysimple and beautiful imagery of the story of the Sovereign Sun (as did those of Mithras)and the Virgin-Mother of the Gods with the wheat-ear in her hand. Truly her son everychild of the Mysteries - was born in the 'house of Bread,' which the Hebrews call in theirlanguage 'Bethlehem.' And truly the Wine of Divine Life gave him new and divine Life.The Mysteries of the Great Mother are older than Eleusis. If in Mediterranean lands shewas the Magna Mater, the Bona Dea, the Great Mother and Good Goddess, in Sanskritshe was the same. She is the Virgin, Isis, the Mother of the Gods, the Mother of Humanity.

Finally, we are told, and Julian must have seen it, that the whole of the Solar Wheat-and-Vine, Bread-and-Wine cycle, terminated in the Hierophant solemnly holding an ear ofwheat in silence before the assembled candidates. No twin-symbols in the world so wellcover the whole ground of the Solar Man and his own divinity.

We may never know the name of the Hierophant who initiated Julian. It was deathto mention his name, and even in this degraded time no true initiate would reveal it.

In the summer and autumn of 355, Julian was a young man of twenty-five years.He spent five months at the University of Athens with such friends as Basil and Gregoryand others. The time seems almost negligibly short. And yet historians have been obligedto suppose that he was at Athens before, to account for the extraordinary amount of reallife that he crammed into those happy days - the only really happy days of his life, if youdo not count all his days happy, as are those of every spiritual warrior. Such a stronginfluence had those short five months on Julian that they might have been five years to anyone else. He worked, he played, he made friends, he concentrated a lifetime in thosemonths. What is the explanation?

It is not difficult to give. The outer, denatured, degraded Mysteries - which you paida fee for being initiated into - were about as thrilling as going to kirk on a Sunday morningin winter to hear the minister preach. As far as the ordinary man knew, that was all therewas in it.

But the real, the pure divine mysteries are not like that. For those who are duly andtruly prepared and worthy and well qualified to be initiated into even some lower aspects

of the real mysteries of the Bona Dea, the Virgin-Mother of the Christ-spirit in all men, theBacchic wine so thrills with real life every cell of the dead body that we call our workingselves that time is forgotten and centuries of glowing pulsing life may be experienced in anight. This foretaste of real life has many names in many countries.

But the application of the matter is that Julian found his life so intensified, sodeepened, so expanded, so exalted with the influence of the genuine Mysteries, that the'reception of the Holy Ghost' as described by other writers, appears pale in comparison.It was the same force that made Paul such a tremendous bundle of energy throughout hislife and kept him active long after any one else would have died of exhaustion: it was thesoul come to life, if you like to put it that way. It is nothing that comes of paying fees or ofstudying books, but it is comparable only to a flower-bud opening in the sunlight by its ownunaided efforts; it is the enthusiasm of Aladdin when he enters the orchard of jewels; itis the garden of delights which sends men mad if they are not purified and prepared; it isthe reflexion of the heaven into which Paul was caught up; it is the glow of the Shekinah -all in degree, of course.

Those were not five months of student-life that Julian spent at Athens, in thesummer and fall of 355. They were the seventy years of the old fairy-tale that the kidnapedmortal spends among the fairies and thinks it is only a few hours.

What can we say more of the blossoming of the soul that takes place at the leastcontact with the real Mysteries of the Soul? We can but repeat the old saying that menoften went to Eleusis mere mortals like any one else; that they returned different men.They had learnt their own essential divinity. They knew that their bodies were exactly assaid, the Temple of the Divine.

No wonder the Mysteries were the beacon-light of civilization throughout countlessmillenniums. No wonder that Egypt's glorious civilization lasted for seventy-five thousandyears and more - just as long as they kept the fires of the Mysteries burning in their hearts.No wonder that the world shall again be a heaven compared with what it is now when thelight of the Mysteries shines once more from the old beacons upon the mountains, likefootsteps of the Messengers of Peace!

They said that Julian was the marvel and wonder of Athens for his learning andattainments. And that in five months! The uninitiated historian says that of course this wasmerely the fulsome compliment of the Sophists and orators, such as Libanius, flattering anEmperor. Indeed it was not. It was the light that shone in his face as did the light in theface of Moses when he came down from the 'mountain' so that he had to be veiled, lest thepeople be dazzled. The Mysteries were such an overwhelming event in the university-lifeof Julian that all else is overshadowed by the glory of the initiation. Julian went through alifetime of happiness in those five months. As described in Eastern imagery:

"Behold, O happy Pilgrim! The portal that faceth thee is high and wide, seems easyof access. The road that leads therethrough is straight and smooth and green. 'Tis likea sunny glade in the dark forest-depths, a spot on earth mirrored from Amitabha'sparadise. There, nightingales of hope and birds of radiant plumage sing, perched in greenbowers, chanting success to fearless Pilgrims. They sing of Bodhisattvas' virtues five, thefivefold source of Bodhi-power, and of the seven steps in Knowledge."

Basil was always a good friend. But Gregory was never much of a fellow. Theywere just college-friends and that is all. Gregory's university-life taught him little more thanthe value of words, words, words, and in those days in ordinary life they were valuable. Arhetorician with eloquent speech, was always regarded as the superior of a mereexactitudinarian. If in the courts you had the best case in the world and unassailableevidence, it was of little avail unless your lawyer could talk the hind legs off a donkey, asthe saying goes. If he could, then you could do much as you liked; you would beacquitted.

It was all very stupid, of course, of those stupid Greeks. We have outgrown that,of course. Well, have we? It is precisely what leads multitudes in our elections; talk, andnot too much thought ahead. It has destroyed governments and ruled kingdoms in thetwentieth century A.D. No, we are not so very different from those fourth-century people.In fact, the two ages are remarkably alike in many ways.

Gregory is quoted in after life as having written to his friend Jerome, a Father of theChurch and almost the author of our present translation of the Latin Bible, "Nothingdeceives the public so much as verbiage!" But he was now still a very young man andJulian found it difficult to get on with him and his verbiage. For himself, Julian was everprone to tear the heart out of a problem and settle it offhand without frills orcircumlocutions. His intelligence was exceptionally brilliant.-------

VI. Milan and the German War

Then came the rapid events of November and December, 355. In the middle of thisdream of happiness as a devotee at the shrine of Isis-Athena, word suddenly came forJulian to return at once to Milan, to the Court of Constantius. It was a fearful wrench - sucha wrench from happiness to misery as only the Mystic can bear. It is part of the mystic life:first comes intense pleasure; then bitter pain; finally the soul rises above them both andrefuses to suffer from either.

Julian himself has told us how the order affected him; his suffering and theconsolations he received from Athena. He says (writing to the Athenians):

"I must not omit to tell how I consented to dwell under the same roof with thosewhom I knew to have ruined my whole family and who, I suspected, would before long plotagainst myself also. But what floods of tears I shed and what laments I uttered when I wassummoned, stretching out my hands to your Acropolis and imploring Athena to save hersuppliant and not to abandon me, many of you who were eyewitnesses can attest. Thegoddess, above all others, is my witness that I even begged for death at her hands therein Athens rather than my journey to the Emperor. That the goddess accordingly did notbetray her suppliant or abandon him is proved by the event. For everywhere she was myguide and on all sides she set a watch near me bringing guardian angels from Helios andSelene."

We have already read how Julian fared at Milan. On November 6th he was publiclyinvested with the title and robe of Caesar - not yet 'Augustus': that title was for the

Emperor alone. Constantius had now come to the conclusion that his childlessness wasa direct punishment from the gods for his murders of members of his family; reluctantlyhe had come to recognise that he must give Julian a share in the government of theEmpire or remain in the hands of strangers. He would have liked to see Julian dead,probably enough, but there was the excellent Eusebia at his elbow to speak gently in favorof giving the young man a chance. She herself demanded faithfulness and service fromJulian, in spite of the wrongs he had suffered from Constantius.

The ceremony took place at a great military assembly at Milan. The Emperor madea speech commending the young Caesar to them. Julian bore himself with noble bearingand the soldiers clashed their shields against their knees in approval and applause. A fewdays later he was married to Helen, the sister of Constantius, but little has been said of herin history.

What a change that was for a bookworm! They cut off his philosophic beard andshaved him. They threw away his university-gown and made him wear the military cloak;they made him drill and drill and drill. His student's casual walk had to be exchanged forthe soldier's swagger; the modest downcast eyes of the little schoolboy, and the simplebearing of the private citizen, had to be supplanted by the soldier's stare and glitteringuniform; he had to do his best to be like the murderers of his family and to look as if heenjoyed it.

He swore, not by the military gods, but by strange student's oaths: when he trippedover some new goosestep he was heard to mutter "O Plato!" But his great characteristicwas that of all Initiates: he was thorough, and his concentration on the work in hand wasperfect. So he soon learnt.

In less than a month he was off. On December 1st he had to leave Milan for Gaulfor his first military command. He felt keenly the restrictions placed upon him. In the firstplace he was unried and therefore not to be too greatly trusted with power. Also, whoknew? he might take the first opportunity to wipe out Constantius the usurper and all hisfamily, before himself assuming the purple. Constantius would have deserved it. Julianwas given no more than three hundred and sixty soldiers as his own command. To allintents and purposes he was to go to Gaul merely to represent the royal house; to showhimself in the purple and to carry the picture of the Emperor - just to show the army thatConstantius was there, as you may say. Nominally he was the Commander-in-chief.Actually he was not allowed to do anything except what the older officers approved.

The party had not gone farther than Turin when they heard that the Germans hadtaken Cologne and the whole border was in a bad way. It was winter. There was nothingto be done except to go into winter-quarters and prepare for the advance in the spring.They wintered at Vienne. At that time the country that we call France was strangelydivided. In the north there was savage warfare all along the Rhine; the South was ascivilized as Italy, and Vienne was thoroughly Romanized.

When the new Caesar entered the city an old blind woman declared that he wasdestined to restore the Temples of the Gods. It was an omen of the future.

At Vienne it was not so bad. Julian lived a more than Spartan life. He had somebooks with him and long before daylight he was up and studying. His meals were scantyand sparse. He worked all the time and his play was but a change of work. With his eyefor detail and his wonderful foresight and insight he left nothing undone for the comingspring.

The orders from Constantius were explicit. Julian was to be watched as carefullyas the enemy, for fear he should raise a revolt. It was not until midsummer that he wasallowed to bear the ensign containing the Emperor's portrait.

"I am not sending you a king," wrote Constantius to the Gauls. "I am only sendingone who shall carry about and exhibit the King's portrait."

And yet Julian had been made a Caesar! It was humiliating.So the year passed fruitlessly for Julian in military matters, though there was all the

success that could be expected; the Roman army did very well on the Rhine-frontiers. ButJulian was not even allowed to assemble the troops. This power was given to another.Julian was quartered apart with only a few soldiers, and even those he was obliged to partwith when the neighboring towns implored his assistance. He was alone in his royal glory.

Accepting the trial as an Initiate would, Julian acted always with moderation andwithout complaint or repining. This was taken for incapability and when the commander-in-chief was recalled under suspicion he was almost ignored and only allowed to interferewhen it was necessary to save some situation. He was actually treated by certain personswith disrespect. After that he contented himself with silence and with parading the imperialrobe and image.

Finally, in the spring of 357, Constantius gave Julian the command of all the forces.He expected some improvement in Gallic affairs, but not anything great.

In actual fact, things could hardly be much worse. The Germans had consolidatedtheir captures and now controlled all the country that extends along the Rhine from sourceto mouth. They had razed the walls of forty-five towns, together with numerous forts andcitadels. For a breadth of nearly forty miles from the Rhine they had captured the countryand had devastated a strip three times that width, so that the Gauls could not pasture theircattle. There were cities deserted by the Gauls and not yet occupied by the Germans; butthe inhabitants were afraid to go back.

With tremendous concentration on the work in hand Julian smashed his way intoCologne and Strassburg. He captured Chnodomar, the King of the country, and sent himto Constantius, who was returning from a campaign in the East. Constantius triumphed,but Julian received no great recognition. This young bookworm must have been lucky towin his battles; it couldn't possibly be talent that had done it!

In the next two summer-campaigns Julian drove the Germans back beyond theRhine. The Roman chief, Florentius, was at his wit's end to obtain corn for the troops. TheGermans had command of the Rhine-outlets and the great granaries of Britain were cutoff, for there was no other way to obtain supplies. Florentius wrote to Constantius to saythat he had proposed to pay the Germans three thousand pounds' weight of silver forpermission to land the corn from Britain without being attacked. Constantius actuallyapproved, if "Florentius did not think such a course altogether too disgraceful."

Of course it was disgraceful, says Julian - else the idea would never have enteredthe Emperor's head that it might be so. Julian would pay no silver to the Germans, but hewould have that corn from Britain. He had not been idle. He had two hundred ships ready,and built four hundred more in ten months of waiting. A fleet of six hundred ships capableof bringing corn from Britain to the Rhine was no small matter. Once ready with histransport, Julian made a furious attack on the Germans and made them submit. He tookhostages and secured a safe passage for the corn-ships to and from Britain.

At the end of his service in Gaul, Julian sums up the situation and tells of his loyaltyto the Emperor and how little he deserved to be treated with resentment. He says:

"Three times, while I was still Caesar, I crossed the Rhine; twenty thousandpersons who were held as captives on the further side of the Rhine I demanded andreceived back; in two battles and one siege I took captive ten thousand prisoners andthose not men of unserviceable age, but men in the prime of life."

The Germans had tried an old trick with their captives. But Julian was too wideawake for them. Before he could demand the captives back, he prepared lists of all thosewho had been taken from the Gallic towns. The few that were left willingly told him of theirlost ones. Then prisoners and rescued captives were questioned and they gave the namesof all they knew to be in captivity among the Germans. The lists were enormous.

When the Germans had released all the prisoners, Julian demanded where the restwere.

"There are no more!" declared the German chiefs."Well, where are so-and-so and so-and-so?" asked Julian, as the clerk behind him

at the table gave him name after name in a quiet voice.The Germans were astonished. They were forced to give up every man they had

taken and Julian went up in their respect to a great height. He was so very thorough in allhe did.

Julian continues his summary of the things he did:

"I sent to Constantius four levies of excellent infantry, three more of second-qualityinfantry, and two very smart squadrons of cavalry. I have now, with the help of the gods,recovered all the towns, and by that time I had almost recovered forty. I call Zeus and allthe gods who protect cities and our race to bear witness as to my behavior towardsConstantius and my loyalty to him, and that I have behaved to him as I would have chosenthat my own son should behave to me. I have paid him more honor than any Caesar hasever paid any Emperor in the past."

Nor was this behavior without its heroic side; for Constantius had treated theRomans in Gaul very shabbily.

Magnentius had rebelled and assumed the purple while in charge along the Rhine.The Romans had been unable to suppress him, so Constantius had done a thing whichmay have been according to precedent but which was certainly not above-board.

When Julian had conquered the German king, he demanded to know why they haddevastated such a huge portion of Gaul, and had laid waste so many towns and ruined somany square miles of fine pasture. The German king produced a letter from Constantiusasking him to do so! Certainly it was one way of keeping Magnentius engaged in Gaul andthereby drawing his teeth, but the cost to the Romans and the Gauls under their protectionwas enormous.------------

VII. Events in Gaul

Constantius began playing the same game with Julian as he had played withJulian's brother Gallus. First he demanded 'help' from Julian in the shape of all his bestsoldiers; then, when Julian had been entirely deprived of effective power, there is noreason to suppose that Constantius would have done otherwise than he had done withGallus. Julian would have been recalled to Milan or Rome or Constantinople; each stepwould have been marked by a diminished prestige and protection by friendly escorts, untilfinally he would have been arrested like a common felon and beheaded in some obscurefortress.

How were these people to know that Julian was not quite like other men? That hewas a genuine devotee of the true gods, and a Christian of the original type, and that ondue occasion the gods were able through his devotion to warn him well ahead of pendingdangers which he had a right to avoid; though of course there are dangers in any man'sKarman - or store of causes unexhausted by effects - which he must go through as besthe can and which the gods will not only not help him to avoid but will encourage him to faceand, if possible, conquer. But in proportion as Julian was warned by the gods, so hissilence increased and his enemies - the eunuchs and Constantius and the whole host ofcriminal and political agents - never suspected his hidden strength.

Certainly Constantius had a very plausible excuse when he called for Julian's besttroops. To use our modern geographical terms, he had his hands full with the Russian andBohemian wars. But then Julian needed the troops as much as Constantius. If he hadrestored peace and honor in Gaul, that was no reason why he should be immediately soweakened that the Germans could again attack with fair hopes of success. Besides, lateron, it would be found that Constantius had been up to his old mean trick of encouragingthe enemy to attack Julian! Argument was of little use; it could be used to 'prove' thatJulian was plotting to gain power.

All the decent men were taken away from Julian and vile courtiers were put in theirplace. By some sort of oversight the excellent Sallust had become one of Julian's officers.Immediately this was noticed Sallust became a source of suspicion and as soon aspossible was taken away. Julian hardly needed indications from 'the god' to tell him whatwas in the wind; his own mere intellectual brain was enough. Speaking of Constantius,he tells how he pleaded for fair treatment. To quote from his declaration to the Emperor:

"I have no acquaintance with any of these men, nor have I had in the past. But Iknow them by report, and since you bid me to do so, I regard them as friends andcomrades and pay as much respect to them as I would to old acquaintances.Nevertheless, it is not just that my affairs should be intrusted to them or that their fortunesshould be hazarded with mine. What then is my petition? Give me some sort of writtenrules as to what I must avoid and what you intrust me to perform. For it is clear that youwill approve of him who obeys you and punish him who is disobedient, though indeed I amvery sure that no one will disobey you."

If he could get written instructions there need be no more blaming him for everythingthat went wrong and praising his officers, his enemies, for everything that went right.

Julian opposed the extravagance of the officials with public money. They becamehis bitter enemies. The whole system under Constantine and later was one of plunder, andoppression of the poor and the worker.

Things had to come to a head some time. The order was given for the troops, thefighting Gauls who had enlisted in the Roman army under guarantee of home-service, togo east to Constantius. Such a flagrant violation of a definite pledge was unworthy of aRoman Emperor.

No loyalty on Julian's part was of any avail. Constantius could never rest happy.Like the protagonist of one of the old Greek tragedies, he was for ever haunted by theghosts of his own crimes. His life was a hell on earth. Deeply, unspeakably, as he hadinjured Julian, the latter was yet almost his only friend, except perhaps the excellentEusebia, the Empress, who was the friend of both of them. Whatever Julian did to pleaseConstantius was suspicious; whatever he did because it was right to do was still moresuspicious because it could not possibly please more than one or two; economies madeenemies; extravagances, if there had been any, would have produced accusations.Constantius was surrounded by courtiers and bloodsuckers and sycophants like so manydemons born of his own guilty conscience. All the time they were whispering subtil maliceagainst Julian in his ear. Sallust was a good man, but he was at once recalled. Julian wassurrounded by rascals. The Empire was rotten with a riff-raff of self-seekers.

One after another was sent to Gaul with powers which Julian was ordered not tooppose in his capacity of Commander-in-chief and representative of the Emperor. Spiesand agents provocateurs, the filthy dregs of a rotting state, abounded. Julian would havebeen condemned and removed had he been unsuccessful, but by his extraordinarybrilliance and directness of mind he was highly successful. Therefore, it was unjustlyassumed that he had more troops than he needed and must send them off to the Russianwar or somewhere out of Gaul.

The situation at one time for Julian had been astonishingly like the situation met inprecisely the same place just about one thousand years later by that schoolgirl Joan of Arc- only she had never been to school. He was in the hands of jealous nominal subordinateswhose one idea was to temporize; if any serious situation arose they wanted to hold acouncil of war. Julian, like Joan, never hesitated a moment. "We are not here as a villagedebating society," they both protested in words of their respective periods. "We are hereto turn the enemy out. Attack! Attack! Attack!" And attacking, they won all along the line.What are dates in history? Merely landmarks indicating the arrival of the same people andsimilar conditions to those we have met in earlier chapters.

At one time a convoy of wheat - most necessary for the troops - was coming downthe Rhine for Julian. His nominal subordinate, rather than let him reap the advantage ofhis organization, actually burnt the corn and the boats with it! It was heartbreaking. AndJulian did not love power. He loved philosophy, and what is far more than philosophy: theclean, upright, quiet, divine life of the true philosopher. He said:

"It was my intention, the gods themselves will bear me witness, to divest myself ofall imperial splendor and state and remain in peace, taking no part whatever in affairs."

But the gods had other work for him to do. He could not please himself.

The final fatal blow had come from Constantius. Julian was to be stripped not onlyof the best but the whole of his tried troops, and they were to be sent to the Russian war.The Celts, Welsh and Bretons, and the Petulantes, the native troops, still called Gauls, ofcourse, knew him for a real man. If he chose to read and write at four o'clock in themorning before any one else was up, and if he chose to study divine things late at night,he fought on foot in the daytime with the best of them; nor was he a general who led themfrom behind to avoid excessive excitement. The soldiers loved him. The native troops -who was it said that Rome had no good troops except the foreign legions of Gauls andCelts and Germans? - had mostly enlisted under the solemn pledge that they were not tobe called upon for foreign service - foreign service for them being anywhere out ofGermany or Gaul or Britain. They lived in the camps all their lives when circumstancespermitted. Their wives had homes there and their children grew up and enlisted as theirfathers had done; sometimes there were even grandchildren in the camp. The camp wasa unit, a city. We have them still: there are these castra, or camps, all over England today.There are Chester, and Doncaster, and Leicester, and Chichester, and Rochester, andCirencester, and dozens of other of these castra which were but these military campsturned city.

And now Constantius had given the order for them to move out to the East, toRussia and Persia and other wild places beyond the sunrise, beyond the edge of the world,beyond their own beloved borders, far from the homeland. It was an outrage, a flouting ofpledges unworthy of a great Empire; it was a crime.

Julian would have found some way out of the impasse - he was no breaker ofpledges while they remained pledges. But he was paralysed. From Vienne in civilizedGaul, Florentius the Pretorian Prefect was to go to Paris and see the thing done.Florentius hated Julian more than a small boy hates soap. Julian had cut down expensesand actually introduced economies to lessen the tremendous weight of the taxes.Therefore Julian was anathema to the Constantinian spendthrifts. Joined with Florentiuswas Lupicinus, at present in Britain. These two were to supersede Julian in the matter ofgetting the troops out of Gaul.

Julian was helpless. He could only wait for these officials to arrive and see if hecould mitigate the terrible hardship of the removal.

Julian waited. Whatever he did would naturally be brought against him."If you wait until Florentius and Lupicinus arrive before sending the troops to

Constantius," the hostile officials around him declared, "then it will be said that you aretrying to disobey the Emperor and hold back, in the hope of making a revolt against him."

Julian was in a dilemma. If he sent the troops he was helpless and undefended -besides, Constantius had threatened to ruin Gaul. But if he did not send them it was to betaken as a sign of treason. He stayed in the palace at Paris, the little island in the Seinewhere the Cathedral of Notre Dame now stands, and trusted to his only true friends, thegods.

The soldiers were not idle, either with tongue or pen. They were not fools. Someone wrote an anonymous letter to the troops quartered near Paris and the whole garrisonwas in a turmoil. The letter was particularly addressed to the Celts and the Petulantes, thenative troops. The name of Constantius was handled without reverence and the vilebetrayal of the Gauls and the pledge that they should not be sent on foreign service wasput in its true light. In addition, the letter bitterly deplored the disgrace inflicted on Julian,

the soldiers' friend. The whole garrison was deeply stirred and it became evident that if allthe other legions heard of it, there would be the utmost difficulty in preventing a flat refusal,a mutiny in the army. That would have suited the officials and Constantius very wellbecause it would have been the damnation of Julian. But what if it were successful?There was the rub. No, the plan must be carried out and Julian gradually reduced tocomplete impotency.

These officials urged Julian not to wait for Florentius and Lupicinus but to send thetroops off at once. Julian stuck to his guns.

"We ought to wait a bit longer for them," he replied to their extremely urgentsolicitations. And of course, that would give time for the anonymous letter-writer to upsetall the remaining troops.

Nebridius, Pentadius, and Decentius were supposed to be friendly. But the latterat least had been sent by Constantius for the purpose of ruining Julian. Pentadius was areal enemy because Julian had opposed all the innovations he had tried to introduce, andthe fact was that Julian had not a single friend near him - except the gods. These hostilecounselors and others were most insistent.

"If you wait, then it will add proof and evidence that the suspicions entertained aboutyou are correct," said these two-faced 'friends.' "If you send away the troops now it will beregarded as your own action, but when Constantius hears that you waited for Florentiusand Lupicinus, then he will give them the credit and you will be blamed."

And, incidentally, the Gauls would despise Julian for aiding in their betrayal. Hewould be left without a single supporter and with a reputation for double-dealing!

Julian was helpless; he had spun out the game as long as he could and now couldno longer refuse to act as he was advised. He consented, under compulsion, as he says,to write to Constantius, agreeing to send the troops. Julian even discussed the route thetroops must take. There was a choice of two roads, and he voted for one of them. Thatwas in itself almost enough to make these treacherous and suspicious friends determineon the other. There might be a catch in it somewhere! They argued that if they went bythe road chosen by Julian they would meet other troops and infect them with the mutinousspirit of the fatal anonymous letter. Then there would be a mutiny and all would be throwninto confusion.

Julian adds drily that there seemed to be something in what they said. It is exactlywhat would have happened, and he knew it.

The legions arrived and Julian went to meet them. In the customary way, he madea very encouraging speech and exhorted them to continue on the march and behave likethe soldiers they were - the backbone of the Roman army. It was the usual review-speech.

"I knew nothing whatever of what they had determined," declares Julian. "I call towitness Zeus, Helios, Ares, Athene, and all the other gods that no suspicion entered intomy mind until that very evening."

It was then that things began to happen; items that were not entered in the officialprogram.---------

VIII. Julian Augustus

Julian went out to meet the soldiers when they approached Paris. He made theusual complimentary and encouraging speeches.

"You have shown yourselves the best-disciplined soldiers of the Empire and theEmpire needs you in the East. There you will find success and wealth beyond your wildestdreams; you will come home proud of having seen the wonders of the Orient. Tonight theofficers are invited to dine with me in a farewell feast, and if it is in my power to do anythingfor them, I hope they will make their requests then. You all know that I desire to serve youand make you happy."

The soldiers cheered and beat their shields against their knees. Julian to them wasno longer the supposed fool of a student with unsoldierlike ways, but their gallant general.If he had seemed to bemean himself at first by fighting with them in the front rank on footjust like one of themselves, they had long overcome the strangeness of the proceeding andrealized that he was their real leader. They would have followed him into the jaws of deathand seen to it that they brought him back in safety. There was also about him a strangemagnetism which made them do things with him and for him that they would not have donefor another.

Julian was still in residence at the 'palace' in the little Seine Island of Paris. His wifeHelen, the sister of the Emperor, was with him, and all seemed peaceful and quiet.Meanwhile, in the officers' quarters and the camp, other scenes were in being. The officershad formed a decision as to the course they intended to take. Talking and discussingmatters as officers do, they clearly perceived the plot of Constantius to ruin Julian.

"The Emperor only wants to take us away so as to leave Julian defenceless," theyconcluded. "Look at the way he has treated us. Unlike Constantius, he does everythinghe can to help us. When we were to have marched into the wilds of the East we were tohave gone alone. But Julian took on himself to order that our wives and families shouldgo with us. The only time he has ever disgraced us was when the two legions gave wayagainst the Germans. Another would have decimated us, killing every tenth man, or wouldhave sent us to rot in the forests of the north, or would have degraded all the officers.Julian merely made them all march through the town in women's clothes! The thing hurtworse than death at the time, but he was justified in the event. For those two legionsfought like lions to wipe out the disgrace and have ever since been in the front of everybattle. We should have liked to kill him for making them march like that, but we see nowthat he was right. Shall we then suffer such a man to be slowly destroyed by Constantius?"

And the whole mess roared out a thundering 'No!'Certain of the tribunes called for pen and parchment and it took them no long time

to write a few short notes - they would not trust the official shorthand-writers to do it - andit was a matter of minutes before the notes were sent quite anonymously to the privatemesses.

"We are banished, like condemned criminals, to the ends of the earth. Our homeswill fall into the hands of the Germans. What are we going to do about it?"

The evening was well forward towards sunset. Julian's campaigns and transport-services had provided the means for producing plenty of wine both on the spot and fromthe south. The soldiers were ripe for any bold stroke. The word was passed andpandemonium broke loose. With their wine-cups still in their hands they rushed to thePalace and surrounded it.

Julian had bolted and barred the doors with their heavy beams. But that was notenough to stop the soldiers in their design. They shouted and hammered on the great oakdoors and it seemed as if they would break the whole house down. It was a substantialwinter-house, too, with two stories, built of strong, solid oak.

Amid the turmoil there gradually began to prevail one cry over the rest. Clearly andmore clear it rose in all its ominous significance: "Julianus Augustus!"

It was high treason of the most patent type. Julian the Emperor!Certainly there had been co-emperors before and there might be again. But

Constantius had murdered wholesale the family of Julian - his cousin - and the Furieswould never stop at a peaceful recognition of Julian, the rightful heir by descent, but notby fact. There could only be one ending to such a combination, the death of Constantiusor of Julian, and there would be civil war in any case.

Julian, being an initiated philosopher, was free from personal ambition. He hadloyally obeyed the Emperor in everything, even under the utmost provocation. Why, hisextraordinary loyalty was in itself suspicious! And now there was this fearful new problemto face. It came as a complete surprise to him.

While one or two of his own officers tried to temporize with the soldiers and keepthem in good humor, Julian went upstairs to his own room, which was next to that of hiswife Helen. It was all very well for her. She was the sister of Constantius and even nowpossessed a little crown as a member of the royal family. But Julian needed to think forhimself.

Meanwhile the shouts outside became more and more insistent as the cool night-airof late spring tempered the fumes of the wine-cups. The men were now in dead earnest.It was Julian's moment of choice.

Sometime after midnight the friend of the Gods stood in his upper room and lookedout of the square window in the beams towards the starry sky, seeking a sign. "O Jupiter!direct me in the right way. Not for myself, but for the good of all!'

And as he gazed on the myriad lamps of nature in the glittering sky of night theGods gave him a sign. He saw the Star and followed it. He was himself to be the Rulerof the World, Emperor of Rome. He must not thwart the will of the Gods nor oppose theclamors of the army. Such things are not spoken of too lightly or too exactly. But to a fewfriends it was given out that Julian saw a vision of a great figure representing the RomanEmpire.

"If you refuse the duty laid upon you by the gods we will desert you," was the severewarning he received. The story is cautiously told. Julian dared not fail the gods. A lesserman, one Napoleon, in later days, let his personal desires gain the day and - the godsdeserted him.

This bookworm, this student, this philosopher and lover of the gods - those gods,alas! now so weak from lack of nourishment, the devotion of men, - this retiring young manwho had planned to ask permission to give up his Caesarship and the purple robe that hemight go and live by the sea on his grandmother's little farm, whence he could dream andgaze upon the turrets and pinnacles of Constantinople in the distance and meditate on thegods; this unambitious soul out of the ages must undergo the trials and terrors andstrenuous times of an Emperor upon whose uneasy head lay many crowns.

The god had spoken. But Julian prayed that the cup might pass from him. Heopposed the clamor of the soldiers to the last, resisting as long as a chance remained that

the gods would release him from this obligation. But the sands of time were running outand before the Unconquered Sun could dawn upon another day Julian must fulfil hisdestiny.

At three o'clock in the morning the soldiers rushed the doors and the stout oakenbeams gave way. With riotous joy the Bretons and Welsh troops, the Gauls and Romans,caught Julian as he descended the stairs and thrusting him upon a shield, bore him lightlyout to the cheering army in the courtyard, where now the Cathedral of Notre Dame standsin its grandeur of a later day.

"Julian Augustus! Julian Augustus!"He must be crowned. The sacred emblem alone could seal the event in due form.

But there was no crown. The thing must not become an omen. And it must not becomea crown such as some of these secret-society people spoke of in their strangelymisunderstood ritual. Julian was the protege of the Sol Invictus, the Unconquered Mithras,the Sovereign Sun. And the crown with blackened rays - replacing the golden ones, shornoff by the powers of evil, the clipped locks of Shemesh-On, of Samson, the Hebrew Sun-God - must never be allowed to make the crown of thorns, the crown of him who had beenshorn of all power and lies dead in the grave of winter. It must be a genuine shining goldencrown.

Ah! There was Helen. She could lend hers. In a trice it was brought to Julian."Not so! Shall we seem to be entering upon a reign fit only for women?" Thus

Julian as he refused to wear it.There was hesitation and doubt. Where was the crown to come from? A crown

they must have before the material symbol of the Unconquered Sun rose in the heavensin all his sovereign splendor. Then a soldier snatched off a golden collar that he wore asa symbol of his rank and probably as a relic of some looted treasury of Rome's enemies.With this Julian was crowned, and at last he was in his rightful place as Emperor of theWorld!

He would rather have been studying Plato in the long lush grass where it grew bythe sea on his grandmother's farm in Bithynia under the Eastern sun of the Bosporus. Butduty was duty and the gods must not be disappointed. Even the happy university-days ofAthens must remain but a memory in the mind - the only happy days he ever had in his life,except when with his Teacher and Master, Maximus. The die was cast.----------

Julian and ConstantiusJulius had said he was not ambitious, but after due show of modesty he took the

crown when they gave it to him. On the other hand, Julian really was not ambitious exceptonly in the interest of the gods, and he wanted to strip himself of everything except thesymbol after he had had it forced on him by the soldiers. He wrote to Constantius and toldhim so.

But Constantius, the tool of eunuchs and sycophants and the victim of an evilconscience, still thought that he could suppress Julian. He promised him his life if hewould surrender at discretion and give up all his honors and prestige. Considering thewholesale murder of Julian's family by Constantius, he must have thought this quite agenerous offer. Julian did not. Had he surrendered, what was there to prevent some ofthe vile slaves of the court from accusing him of some new crime and having him

beheaded at once, as Gallus had been beheaded? That is, of course, supposingConstantius and his vile advisers thought it necessary to have an excuse for breaking hisword and committing another murder. It need hardly be repeated that there was nothingreligious or Christian about the politicians and courtiers except the name; the realChristians were few and kept their Christianity clean and sacred in the home, withoccasional public observances, and that was all.

Besides, the gods told Julian what to do and warned him every time when theycould; though of course the gods are under the very strictest rules and must not evadenatural law by a hair's breadth, seeing that they are themselves natural law. They couldhelp him only when and as long as they were not met by devices of the powers of evil thateven the gods cannot surmount.

Ordinarily in that summer of 360 the one Emperor would have marched East fromGaul and the other West from Syria or Mesopotamia and there would have been somedecisive battle somewhere, accompanied by fearful slaughter. The point had not come inJulian's life, as it had come long before in Chandragupta's, where he would shed no moreblood, even in self-defense. But until it did come, the gods were not willing that he shouldbe the instrument for more slaughter than could be helped. It is only the very inferior 'gods'hardly worthy of the name - those not so great as even a man should be - who lovebloodshed where it is unnecessary.

So Julian found it convenient to continue in the consolidation of the Gallic frontierwhile Constantius made his annual demonstrations against the great Sapor, the Persianking. In Mesopotamia and Armenia these grand Persian warriors made a yearly inroad intothe Roman territory and Constantius found himself obliged to attack them in a feeble sortof way after the damage was done. It is quite possible that Constantius really did think heneeded most of Julian's trained fighting men, especially the Gauls and Bretons andGermans; they were towers of strength compared to the Romans; but without goodleadership what is the use of any army, however superior? They would have been well-nigh wasted.

In this way the Emperors were kept busy, Julian in the West and Constantius in theEast, during that summer of 360. It seemed that the clash must come sometime with itsterrible civil war and slaughter. Constantius spoke very rudely of 'that goat,' as he calledJulian, from his wearing the beard of the philosopher. Julian wrote quite reasonable letterstrying to smooth matters over, but Constantius would have none of it.

So Julian, quite reasonably, wrote manifestos to those people whom he consideredhad a right to know what his claims were. He wrote to the Roman Senate; that wasnatural, for they still nominally held the power of the Empire. But he went further. He wroteto the people of Athens, as being the head and center of the philosophic and thinkingworld. This was a novelty, because most people regarded Athens as a spent force, a sortof back number, quite unworthy of serious consideration in Imperial affairs. He wrote tothe Spartans and to Corinth, and these letters of self-justification are regarded asevidences of the hopelessly antiquated and old-fashioned dreamy state of mind of thephilosopher-Emperor. But that is always the way with historians of a material age whendealing with initiates who tempered their dull sordid everyday life with the spiritual touch.If Julian was such a hopeless fool of a bookworm, how is it that when he followed the paththe gods showed him in any branch of life, he never failed? He was the soldier, thestatesman, the student, the philosopher, the reformer, and he was gloriously successful

in all these roles until the gods, under the pressure of inevitable law, drew away from him.It was no fault of theirs; we should say that they did not fail him, but that thecommunications between him and them were cut by a hostile hand; that was the exactstate of the case.

Constantius made peace impossible. He went back to his old trick of supporting theenemies of Rome in secret so as to keep Julian busy. He encouraged a German enemyto attack Julian; but the gods saw to it that Julian knew it all in good time. Constantius andhis political schemers could never understand that the gods were a reality and, whenundisturbed, were a very real help to their devotee.

If by chance they were confronted with some irrefutable evidence of their protectionand aid, these dull fellows would declare that it was the work of devils! Meanwhile, Julianrelied on the gods and was not deceived. Not that he did not often have to use his intuitionas to their meaning; that was always the rule.

But there was not much intuition needed with one of their messages. This is it,translated into the customary doggerel of a past century:

When Jupiter th' extremity commands Of moist Aquarius, and Saturn stands In Virgo twenty-five, th' Imperial state Of high Constantius shall be closed by fate.

Not what one would call brilliant poetry in English at any rate, but plain enough forJulian to make no mistake about its meaning. The time indicated was somewhere in thefall or winter of 360. That gave all summer to get the affairs of Gaul into order and toappoint civilian governors and officers over the province. Julian did this and then preparedto meet Constantius.

The army of Welsh and Germans and Gauls that had been so bitterly upset whenConstantius proposed to make them go East; the natives who had been under solemncontract that they should not be called upon to leave Gaul and their families; the men whohad made Julian Emperor on purpose to avoid foreign service; were now the very menwho enthusiastically followed him to the near East, to the Balkans, all along the Danube-country to Constantinople itself.

This fact shows what a magnetic power Julian had given him by the gods. HisGauls and Celts would follow him anywhere, over the edge of the world, if need be.

When the time came, Julian crossed into Switzerland and marched to the sourcesof the Danube as far as the point where the river becomes navigable. With his usualwonderful resource and energy he sent on the rest of the army, while with three thousandpicked men he embarked in boats and in the wonderfully short time of eleven days reachedSirmium, Mitrovitz, near Belgrade, as we may say. The gods were watching him and theygave him every advantage of wind and current. It was a wonderful passage.

When the people in Sirmium were told that the Emperor had arrived, they wereastonished. They could not understand how Constantius had come so far without beingannounced. When they found that the Emperor was not Constantius, but Julian, they wereyet more astonished. From Gaul to Belgrade in eleven days was a marvel.

The stay at Sirmium gave Julian an opportunity to consolidate matters. He receivedembassies and to his Welsh or Breton army he added soldiers he found at Sirmiurn,

together with legions from Hungary and Transylvania. With these he marched to Naisusor Nish, the birthplace of Constantine. That was some four hundred miles fromConstantinople. Meanwhile, Constantius was making the usual autumn-retreat fromMesopotamia and was in the neighborhood of Antioch, on the way to meet Julian.

The natural move to make would have been to take Constantinople beforeConstantius could arrive and then face him with the power thus gained from an admirablebase. But Julian would not move without the assent of the gods. They told him to wait.Besides, there was the oracle to consider. It would all come right in the end, not a doubtof it.

The time named came while Julian was at Naisus. True to the minute, a party ofcavalry came riding from Constantinople to report that Constantius was dead and that thearmies had decided to support Julian as Emperor.

At once, as the gods directed, Julian marched for Constantinople. They hadbrought him near the capital so that when the moment came he could quickly enter the cityand forestall any attempt of others to supplant him.

He was received with joyful acclamations as a beloved fellow-citizen.Constantinople had been his birthplace. At once he made arrangements for the welfareof the city and the army; he gave them the privilege of electing a senate like that of Rome;he made a harbor to shelter ships from the south wind and an entrance to the port. Hebuilt a library to the Imperial portico and presented it with all his books. Then, havingsettled these affairs of the Empire, he prepared to carry on the Persian war. But not asConstantius had done, in a kind of tip-and-run manner. Quite the contrary. Julian was outto finish the war and to do it thoroughly, adding Persia to the Empire and opening the wayto India. It was the old plan which Alexander had carried out badly. Someday it had to bedone and the link formed between the living philosophy of the Himalayas and the peoplesof the West. Julian thought that he was to do it.

There was a Persian Prince in Constantinople, brother of the reigning King, Sapor.This was Ormazd or Hormisdas. When his father was king he had once entered a festival-hall where the great ones of the Persian Empire were celebrating a feast. They hadreceived him good-humoredly but had not risen from their couches or seats. He was soincensed by what he considered a lack of respect that he threatened them with ironpunishments when he should come to reign. So they arrested him and kept him captive,in chains, in a safe mountain-retreat. His wife sewed a file inside a fish and sent it to himfor dinner after presenting the guards with a generous supply of wine. He was told to openthe fish carefully and use what he found inside it.

With the file he sawed through his chains and fled to Constantinople. Here he notonly became the ally of Julian but was made general of one of the armies; the other wascommanded by Victor.

Antioch was of course the base from which the expeditions were always made intoMesopotamia and Persia. Here the armies marched and Julian with them.

The people of Antioch loved pleasures and were cheerfully corrupt under theConstantines, as so many cities were. They expected Julian would encourage their idleand corrupt ways.

But he had been initiated into the counsels of the gods. Could such a man willinglywaste time and money in frivolity? The people invited him to the theater. He refused tostay all day - they had Methuselah-like plays in those days. Again, while at the

Hippodrome when the races and glove-fights were on and all was excitement and turmoil,he remained like a meditating statue of the Buddha considering the affairs of state and hisduties. He seemed oblivious of the boxing and betting and racing. They were smart folk,clean-shaven dandies. Julian's beard offended them. They remembered how Constantiushad called him 'that goat'! They insulted him.

Did he let loose the soldiery and kill a few thousand Antiochenes, as any self-respecting Emperor would do? Not a bit of it. He wrote a book. Sat up all night doing it,too. Against the Antiochenes? No, against himself! He called it 'Beard-hating.' Outdoingthem in their foolish sarcasms at the expense of his beard, he turned the whole thing intoa joke and killed it. Who could joke any more about his beard when he had done it himself,after the manner of a university-graduate of rhetoric who had the reputation of one whotaught his own tutors before he had been at Athens three months. And then there was thesophist Libanius, who was the idol of Antioch. He was Julian's friend and admirer. Saywhat you like about the undignified proceeding, Julian's plan did the work. His plansalways did; those who criticized him could hardly say the same about their plans. Andthere was no bloodshed and no hate to put to his debit. The children of the gods work instrange ways, but they get the work done.

The grandest philosopher of modern times in Europe did precisely the same thing.Made fun of her own features and so disarmed the virulent shafts of her enemies withoutincurring the responsibility of harming them.

But Julian was not at Antioch to write books. He was there to prepare for theconquest of the Road to India. He was a tremendous worker, up long before dawn andoften at it late at night. Occasionally he would exhaust a few shorthand secretaries bywriting a book in a night - and one full of information, too. He possessed the secret ofdirectness and concentration. Others could not have written his books in weeks - they hadnot the knowledge at command. Besides the 'beard-hating' book, he had writtenmagnificent orations to the Sol Invictus, the Unconquered Sun, and to Ceres, the Motherof the Gods. You may call them mere pamphlets and criticize their statements, but the factremains that they are the fruit of wonderful knowledge cautiously given out. To Julian,Mithras, the Unconquered Sun - the Christ-Sun, as the old Church-Fathers sometimescalled it - was a very real Presence. Demeter, Ceres, Isis myrionymus, the Mother of thegods, the Divinity of the Eleusinia, was another. And she is a kind mother to her ownchildren. She is the Virgin with the Wheat-ear, the Virgin-Mother of all antiquity, and muchbesides. Julian loved them both, the Mithras-Christ and the Virgin-Mother. For he knewthem not as they were in 360 A.D. but as they had been in the period of their glory,centuries before the present era.

But his business now was war; and he was ready. Did the Gods approve?

---------

IX. The Persian War

Socrates the historian says that Julian was so imposed upon by the absurd notionsof Pythagoras and Plato on Metensomatosis that he imagined himself to be possessed ofAlexander's soul, or rather that he was Alexander himself in another body.

This Metensomatosis is Reincarnation pure and simple, just as it was taught in theearly lodges of Paul and in the secret or semi-secret teachings. It was not absolutelysecret, since so much that was made public was based upon it and its twin doctrine of theBalance, the Law that "As ye sow, so shall ye reap." For reincarnation and that alonemakes it possible for a man to readjust the balance of good and bad which he created. Hemust suffer in a body for the bad and receive the benefit of the good in a body.

But there were other ramifications and extensions of the simple doctrine which madeit undesirable to discuss them much in public. It was possible to quote an old lawyer'squestion, "Did this man or his parents sin that he was born blind?" with a general and tacitacceptance or knowledge of the truth of Reincarnation. It was possible to have Solomonsay, "I was a wise child and moreover good, and therefore I came into a body undefiled."It was possible to declare that John Hydranos, John the Baptist, was Elijah reincarnated.It was possible to assert that Jeshu should come again before his disciples were all in theirgraves. Paul wrote treatise after treatise and made speech after speech on the chief plankin all his public doctrine - Reincarnation.

It was found convenient to disguise it slightly by calling it the Resurrection. But thatwas because of the precise difficulty that made it necessary to keep from saying muchabout it except in the lodges when close-tiled.

It would be highly inconvenient to have the slaves and carpenters and bricklayersand cooks and barbers and less respectable people all knowing some of the finerramifications of the doctrine, thereby possessing just enough knowledge to do immenseharm, and not enough balance, or self-control, to avoid the dangers incident to apublication of the Mysteries.

For instance, Paul knew perfectly well that when he talked of Reincarnation he wasusing mystery-language that has more than one meaning. Certainly the man reincarnatesagain and again until by his own efforts he is purified and can, after many, many lives onearth, 'reincarnate' or more accurately 'reimbody,' rebecoming the pure divinity from whichhe started out on his long journey for experience. Then there are the secrets ofReincarnation included in the medical assurance that a man's body after seven years haschanged in every particle, and is the new outer case of the soul. There are other secretsincluded in this universal doctrine which we do not know, but can easily sense as to theirexistence.

The country-bumpkin with his wife and family were all initiated - at a price - into thedenatured Eleusinian mysteries of later date, before they perished entirely (a few yearsafter Julian's time), just as the same good fellow is today baptized, with all his family; hesaw the drama of reincarnation without in the least comprehending it. He could pay thefee and see how the master-hand of the divinity within raised the dead into a new andpurified body without having the slightest idea of the lesson taught. The man next to himmight see or go through the same drama and realize the wonderful story of the sun'sannual death and reincarnation - or for that matter even the day-sun's journey through thetwelve 'double-hours' of the day, his death and resurrection. He might grasp a little of thebeautiful symbolism of the great Virgin-Mother who holds the mystery of bread - the staffof life - in her hand while her colleague Bacchus, Iacchos, manifests the mystery of thewine of divine life. But neither of them could ever penetrate the full depth of their divinesignificance. Nor could any priest, as such.

But there it was in its simple sense, obvious to the most simple mind. There wasthe reincarnation of the body symbolized first in the sun itself and then in the sun's protege,the wheat, year after year. And the harvest was intimately bound up in the whole thing.It was the inseparable symbol of Justice, of the Law of Recompense.

You can see it all pictured beautifully in the Egyptian paintings. To the priest, theorthodox scientist, the antiquarian, these are beautiful scenes of farm-life in ancient Egypt.To the simple soul of more intuition and less learning they are the very essence of religioussymbolism.

This is why a common scribbler, a historian of a phase of history several centuriesA.D., can jeer at the 'idiotic' doctrines of Pythagoras and Plato, and yet be regarded as an'authority.' Yet what does it matter?

Julian knew a thousand times more than any of such penmen. If the gods hadrevealed to him that he was Alexander in another body, there is nothing very strange aboutit. Certainly his life shows curious parallels with that of his prototype. Julian is a far greaterAlexander. The latter, drunk and irresponsible, marched across Persia and almost openedthe Road to India. He used the training of past lives to make himself an irresistibleconqueror - until he met a much greater man, Chandragupta, who barred him from India.Alexander died at the age of thirty-three and is reported to have wept because he couldfind no more worlds to conquer. In the ordinary sense this is pure rubbish, because he hadIndia and all China and much more beyond to attack. What he could not conquer was thatkingdom whose conquest is greater than the taking of any earthly city - himself. He hadnot been initiated into the Mysteries and had not learnt to conquer himself in that great andonly real war where he who conquers becomes divine, that war where the glorious victorlearns to make himself 'as nothing in the eyes of men.'

Julian had entered that glorious path of self-conquest and Julian was greater thanAlexander, though less 'in the eyes of men.' Would he also die at the early age of thirty-three blazing the Road to India? Or would he burst through the obstacle created by theLaw of Balance, Karman as they called it in Hindusthan? We shall see.

It is unfortunate that when the gods are mentioned in these days there are few whohave the least idea as to who and what they are. They are not great big people living inthe air in a kind of irresponsible condition, where they can be propitiated by the smell ofroast mutton from a Temple in Jerusalem or anywhere else. Not that roast mutton orpigeon-pie does not have its place in certain ceremonies connected with some of them, forall we know to the contrary. Nor are they a kind of half-silly, good-natured giants who dofunny things for you if you only worry them enough with pleadings and placations.Whatever they are we may be sure that they obey natural laws as much as we do, and farmore faithfully. That is enough for us, so far as concerns our story. If a man passes anopen drain he usually gives it a wide berth. If he does not, then he must be so blunted inhis finer nature that he comes very low down in the scale of intelligence. The law is justthe same with the gods, both good and bad. When a man like Julian or Maximus purifieshimself and his whole neighborhood with a lifetime of purity, then the finer gods willsometimes willingly communicate with him and help him. But fill their shrines with therefuse of the slaughterhouses and you will get no high god to penetrate the foul horribleatmosphere; you may get something like a psychic pariah to delight in a charnel-house,but that is about all. And if you fill the shrine and its neighborhood with the rotting remains

of quite ordinary sinning mortals (even though the newspapers call them 'saints'), you reallycannot expect clean gods to visit the place. They have no desire to catch psychic typhoid!

So it was that when Julian went to the shrine of the glorious Daphne Apollo nearAntioch, there was no response from the bright and sunny god. His fane was shut andplundered. On the day of the great festival Julian went out to pay the honors as HighPontiff of the Roman Empire; and he found no vast crowd of joyous worshipers, no pipingand dancing, no sacrifices, no processions, no priests, no honor. His own story is patheticenough. This is what he writes:

"In the tenth month, according to your reckoning - Loos, I think you call it - there isa festival founded by your forefathers in honor of this god, and it was your duty to bezealous in visiting Daphne. Accordingly I hastened thither from the Temple of Zeus Kasios,thinking that at Daphne, if anywhere, I should enjoy the sight of your wealth and publicspirit. And I imagined in my own mind the sort of procession it would be, like a man seeingvisions in a dream: beasts for sacrifice, libations, choruses in honor of the god, incense,and the youths of your city there surrounding the shrine, their souls adorned with allholiness and themselves attired in white and splendid raiment. But when I entered theshrine I found there no incense, not so much as a cake, not a single beast for sacrifice.For the moment I was amazed and thought that I was still outside the shrine and that youwere waiting the signal from me, doing me that honor because I am supreme Pontiff. Butwhen I began to inquire what sacrifice the city intended to offer to celebrate the annualfestival in honor of the god, the priest answered, "I have brought with me from my ownhouse a goose as an offering to the god; but the city, this time, has made nopreparations."

Then Julian spoke severely, in the Senate, to the people of Antioch, chiding themfor their neglect of religion and their foolish support of the 'Atheists' - the common namefor Christians or Galileans.

"Every one of you," he said, "allows his wife to carry everything out of his house tothe Galileans, and when your wives feed the poor at your expense they inspire greatadmiration for godlessness in those who are in need of such bounty - and of such sort, Ithink, are the majority of mankind." He tells them how they waste money and luxuries indinners, but will not give an ounce of olive oil for religious purposes.

Julian restored the Temple of Apollo at Daphne, but he solemnly calls the mightyHelios to witness that when he entered that temple the god gave him a definite sign thathe had left the shrine. And why had Apollo forsaken his holiest shrine? Because therewas a 'tomb of the godless' built right in front of it; otherwise a 'Christian' Church. Theglorious Apollo Daphneus was forced to leave his shrine, the bones of Babylas, a Bishopof Antioch, having been buried there to desecrate it. The Christians boasted of this. ButJulian was a servant of the gods, and therefore merely directed that the body be removed,reverently, to Antioch. This was done on October 22, 362 A.D., and that very night theChristians burned the restored Temple of Apollo!

This is what Zosimus writes:

"When the winter was past, having collected his forces and sent them before himin the usual manner of marching, he (Julian) departed from Antioch, though without

encouragement from the oracle. The reason of this failure it is in my power to explain, yetI pass it over in silence."

How could he have said more? Probably for the first time in his life as an InitiateJulian undertook a great step without the gods. Even his Master, Maximus the Ephesian,was unable to tell him whether to go forward or hold his hand. It is the way the Law works;it is Karman; it is intelligent 'Fate.'--------

On the MarchIf you draw a great triangle with Antioch pointing north at the northeast corner of the

Mediterranean, the base some distance to the west of Alexandria on the African coast, andits other end at the mouths of the Euphrates and Tigris at the head of the Persian Gulf, youmay say in a rough sort of way that the Euphrates occupies the whole of the right handside of the triangle. And much more than that, for the great river has its beginning in theArmenian Mountains far to the north and towards the Black Sea. But we are notconcerned with this magnificent watercourse until it passes within a hundred miles or soof Antioch to the east of that great city - the third or fourth city in the Western world. Thetremendous deserts to the south are avoided by cutting straight across to the east until youcome to the river, passing through Beroea (Aleppo) and Hierapolis. When you have cometo Hierapolis you may say that you have reached the river, because it is already in thefertile belt which stretches all the way down from the Mesopotamian border to the PersianGulf. Mesopotamia is simply the Greek word for 'between the rivers' (Euphrates andTigris), and as soon as you are over the Euphrates you are in Mesopotamia, since theTigris runs north in a rough parallel to the more western river.

The Romans had long ago obtained power over the countries betweenMesopotamia and Antioch and also had Armenia in their interests. They were also joinedby some of the great warriors of the North and West, the terrible Goths.

Julian's army of 83,000 took five days to reach Hierapolis, about twenty miles westof the Euphrates. The country far to the east was still Roman, but the whole trouble wasthat it was constantly being attacked by the Persians under the great Sapor, and theRomans were able to send only punitive forces, which did little more than reassert theRoman suzerainty. There were Roman cities which held off the Persians when they could,though sometimes they were taken and destroyed and the Roman garrison led away intocaptivity.

Julian's plan was to stop all this by aiming at the heart of Persia, far to the south,where were Ctesiphon and Seleucia and Babylon. If he could punish these cities then heneed never fear that the Persians would again raid the Roman sphere of influence; theywould be afraid. Whether Julian knew it was in the plan, or thought it was, to push on toIndia, history will never know; only the secret records of the oracles and the gods candecide the point.

Julian was a true soldier, just as he was an expert at everything he undertook, bothbecause he had the gods behind him and willingly followed their indications, and becausehe had the Initiate's power of concentration on the work in hand. Where another wouldhave gone straight east somewhere towards Nineveh and in a direct line for India - just asAlexander did - he only pretended to go. As soon as it seemed plain to the Persians that

he had left the Euphrates behind and was making straight for the Tigris, he suddenlyturned at a sharp angle to the southward and picked up his flotilla of provisions andsupplies at the point where he again came to the Euphrates.

He had left Antioch on March 5th, 363. By March 27th he had rejoined his flotillaon the Euphrates. But the eastward movement was not entirely abandoned. A strongdetachment under Sebastian, formerly Duke or Governor of Egypt, and of Procopius, arelative of Julian and his probable heir, were sent on to Nisibis and ordered to hold theirregulars in check. Then, having more or less reduced that part of the country to order andput it under the care of his ally, Arsaces the King of Armenia, they were to march south andjoin him for the important part of the campaign.

At Callinicum where he rejoined his flotilla, Julian celebrated the feast of Demeter-Ceres the Mother of the Gods, the patroness of the Eleusinian Mysteries. Going down theEuphrates the Romans reached Circensium, say half way to Babylon, after about 350 milesof marching from Antioch. This was almost the last garrison in Roman territory and the realcampaign was about to begin.

Constantius had played at this war for several years, never attaining any realsuccess; and Julian found out one of the reasons. While still in Roman territory he sawlong trains of camels tied head to tail as is the custom to tie them to this day.

"What are they carrying?" he asked."Wine!" he was told. "The best wine of every country and all the means for making

its use as pleasant as possible. There's nothing like doing the thing in style!""Isn't there?" asked the Emperor. "They seem to have forgotten that this is war, not

a picnic. The only wine a soldier should drink is that which he loots from the enemy andwins by his sword. Send it all back! I myself am a soldier and I will have just the same dietas the rest!"

There was no answer to such an argument, and the wine was restored to its cellars.All luxury was cut off. But the baggage-animals were not stinted. It was early spring andthe grass grew lush by the riverside; the animals reveled in its freshness.

The first engagement was a good omen for the Romans. They came to an islandwhere the Chaboras joins the Euphrates and here there was a fort to be taken.

When the garrison saw the surrounding hills covered with armed men they openedthe gates and gave themselves up, going to live in Roman territory. This first captureprovided so much in the way of good things that the Roman army lived as well as in a townfor several days.

The next fort was an island so built around with a wall that there was not evenfoothold outside the wall. Julian did not stop to waste time over it, but pushed on,remarking that he would come back and take it when he was ready. Arrived in the land ofthe Assyrians, the Romans had all the provisions they required. It was a rich country, fullof palms and abundant crops and vines. The small towns found everywhere were unableto put up any resistance.

Julian could not prevent the army from drinking the wine they looted, but they didnot drink to excess. They remembered that one man who became drunk was promptlyexecuted. The Assyrians watched them from the surrounding hills helpless to withstandthem.

The Euphrates was much like the Nile. The spring showers in the Armenian hillsmelted the snows of winter and the river swelled enormously. Dykes and canals were ledeverywhere over the surrounding land and the crops rivaled those of the Egyptian river.

Seeing that the Romans must keep to the river, the Assyrians opened all the dykesand flooded the country. The water was a serious obstacle even on the flat, but theinnumerable dykes and canals made sudden dips which meant marching breast high oras high as the chin, and at times the water covered the heads of the advancing soldiers.Those who could swim were in their element. Like a lot of schoolboys they raced eachother to see who could go farthest in the shortest time. But those who could not swim hadto make the best of it, bridging the canals and trying to keep to the raised paths underwater, often falling off and having to be hauled out; officers were rescued by theirservants, servants by their officers. They made fun of the whole thing; they could donothing else, for even the Emperor himself shared their difficulties and, as was his way,laughed at every trouble. Another - say Constantius - would not have hesitated to makethe men stand in the water and hold boards on their heads so that he could cross dryshod.

But Julian was not like that. There was a job to be done and he did it in the shortestand most direct way. His gorgeous purple robe - the insignia of his Imperial office, hecould not lay down. So with it on he just plunged through mud and slime and water,showing the purple robe all stained. How could any of the army make difficulties of thepassage with such an example to follow? Very few men were lost in the floods which theAssyrians made.

But Julian no longer troubled about small castles and forts. They were not so manymiles now from the heart of the country, where the rivers approach one another veryclosely before finally joining, a little below Babylon. On the Euphrates was the city ofPyrisapor, named after the reigning King, Sapor. East of this city, a few miles away on theTigris, were the cities of Ctesiphon and Seleucia; once these were taken. Persia wouldbe almost at the mercy of the Romans.

Pyrisapor had been built with one wall within another, one town inside another. Onthe assault the defenders retreated to the inner town, as being more strongly fortified.Many of the Romans were killed by arrows from the walls, but persevering, the rest raisedmounds level with the top of the inner wall and took the place. Terms were agreed upon:that the townsfolk should not be given back to the Persians even when peace was made.They had fought as well as they could, but even so, the Persians would have treated themas they treated all who surrendered - they would have flayed them alive. And they didn'twant to be flayed alive. They preferred to join the Romans.

Julian was rough-and-ready and democratic, but he was a disciplinarian for all that.The cavalry appointed to protect the advance had been very troublesome. Three timesthey had threatened mutiny (they didn't call it 'striking' in those days,) if they did not get abonus in preference to the rest of the army. And on top of that they 'lost' their captaininstead of following him into the thick of the fray. It was cowardice.

Julian was unarmed and he had only three of his guards with him. But he went intothe midst of these turbulent cavalry and picked out ten men whom he ordered to dismountinstantly. Then he delivered them over to the executioners as a punishment for theirdesertion of their officer.

The country was rich and there was plenty of food. They discovered many womenand children hidden in cellars and caves and underground-passages. The captives in fact,numbered more than the Roman army; yet there was abundance of food for all.

More floods remained to be encountered. Some advised moving out into the desertand marching on dry land. Julian would have none of it. It might be difficult to go throughthe floods, but the whole army might face death from thirst if they went out into the desert.They would go on as they had done before.

Julian was a bookworm, but a practical one. He dug out of his baggage a copy ofPlutarch and showed the advisers how Crassus had led his men to certain ruin doingexactly the same thing. They had no more to say. And as if he had been under theguidance of the gods, the palm-trees soon became plentiful and there was abundance ofwood for making bridges. The soldier-boys treated the whole thing as a game. Whilesome were going over the planks, others dived into the flood and raced them swimming.The floods had proved a failure as defense.

There was a fortress that seemed impregnable. It was on a precipitous island, andthe walls were built as part of the cliffs, of burnt brick cemented with asphalt, very strong.There was a small space by the riverside where grew tall and thick reeds, covering theentrance to a passage which led up into the rock. From this the Persians sallied out andone day nearly caught the Emperor; he only escaped after a hand-to-hand fight. So surewere the Persians that they were safe that they jeered at the Romans from the walls andinsulted them in every way.

The Romans made a little bridge from the bank to the island. Then under cover oftheir coracles, made of hide, they attacked the cliff by mining. The arrows and stonesshowered on them from the walls and could not penetrate the upturned boats under whichthey were working. Even fire would not touch them. The Persians knew that their castlewas being mined but they did not believe it possible for the Romans to succeed. Theydined and drank and made merry in their lofty nest. But the Romans had no wine; theyburrowed and worked unceasingly. The mine was as wide and as tall as a man. The firstRoman that emerged from the hole came out at midnight in the middle of a tower; he wasunobserved by the garrison. One followed after another, and silencing a woman theyfound sleeping with a little child, they soon occupied the doors of the towers. Then theysignalled their companions below to shout.

The Roman victory was complete. The garrison were killed as they jumped out ofbed and ran about the place wondering what had happened. Many of them threwthemselves over the wall and were killed that way; others were thrown over by theRomans; the rising sun looked upon a scene of horror. It was all against the Emperor'sorders, but the soldiers remembered those of their companions who had been killed witharrows and in other ways and it was impossible to restrain them. The Unconquered Sun,the Emperor's patron, had not been intended to look upon such a sight at his rising.

Finally the castle was destroyed to the last brick. It was a lesson to the Persians.They now believed that the Romans were invincible, while the Romans knew they were.

The Emperor Julian, always doing great things and thinking them trifles, this timereally thought that he had done something worth while.

"There! That will give Syrian Libanius, the famous Sophist of Antioch, somethingto make a speech about," was what he said. He was right. His own annals have perished,and it is Libanius who has told us the story.

After this even the baggage-porters went out and captured Persian towns; theinhabitants were so afraid of the Romans. The plan was to punish the Persians soseverely that they should no longer dare to attack the Roman-occupied territory every yearas they had been doing under the inefficient Constantius. Therefore every town wasplundered, and all that could not be used or carried away was thrown into the river or burnt.

A magnificent palace belonging to the Persian King was burnt and all in it destroyed;buildings, gardens, trees, shrubs, flowers, tapestries, all were demolished. Attached wasa magnificent park full of game; wild boars were kept there for the chase. The Romanshad exciting days catching and roasting them.

Forty-five miles from Babylon the Roman army came to the neighborhood ofSeleucia and Ctesiphon on the Tigris, the twin cities. These were the goal of theirambition. There was a great difficulty. The junction of the rivers was some way to thesouth. The Romans were on the Euphrates. If they crossed to the cities by land theywould have to abandon their flotilla. If they went down the river they could not easily getback up the Tigris-branch against the stream.

Julian was always ready for every situation. Again his books served him well.A couple of prisoners were caught, an old man and a youth. They were questioned

about a canal that had once united the Euphrates and Tigris between the place where theywere and the cities of Seleucia and Ctesiphon. The young man told all he knew, notknowing the object of this archaeological inquiry. The old man suspected, but answeredfully because he saw no way of avoiding it. He realized at once that Julian knew perfectlywell what he was talking about, but he did not know that Julian had found it in his belovedbooks.

"Yes, there was a canal there in ancient times," the old man said. "But now it isfilled up, and the part near the river here is sown with corn where the dam was madeacross it."

"At the nod of the Commander-in-chief," says the chronicler, "the obstruction wasremoved." The Euphrates ran into the canal and its own bed was drained dry. The flotillawent down the canal with the army marching alongside. The waters of the Euphrates soswelled the volume of the Tigris that the inhabitants of the cities were alarmed, thinkingtheir walls would be overwhelmed.

The Persian army was forced to face the Romans. The Romans could not haveretreated had they wanted to; all was desolation behind them, and they were in the cornerwhere the canal joins the Tigris. The best of the Persians were facing them; they had"shining shields, and neighing horses, with bent bows, and the huge bodies of elephantsto which it is the same thing to walk through stalks of corn as it is to go through the midstof legions in battle-array." Another Persian army was in the background behind anotherriver and the situation looked serious for the Romans.

What did Julian do?He just made a race-course and turned the place into a sort of Newmarket. Prizes

were given for the winners and the betting was fast and furious.The Persians did not know what to make of it. Here were the Romans celebrating

the victory they had not yet won, just as if they were sure to beat the enemy, though thelatter was far stronger and better placed. It gave the Persians a creepy feeling to see thecalm confidence of this Roman. Nothing seemed to daunt or stop him.

Meanwhile the guards in the boats were disembarked under the pretext ofexamining the rowlocks and oars. In reality the plan was to have the boats ready for thesoldiers to embark instantly and cross the Tigris into the undevastated land beyond. ButJulian was cautious. If he told his plans only at the last minute, it was obvious that spiescould do him little harm in giving the enemy notice of his movements.

After the feast to the officers, Julian took them aside and told them the plan. Thegeneral who had most of the army under him objected to it. The height of the oppositeriver-bank, and the multitude of the enemy, made the thing seem altogether too hazardous.Julian dismissed him and told another to carry on with the scheme.

"You will be successful," he said. "But not without a wound; you will be woundedin the back of the hand and it will need little doctoring."

Who and what was this wonderful leader of theirs to prophesy in that way? Just1050 years or so later Joan of Arc was to do exactly the same thing. Were they bothmerely guessing? Were their predictions mere coincidences, or were the 'gods' behindboth of them?

The fighting men were already in the boats; Julian stood looking steadfastly up intoheaven for The Sign; as soon as he perceived it he gave the signal to the tribunes andthey passed the word with all possible secrecy to the rest. They sailed, they landed, andwere received with a shower of arrows and stones.

The river bank was enough to make the greatest general next to Julian afraid in thedaytime; now it was night. In time of peace, with no opposition, men encumbered witharms would not have attempted the ascent of the bank. Now there were the enemy in faceof them; they were loaded with armor; and yet they mounted the bank. How they did it,the gods alone knew; they themselves could not explain it.

The Romans cut their way through the enemy and attacked their camp, where thesleeping Persians were slain. They were helpless before the onrush of the Romans. Sixthousand Persians were killed.

But the children of the gods must ever suffer for the shortcomings of men and theirdesires. Ctesiphon - Persia - was in the hands of the Romans that night. If the latter hadonly gone to the gates and burst their way into the city.... But the men stayed to rob thedead of their gold and silver and horses. By dawn the opportunity had passed. Whoknows what the future of the whole world would have been if those men had despised theirpersonal desires and had done what their leader told them? But the soldiers knew better.Hence the trouble. It is always so. Still, looked at from the temporary point of view, theRoman success was so great that it hardly occurred to them to think that they could havedone better.

The King, Sapor, sent to Julian to beg for a truce that would end the war then andthere, on condition that Sapor should become the friend and ally of Julian and Rome. Oneof the nobles in the Persian mission sought out Hormisdas, the King's brother, who waswith the Romans, and, clasping his knees in supplication, begged him to take part in thepetition to the Emperor.

Hormisdas gladly did so, thinking he was the bearer of excellent tidings. With ahappy smile he told Julian what he had been asked. To his surprise Julian ordered himto keep silence and to send his Persian visitor away without saying a word to anyoneexcept that the interview was simply on account of the relationship between Sapor andHormisdas.

Julian was not prepared to end the war and he was fearful lest the word 'peace'should leak out among the soldiers and so blunt their energy and courage. Then Julianwent to the walls of Ctesiphon and taunted the Persians with behaving like women withinthe walls instead of coming out to fight.

The Persians replied that Julian must seek out the king, who was elsewhere oncampaign, and show himself to the latter. Julian was willing enough; he wanted to seeand pass through Arbela, where Alexander had broken the power of Darius. "Julianwanted to be celebrated in song as much as Alexander had been!" So the report ran. Anytale is good enough for gossips; and Julian was not telling anyone what his full plans were.In a general way it was known that he wanted to go right through Persia and a little beyond,just as Alexander had done. And then.... Ah, well.... India is very big.

But the faithless Armenian King Arsaces failed him, and his own twenty-thousandmen detached for work with Arsaces in the north failed to arrive in time. This army had hadsome of its men shot at by the Persians while bathing in the Tigris, so they stopped to fightthese guerrillas instead of pursuing the big plan and obeying orders. Besides, theirgenerals were always quarreling and delaying, exactly as Constantius had taught them,and this inaction bred cowardice in the rank and file.

A loss of twenty thousand men of his own eighty thousand, besides the defectionof the Armenian army, was a serious matter. Julian was in a grave dilemma.

But his courage was unabated. He would go on to India. He burnt his boats. In thefirst place, it would have taken half the army to tow them up against the powerful currentsof the Tigris. Then many men would have reported 'sick' and would have had to go in theboats. But with all the boats burnt, the men dared not go sick, whether as malingerers ornot. Fifteen boats had at first been saved for bridge-making, but even these weredestroyed after it was seen how difficult it would be to take them; half the time the strongcurrents would take the boat and the soldiers in it into the hands of the Persians. Actuallythis burning of boats was to the gain of the Romans and the loss of the Persians. Thearmy marched along the Tigris, keeping the river on the left; the country was even morefertile and rich than the other bank, the western side, so that they took more captives andhad no shortage of provisions for all.

Julian's plan for marching eastward from Ctesiphon had to be given up. The officersunder him, like those of Alexander nearly seven centuries before, were very reluctant togo; they wished to retreat. The army could not retrace its steps because of the desolationbehind them. Even if they could have done so the boats were burnt; if they had not beenburnt they would have made the upstream voyage a tremendous drag on the Romans.

Going north along the bank of the Tigris, or at least in the cultivated area, there wasa chance of retrieving the fatal failure of Procopius and the Armenians to join the mainarmy in the south. Even if they could find Procopius in the neighborhood of the Romanterritory to the north, there was still a chance to go East from Nisibis and Arbela, asAlexander had done.

There were difficulties by the way. The main host of the Persian army under Saporsuddenly gave sign of its presence one day in a distant cloud of dust on the horizon. Fromthat moment there were engagements and skirmishes all the time. The Persians were likeCossacks, famous for their horsemanship. It was said in half jest that they could not walk,having lived and slept all their lives on horseback. Their most effective method of attack

was like that of the Parthians - that of dashing up to the enemy and then retreating, butshooting arrows behind them as they went. They were experts at this mode of warfare.

Sapor offered a huge reward for any man who should kill Julian, and the Persianswere all the time on the alert.

Julian was everywhere where most needed, encouraging, helping, planning. Oneday there was a cry that the rearguard was attacked by the Persians. Snatching a shield,but otherwise unarmed, he galloped to help the defense. Then there was a counter-crythat the van was being attacked also. Hurrying back, Julian showed himself everywhere,rallying his men, leading them, preventing panic.

The Persians gave way and Julian was the first to pursue them and to endeavor tounite the broken Roman line. In the heat of the action the combatants raised a cloud ofdust and a sharp spear was thrown; it cut Julian's arm and pierced his side. Julian fell andwas put on a shield. There was no camp: the enemy had been too troublesome, and theRomans were on the march. But a tent was quickly pitched and here the beloved of theold gods lingered on until midnight, when he died.

His was the death of an Initiate, of one who has glimpsed the life of the gods. Calmand self-possessed, he made all preparations. Only once did his fortitude break down.Asking after the welfare of the Master of the Offices, his friend Anatolius, the excellentSallust replied that he was among the blest - that he was dead. Julian wept, - not forhimself but for his friend.

Julian was dead, but the old Maximus survived him after, as they say, seeing himdie.

The Roman debacle was complete. Jovian, a plain but popular soldier, was madeEmperor. Julian would not name a successor because he foresaw that it would spelltrouble from the wretched politicals. Julian had gone to help his men with but oneattendant. In the cloud of dust the opportunity had arisen and it was a treacherous'Christian' hand that killed him. The proof was plain, if for no other reason than that noPersian claimed the huge reward for killing the wearer of the purple. There were thosewho suspected and, indeed, knew who had done the deed; but they preferred to remainsilent, as did Julian himself, if he knew.

The Road to India was closed with Julian; not to be opened for fourteen or fifteencenturies, when perhaps Julian himself, who (they said) had been Alexander, wouldperhaps prepare and open the way or do his part, in yet another body, in opening it. Whoknows? These servants of the gods do their work from life to life, now resplendent inhistory, now obscure. They know little of the fruits of their work, perhaps, but they are everservants of the Great Law and its executors.

There was nothing for it but for the Romans to go back to Antioch as soon as theycould with a whole skin - they took little else. Jovian gave up cities and provinces to thePersians and the wonder was that Sapor stopped where he did in his demands. He musthave been astonished at his own moderation. The treaty once made, both sides observedit rigidly. The Romans reached Antioch with the body of Julian, where the first messengerbearing the terrible news was nearly killed. It was as though he had announced thedestruction of a god. Other messengers in other places were killed!

The Roman army arrived in rags. A few saved a boot or so, carrying it over theirshoulders. The man who had half a broken spear was in luck; the man who saved a bitof a sword was a hero.

It is a story of glorious possibilities and shining opportunities. But the cloud ofspiritual and material darkness was settling slowly down over the West, and the gods wereforced to abandon their ancient shrines.

Much, very much, of the symbolism and machinery of the glorious King Helios,Mithras the Unconquered Sun, and of the Magna et Bona Dea, the Mother of the gods,was imbodied in the eclectic religions of Europe and in other cults. Initiates of theMysteries had sacrificed themselves in order to carry with them some shreds of the oldreligions as seed for the future renaissance, the reimbodiment of the worship of the gods,disguising them as parts of a new cult; the emasculated Mysteries finally died out inEurope and darkness settled over the West. The Unconquered Sun was near his setting.

But Julian's efforts were not wasted. He would reincarnate as a champion oftoleration and pure worship again and again, in other cults, in other lands, and also in thesame lands, without a doubt.

There was to be one more and final effort to keep the Light burning in the Templesof the Old Gods, and only one, before the curtain fell, not to rise again for fourteencenturies. It was the effort and sacrifice of the glorious martyr of Alexandria, Hypatia, fiftyyears later.--------

X. The Correspondence of a Philosopher

Julian was an indefatigable correspondent. He wrote late at night and he was upin the morning hours before others, writing, studying, thinking, working. With theshorthand-writers he got through an enormous amount of correspondence and literarylabor. Without them he was still a giant of the desk. Several times he sat up all night tobegin and end a 'book' which reads like no mere ephemeral journalism but is just asinteresting today as it was when written in the sixties of the fourth century A.D.

Much of his correspondence has been preserved and it is interesting to read, asshowing the mind of the man in that age. Always he had before him the welfare of hispeople, the pursuit of true philosophy, the honor of the philosophers, and, above all, theduties of an initiate of the mysteries of the Sovereign Sun and the Virgin-Mother of theGods.

Writing to Priscus, who was with him in Gaul and Constantinople and in Persia, hesays:

"I swear by him who is the giver and preserver of all my good fortune that I desireto live only that I may in some degree be of use to you. When I say 'you' I mean the truephilosophers, and convinced as I am that you are one of these, how much I have loved andlove you, you well know, and how I desire to see you. May divine Providence preserve youin health for many a year, my dearest and best beloved brother! .... "

To the same Priscus he writes in another letter:

"I entreat you not to let Theodorus and his followers deafen you, too, by theirassertions that Iamblichus, that truly godlike man who ranks next to Pythagoras and Plato,

was worldly and self-seeking. But if it be rash to declare my own opinion to you, I mayreasonably expect you to excuse me, as one excuses those who are carried away by adivine frenzy. You are yourself an ardent admirer of Iamblichus for his philosophy, and ofhis namesake for his Theosophy. And I too think, like Apollodorus, that the rest are notworth mentioning compared with those two."

In a letter to Oribasius, Julian mentions the "excellent Sallust." The word used isChreston Saloustion (Crhston Saloustion), an example of the use of the wordChrest and the possibility of the double meaning so beloved of the Greek philosophers.Here it just means for the ordinary reader that Sallust was a good man. But for aphilosopher who wished to show discreetly that the man of whom he speaks was astruggling devotee of the Mysteries on his way to becoming a Christos rather than aChrestos, the same word could have been used without any profane being the wiser. Thepoint may not seem to be important, but the confusion arising in the last fifteen hundredyears through the failure to understand the distinction between the two words - it wasmeant to be confusing to outsiders - has caused untold misery to the European world.

"It is better to do one's duty for a brief time honestly than for a long timedishonestly," is one of Julian's maxims, which had its eventual application in his own life.

In another letter to Priscus, as in several, there is the phrase kai idia cheiri (kaiidia ceiri) "Added with his own hand." This reminds one of the same phrase withPaul, three hundred years before Julian, who calls attention to his big lettering, as if themalady from which he suffered was an affection of the sight. Many have thought it was so.The custom of writing an autograph postscript seems to have conveyed some specialcompliment to the addressee.

In a letter to the wise and great Maximus of Ephesus Julian lets himself go.

"Everything crowds into my mind at once and chokes my utterance, as one thoughtrefuses to let another precede it, whether you please to class such symptoms amongpsychic troubles, or to give them some other name.... Directly after I had been madeEmperor - against my will, as the gods know, and this I made evident then and there inevery way possible - I led the army against the barbarians...."

He speaks of coming to Besancon.

"It is a little town that has lately been restored, but in ancient times it was a large cityadorned with costly temples, and was fortified by a strong wall and further by the natureof the place; for it is encircled by the river Doubis. It rises up like a rocky cliff in the sea,inaccessible, I might almost say, to the very birds, except in those places where the riveras it flows round it throws out what one may call beaches, that lie in front of it. Near thiscity there came to meet me a certain man who looked like a Cynic with his long cloak andstaff. When I caught sight of him in the distance I imagined that he was none other thanyourself...."

Evidently Maximus wore the regulation cloak and staff and long hair of thephilosophers.

It is difficult for one who has never known a true philosopher to imagine theeagerness and anxiety Julian felt on behalf of his friend Maximus. He is so anxious thathe continually "inquires of the gods" as to Maximus; at the same time he cannot do itpersonally because of that very anxiety being likely to upset the ceremonies, and he isobliged to do it through others.

He speaks plainly to the old philosopher: "I worship the gods openly," he says,

"and the whole mass of the troops who are returning with me worship the gods. I sacrificeoxen in public. I have offered to the gods many hecatombs as thank-offerings. The godscommand me to restore their worship in its utmost purity, and I obey them, yes, and witha good will. For they promise me great rewards for my labors if I am not remiss...."

Julian is under the constant guidance and protection of the gods so long as he doeswhat they tell him. A man in such circumstances rarely mentions the fact; some never do,and it is better so. But with Julian there are often reasons why he should do so. Themission in which he was their apostle; the fact that he is often writing to friends whounderstand his own position with regard to them; the necessity for witnesses to theirpower; his own modesty - all are reasons why he should occasionally mention the help hereceives from those powers which he and others call 'the gods.'

When at Nish Julian heard of the death of Constantius and his own consequentclear path to the Imperatorship. He writes to his uncle Julian:

"I am alive by the grace of the gods and have been freed from the necessity ofeither suffering or inflicting irreparable ill. But the Sun, whom of all the gods I besoughtmost earnestly to assist me, and sovereign Zeus also, bear me witness that never for amoment did I wish to slay Constantius, but rather I wished the contrary. Why then did Icome? Because the gods expressly ordered me, and promised me safety if I obeyedthem, but if I stayed, what I pray no god may do to me! Furthermore, I came because,having been declared a public enemy. I meant to frighten him merely, and that our quarrelshould result in intercourse on more friendly terms; but if we should have to decide theissue by battle, I meant to entrust the whole to fortune and to the gods, and so awaitwhatever their clemency might decide."

Julian's love for the old Maximus is well expressed in a letter written fromConstantinople in 361 or early in 362.

"There is a tradition that Alexander of Macedon used to sleep with Homer's poemsunder his pillow, in order that by night as well as by day he might busy himself with hismartial writings. But I sleep with your letters as though they were healing drugs of somesort, and I do not cease to read them constantly as though they were newly written and hadonly just come into my hands. Therefore if you are willing to furnish me with intercourseby means of letters, as a semblance of your own society, write, and do not cease to do socontinually. Or rather come, with the help of the gods, and consider that while you areaway I cannot be said to be alive, except in so far as I am able to read what you havewritten."

When the decision was no longer in the balance and Constantius was dead, Julianhas no severe words against his murderous and deadly enemy.

"Suffer me to say," he writes to Hermogenes, ex-prefect of Egypt, in the languageof the poetical rhetoricians,

"oh how little hope I had of safety! Oh how little hope had I of hearing that you hadescaped the three-headed hydra! Zeus be my witness that I do not mean my brotherConstantius - nay, he was what he was - but the wild beasts who surrounded him and casttheir baleful eyes on all men; for they made him even harsher than he was by nature,though on his own account he was by no means of a mild disposition, although he seemedso to many. But since he is one of the blessed dead, may the earth lie lightly on him, asthe saying is! ...."

In a letter to Aetius he shows how Constantius had treated the AthanasianChristians. Aetius became a bishop later, though an extreme Arian and even repudiatedby the milder Arians. He says:

"I have remitted their sentence of exile for all in common who were banished inwhatever fashion by Constantius of blessed memory, on account of the folly of theGalilaeans. But in your case, I not only remit your exile, but also, since I am mindful of ourold acquaintance and intercourse, I invite you to come to me. You will use a publicconveyance as far as my headquarters, and one extra horse."

George ('Saint George for Merrie England'!) had been responsible for the exile ofZeno, a famous physician, from Alexandria, and Julian says that if his exile were owing toGeorge, then the sentence of exile was unjust. George of Alexandria was a Cappadocianbishop whose lawless activities caused him to be torn to pieces by the mob of Alexandriaon December 24, 361. Julian declares:

"As for curses from the gods, men in days of old used to utter them and write them,but I do not think that this was well done; for there is no evidence at all that the godsthemselves devised those curses. And besides, we ought to be the ministers of prayers,not curses. Therefore I believe and join my prayers to yours that after earnest supplicationto the gods you may obtain pardon for your errors.... "

He makes the penalty very mild. Simply the official is to be cut off from all that mayhave to do with priests for three months, and then if he has shown good behavior in theinterval he may be again received.

It is well known that the best men of the new church were pagans who had beenforced to become bishops. In the case of Synesius, the friend and disciple of Hypatiasome forty years after this date, he had consented only on condition that he should retainhis beliefs distinct from those of the church! In fact, there was really nothing to prevent apriest of the old gods who knew anything from becoming a bishop of the new cult, anymore than there is in binding an old book in a new binding. But what was objectionable

was the claim of the exotericists of the new cult to possess the inner truths, theirintolerance and, above all, their political activities.

Julian, writing to a priest of Pegasius, says:

"I should never have favored Pegasius unhesitatingly if I had not had clear proofsthat even in former days, when he had the title of Bishop of the Galilaeans, he was wiseenough to revere and honor the gods. This I do not report to you on hearsay from menwhose words are always adapted to their personal dislikes and friendships, for muchcurrent gossip of this sort about him has reached me, and the gods know that I oncethought I ought to detest him above all other depraved persons.

"But when I was summoned to his headquarters by Constantius of blessed memory,I was traveling by this route, and after rising at early dawn I came from Troas to Ilios aboutthe middle of the morning. Pegasius came to meet me, as I wished to explore the city - thiswas my excuse for visiting the temples - and he was my guide and showed me all thesights. So now let me tell you what he did and said, and from it one may guess that hewas not lacking in right sentiments towards the gods.

"Hector has a hero's shrine there and his bronze statue stands in a tiny little temple.Opposite this they have set up a figure of the great Achilles in the unroofed court. If youhave seen the spot you will certainly recognise my description of it. You can learn from theguides the story that accounts for the fact that the great Achilles was set up opposite to himand takes up the whole of the unroofed court. Now I found that the altars were still alight,I might almost say still blazing, and that the statue of Hector had been anointed till it shone.So I looked at Pegasius and said: 'What does this mean? Do the people of Ilios offersacrifices?' This was to test him cautiously to find out his own views. He replied: 'Is it notnatural that they should worship a brave man who was their own citizen, just as we worshipthe martyrs?' Now the analogy was far from sound; but his point of view and intentionswere those of a man of culture, if you consider the times in which we then lived. Observewhat followed. 'Let us go,' said he, 'to the shrine of Athene of Ilios.' Thereupon with thegreatest eagerness he led me there and opened the temple, and as though he wereproducing evidence he showed me all the statues in perfect preservation, nor did hebehave at all as those impious men do usually, I mean when they make the sign on theirimpious foreheads, nor did he hiss to himself as they do. For these two things are thequintessence of their theology, to hiss at demons and make the sign of the cross on theirforeheads.

"These are the two things I promised to tell you. But a third occurs to me which Ithink I must not fail to mention. This same Pegasius went with me to the temple of Achillesas well and showed me the tomb in good repair; yet I had been informed that this also hadbeen pulled to pieces by him. But he approached it with great reverence; I saw this withmy own eyes. And I have heard from those who are now his enemies that he also usedto offer prayers to Helios and worship him in secret. Would you not have accepted me asa witness even if I had been merely a private citizen? Of each man's attitude towards thegods who could be more trustworthy witnesses than the gods themselves? Should I haveappointed Pegasius a priest if I had had any evidence of impiety towards the gods on hispart? And if in those past days, whether because he was ambitious for power, or, as hehas often asserted to me, he clad himself in rags in order to save the temples of the gods,and only pretended to be irreligious so far as the name of the thing went indeed, it is clear

that he never injured any temple anywhere except for what amounted to a few stones, andthat was as a blind, that he might be able to save the rest - well, then, we are taking thisinto account and are we not ashamed to behave to him as Aphobius did, and as theGalilaeans all pray to see him treated? If you care at all for my wishes you will honor nothim only but any others who are converted, in order that they may the more readily heedme when I summon them to good works, and those others may have less cause to rejoice.But if we drive away those who come to us of their own free will, no one will be ready toheed us when we summon."

In a letter to the High-Priest Theodorus, Julian says:

"It means much that we have the same guide, and I am sure you remember him."

Possibly this shows that Theodorus was also a pupil of Maximus. In this letter hesays:

"For I certainly am not one of those who believe that the soul perishes before thebody or along with it, nor do I believe any human being, but only the gods; since it is likelythat they alone have the most perfect knowledge of these matters, if indeed we ought touse the word 'likely' of what is inevitably true; since it is fitting for men to conjecture aboutsuch matters, but the gods must have complete knowledge....

"When I saw that there is among us great indifference about the gods, and that allreverence for the heavenly powers has been driven out by impure and vulgar luxury, Ialways secretly lamented this state of things. For I saw that those whose minds wereturned to the doctrines of the Jewish religion are so ardent in their belief that they wouldchoose to die for it, and to endure utter want and starvation rather than taste pork or [theflesh of] any other animal that has been strangled or had the life squeezed out of it;whereas we are in such a state of apathy about religious matters that we have forgottenthe customs of our forefathers, and therefore we actually do not know whether any suchrule has ever been prescribed. But these Jews are in part god-fearing, seeing that theyrevere a god who is truly most powerful and most good and governs this world of sense,and, as I well know, is worshiped by us also under other names. They act as is right andseemly, in my opinion, if they do not transgress the laws; but in this one thing they err:while reserving their deepest devotion for their own god, they do not conciliate the othergods also; but the other gods they think have been allotted to us Gentiles only. To sucha pitch of folly have they been brought by their barbaric conceit. But those who belong tothe impious sect of the Galilaeans, as if some disease.... "

(The end of the sentence is lost, having probably been cut out by some Christianhand.)

The brutal murder of George, "that impious man," in Alexandria by the populace ina religious frenzy against him, provokes a severe rebuke in another letter. Certainly theyhad been much provoked by 'Saint George,' who exasperated against them the EmperorConstantius, and brought an army into the holy city, when the general in command, whowas more afraid of him than of Constantius, plundered and despoiled the sacred edificesand treasures. Upon the people protesting, the general sent soldiers against them in

support of George, "the enemy of the gods." The citizens of Alexandria tore George inpieces as dogs tear a wolf. Julian admits that they could justly argue that he deserved it,and adds that he deserved more than that, but the citizens had no right to take the law intomob-hands.

Speaking of the power of Christian propaganda he observes that:

"It is their benevolence to strangers, their care for the graves of the dead, and thepretended holiness of their lives that have done most to increase atheism [i.e., the kind ofChristianity that was in vogue in those days]. I believe that we ought really and truly topractise every one of these virtues."

He says the priests in all Galatia must do so, in his letter to Arsacius the High-Priest,when giving instructions as to the conduct of the priests.

Julian made ample provision for hospitality to strangers in Galatia. He says:

"It is disgraceful that when no Jew ever has to beg, and the impious Galileanssupport not only their own poor but ours as well, all men see that our people lack aid fromus.... Teach those of the Hellenic faith to contribute to public service of this sort, and theHellenic villages to offer their first fruits to the gods; and accustom those who love theHellenic religion to these good works by teaching them that this was our practice of old...."

There is an interesting letter to Ecdicius, the Prefect of Egypt, bidding him securethe library of the assassinated George, who, if a political turbulent rascal, was yet ascholar. Julian writes:

"Some men have a passion for horses, others for birds, others, again, for wildbeasts; but I, from childhood, have been penetrated by a passionate longing to acquirebooks. It would therefore be absurd if I should suffer these to be appropriated by menwhose inordinate desire for wealth, gold alone cannot satiate, and who unscrupulouslydesign to steal these also. Do you therefore grant me this personal favor, that all thebooks which belonged to George be sought out. For there were in his house many onphilosophy, and many on rhetoric; many also on the teachings of the impious Galileans.These latter I should wish to be utterly annihilated, but for fear that along with them moreuseful works may be destroyed by mistake; let all these also be sought for with thegreatest care. Let George's secretary take charge of this search for you, and if he huntsfor them faithfully let him know that he will obtain his freedom as a reward, but that if heprove in any way whatever dishonest in the business he will be put to the test of torture.And I know what books George had, many of them, at any rate, if not all; for he lent mesome of them to copy, when I was in Cappadocia, and these he received back."

Athanasius was always a trouble. He was permitted to return to Alexandria andpromptly assumed that he was thereby allowed to take power in the church there. Writingan edict to the Alexandrians, Julian says:

"We have not even now granted to the Galileans, who were exiled by Constantiusof blessed memory, to return to their churches, but only to their own countries. Yet I learn

that the most audacious Athanasius, elated by his accustomed insolence, has again seizedwhat is called among them the episcopal throne, and that this is not a little displeasing tothe God-fearing citizens of Alexandria. Wherefore we publicly warn him to depart from thecity forthwith, on the very day that he shall receive this letter of our clemency. But if heremain within the city, we publicly warn him that he will receive a much greater and moresevere punishment."

A letter to Evagrius beautifully describes the peaceful estate given to Julian by hisgrandmother. We have quoted it elsewhere.

In a letter to Basil he says: "We, though we refute and criticize one another withappropriate frankness, whenever it is necessary, love one another as much as the mostdevoted friends." Basil is to use the state-post and stay as long as he likes, beingfurnished with an escort when he chooses to leave. This Basil afterwards became a Fatherof the Church, famous in church history. He had been at Athens-university with Julian.

Writing to his Uncle Julian, the Emperor says:

"Renounce all feeling of anger, trust all to justice, submitting your ears to his wordswith complete confidence in the right. Yet I do not deny that what he wrote to you wasannoying and full of every kind of insolence and arrogance; but you must put up with it.For it becomes a good and great-souled man to make no counter-charge when he ismaligned."

This advice is given "concerning the affair of Lauricius," of which there is no furtherhistory.

Much has been made of Julian's Rescript on Christian Teachers. He forbids themto teach what they do not believe, like hypocrites and dishonest men. If they despise thegods why do they expound their works as given through Homer, Hesiod, Demosthenes,Herodotus, Thucydides, Isocrates, and Lysias? Did not these men think they wereconsecrated, some to Hermes, others to the Muses? Either let them not teach what theydo not think admirable, or tell their pupils that none of these writers whom they expoundis really guilty of the impiety, folly, and error in regard to the gods of which they are alwaysaccusing them. They make money from these works. They thereby confess that they aremost shamefully greedy of gain, and that for the sake of a few drachmae they would putup with anything. He says:

"It is true that, until now, there were many excuses for not attending the temples,and the terror that threatened on all sides absolved men for concealing the truest beliefsabout the gods.... If they think that those writers were in error, let them betake themselvesto the churches of the Galileans and expound Matthew and Luke....

"For religious and secular teachers let there be a general ordinance to this effect:Any youth who wishes to attend the schools is not excluded; nor indeed would it bereasonable to shut out from the best way boys who are still too ignorant to know which wayto turn, and to overawe them into being led against their will to the beliefs of theirancestors. Though indeed it might be proper to cure these, even against their will, as onecures the insane, except that we concede indulgence to all for this sort of disease. For weought, I think, to teach, but not punish, the demented."

There is another reference to George's library in a letter to Porphyrius:

"The library of George was very large and complete and contained philosophers ofevery school and many historians, especially among these being numerous books of allkinds by the Galileans. Do you therefore make a thorough search for the whole librarywithout exception and take care to send it to Antioch. You may be sure that you willyourself incur the severest penalty if you do not trace it with all diligence, and do not byevery kind of inquiry, by every kind of sworn testimony, and further, by torture of the slaves,compel, if you cannot persuade, those who are in any way suspected of having stolen anyof the books to bring them all forth. Farewell."

To the citizens of Byzacium Julian writes:

"I have restored to you all your senators and councilors whether they haveabandoned themselves to the superstition of the Galileans or have devised some othermethod of escaping from the senate, and have excepted only those who have filled publicoffices in the capital."

The Christians used to become clerics in order to avoid public duties. Constantinemade them immune. Valentinian restored their privileges in 364.

The Arians in Edessa were to forfeit church-funds so as to help them to go toheaven and teach them to behave.

"Since by their most admirable law they are bidden to sell all that they have and giveto the poor, so that they may attain more easily to the kingdom of the skies, in order to aidthose persons in that effort, I have ordered that all their funds, namely, those that belongto the church of the people of Edessa, are to be taken over that they may be given to thesoldiers, and that its property be confiscated to my private purse. This is in order thatpoverty may teach them to behave properly and that they may not be deprived of thatheavenly kingdom for which they still hope."

Speaking to Ecdicius, Prefect of Egypt, of "that enemy of the gods," Athanasius, hesays: "Infamous man! He has had the audacity to baptize Greek women of rank duringmy reign! Let him be driven forth!"

There is a letter to the citizens of Bostra which gives a very true picture of theturbulent politicals who had attached themselves to the Christians as a political party ofrevolutionaries and brought such a bad name on the genuine religious Christians.

"I thought that the leaders of the Galileans would be more grateful to me than to mypredecessor in the administration of the Empire. For in his reign it happened to themajority of them to be sent into exile, prosecuted, and cast into prison, and, moreover,many whole communities of those who are called 'heretics' were actually butchered, as atSamosata and Cyzicus, in Paphlagonia, Bithynia, and Galatia; and among many othertribes also villages were sacked and completely devastated, hereas, during my reign thecontrary has happened. For those who have been exiled have had their exile remitted, andthose whose property was confiscated have, by a law of mine, received permission to

recover all their possessions. Yet they have reached such a pitch of raving madness andfolly that they are exasperated because they are not allowed to behave like tyrants or topersist in the conduct in which they at one time indulged against one another, andafterwards carried on towards us who revered the gods. They therefore leave no stoneunturned, and have the audacity to incite the populace to disorder and revolt, whereby theyboth act with impiety towards the gods and disobey my edicts, humane though these are.At least I do not allow a single one of them to be dragged against his will to worship at thealtars; nay, I proclaim in so many words that, if any man of his own free will choose to takepart in our lustral rites and libations, he ought first of all to offer sacrifices of purification andsupplicate the gods that avert evil. So far am I from ever having wished or intended thatanyone of those sacrilegious men should take part in the sacrifices that we most revere,until he has purified his soul by supplications to the gods, and his body by the purificationsthat are customary.

"It is, at any rate, evident that the populace who have been led into error by thosewho are called 'clerics,' are in revolt because this license has been taken from them. Forthose who have till now behaved like tyrants are not content that they are not punished fortheir former crimes, but, longing for the power they had before, because they are no longerallowed to sit as judges and draw up wills, and appropriate the inheritances of other menand assign everything to themselves, they pull every string of disorder, and, as the proverbsays, lead fire through a pipe to fire, and dare to add even greater crimes to their formerwickedness by leading on the populace to disunion. Therefore I have decided to proclaimto all communities of citizens, by means of this edict, and to make known to all, that theymust not join in the feuds of the clerics or be induced by them to take stones in their handsor disobey those in authority; but they may hold meetings for as long as they please andmay offer on their own behalf the prayers to which they are accustomed; that, on the otherhand, if the clerics try to induce them to take sides on their behalf in quarrels, they mustno longer consent to do so, if they would escape punishment.

"I have been led to make this proclamation to the city of Bostra in particular becausetheir bishop Titus and the clerics, in the reports that they have issued, have madeaccusations against their own adherents, giving the impression that, when the populacewere on the point of breaking the peace, they themselves admonished them not to causesedition. Indeed, I have subjoined to this my decree the very words which he dared to writein his report: "Although the Christians are a match for the Hellenes in numbers, they arerestrained by our admonition that no one disturb the peace in any place." For these arethe very words of the bishop about you. You see how he says that your good behavior wasnot of your own choice, since, as he at any rate alleged, you were restrained against yourwill by adimonitions! Therefore, of your own free will, seize your accuser and expel himfrom the city, but do you, the populace, live in agreement with one another and let no manbe quarrelsome or act unjustly. Neither let those of you who have strayed from the truthoutrage those who worship the gods duly and justly, according to the beliefs that havebeen handed down to us from time immemorial; nor let those of you who worship the godsoutrage or plunder the houses of those who have strayed rather from ignorance than of setpurpose. It is by reason that we ought to persuade and instruct men, not by blows, orinsults, or bodily violence. Wherefore again and often I admonish those who are zealousfor the true religion not to injure the communities of the Galileans or attack or insult them.Nay, we ought rather to pity than hate men who in matters of the greatest importance are

in such evil case. (For in very truth the greatest of all blessings is reverence for the gods,as, on the other hand, irreverence is the greatest of all evils. It follows that those who haveturned aside from the gods to corpses and relics pay this as their penalty.) Since we sufferin sympathy with those who are afflicted by disease, but rejoice with those who are beingreleased and set free by the aid of the gods. Given at Antioch on the First of August(362)."

In a letter to the Alexandrians, Julian mentions that he walked the 'way' of theChristians until his twentieth year.

He speaks of the Noetic Sun, and the visible Sun and the 'living image' of Helios,showing that the genuine sun-worshipers did not revere the physical sun, but the sameChrist-Sun as the genuine nonpolitical Christians of early times.

Athanasius has been reported to him as a clever rascal. Previously he had beenbanished from Alexandria for his political activities; now having shown himself more activetherein than ever he is banished from all Egypt.

Julian shows his desire to promote the cause of music by arranging to maintain anumber of choir-boys with special educational facilities for those who show exceptionalaptitude.

There is an interesting letter to the Jews in which Julian speaks of restoring theTemple at Jerusalem. He was never antagonistic to the Jews. He says:

"Those who are in all respects free from care should rejoice with their whole heartsand offer their suppliant prayers on behalf of my imperial office to Mighty God, even to himwho is able to direct my reign to the noblest ends according to my purpose. This you oughtto do in order that, when I have successfully concluded the war with Persia, I may rebuildby my own efforts the sacred city of Jerusalem, which for so many years you have longedto see inhabited, and may bring settlers there, and together with you, glorify the Most HighGod therein."

In a letter to Photinus, Julian speaks of God entering the womb in a material senseas an impossible consideration.

In directing that funerals should take place only at night, Julian adduces amongother considerations that death is rest; therefore, since the night is appropriate to rest,funerals should then take place. Among the other reasons are that a man going to thetemple meeting a funeral must purify himself and not enter the temple. Also, if heard orseen, a funeral disturbs the temple-services. Those who know what is right in such mattersdo not approve of funerals taking place until after the tenth hour of the day (4 p.m.). Hesaid little about the impurity of funerals connexion with temple-rites of real religion, but itwas well known that the oracles were ruined by the burial of Christian corpses and bonesin the churches or temples or near them. No pure oracle could approach such a charnel-house.

Shortly before the commencement of the Persian campaign, Julian wrote to Arsacesthe king of Armenia a very severe letter, anticipating his failure to support him (Julian).Julian speaks plainly of the possibility of his dying or being killed on the campaign, butpoints out that Arsaces will gain nothing by deserting him, because he will in due time becrushed by the Persians if he fails. Actually Arsaces, as Julian anticipated, did

treacherously desert him and thereby ensured the failure of the campaign so far as suchdesertion could do it.

In another letter, Julian speaks in open language of the Invisible Sun, showing that,as we have already said, the physical Sun is worshiped only by exotericists as a symbolof the real Sun.

Perhaps it is the protest of an initiate against a too-open revelation of mysteries thatprompts Julian to say of Paul that "he surpassed all the magicians of every place andtime," and also that he changed about with every condition like a polypus changing tomatch the rocks.

Julian speaks of the "godlike Iamblichus."He speaks of Christianity - the blatant political fanaticism of the day, not the real

Christianity, - as a disease. Undoubtedly he was right, for such political frenzy on anominal religious basis is truly a mental disease.

Even on campaign he writes: "As for the number of letters I have signed, andpapers, - for these, too, follow me everywhere like my shadow...."

He tells of the curious superstition or test of the German mothers who float theirnew-born babies on the Rhine. If they sink, it is a proof of their illegitimacy. If they float,it is a sign of their true birth. Also possibly it was a test of hardiness. A baby that couldsurvive such an ordeal would surely be physically strong!

Lydus says that Julian wrote to the Jews: "For I am rebuilding with all zeal thetemple of the Most High God." This may contain the usual double entendre used byinitiates and mystics the world over. For Julian was so rebuilding the temple in his ownheart most actively. But the reference to the Most High God points to El Elion of the Jews,who is of course the same as the Helios of the Greeks, in his true character.

The Christian Bishops invented classics to take the place of the Greek classicalliterature. Julian says of these: "Egnwn, anegnwn, kategnwn, "I recognised,I read, I condemned."

He speaks of the barley-beer or wine of the Celts as not being nearly so good as theItalian wine. Apparently whisky and beer date back at least fifteen hundred years amongthe Celts.

To the Christians claiming adherence to the Jewish Old Testament, Julian very aptlyquotes Exodus, xxii, 28, "Thou shalt not revile the gods." The politicals cared so little foranything but their selfish schemes that they paid no attention to such precepts of the law.Real Christians did not 'revile the gods,' but then they kept themselves very much tothemselves, as they always had done, in order to avoid the self-seekers.

Julian quotes 1 Corinthians, vi, 6, 8, 9-11, for the class of men who becameGalileans:

"But brother goeth to law with brother, and that before the unbelievers, .... ye dowrong, and defraud, and that your brethren....

"Be not deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolators, nor adulterers, nor effeminate,nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, norrevilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you...."---------

XI. Aftermath

The new Emperor, Jovian, reigned only seven months. After burying the body ofJulian at Tarsus, he went on towards Constantinople, and soon died. The excellent Sallustwas chosen Emperor to succeed him. But he, wise man, declared that he was too old forsuch a responsibility. His son, then? No, he was too young. Finally the army decided onValentinian, a great soldier but illiterate. He accepted.

Within a month Valentinian made his brother Valens co-Emperor. Valens was giventhe Eastern Empire while Valentinian ruled Europe. In reality, Valens was hardly fitted forthe position. He had not been brought up as a soldier or an organizer and was a farweaker character than his brother. But the strangest part of the combination was thatValentinian was an orthodox Athanasian Christian, while Valens was an Arian, partiesalways ready to cut each other's throats figuratively when not actually. The Athanasianchroniclers are naturally severe in their condemnation of the cruelty of Valens towards theAthanasians - it is not easy to hew history to its due proportions when written by factionists- but probably there was something in their complaint. Both Athanasians and Arians weremen of their time, cruel to each other when opportunity arose. But both were 'Christians'and thus both persecuted the adherents of the old gods when they thought it desirable.

There is a curious tale told. From the genuine oracles of the greater gods therewere innumerable degrees of divination down to the merest catch-penny predictions withno gods back of them at all. The average chronicler had no means of knowing just whatoracles were reliable and which were mere hocus-pocus. All he knew was that sometimesthey were remarkable. As told by one who was neither a partisan nor too credulous, thetale runs that at Antioch there was an imperial notary named Theodorus, a man ofreputation, birth, and education, but young. A band of designing men persuaded him thatthey were men of great learning and experts in divination and prediction. To ascertain whoshould succeed Valens in the Empire, they erected a tripod of divination which was toreveal in a secret manner what should happen in the future. The letters T h e o d soonappeared in the tripod and this was of course read to mean that Theodorus was to becomeEmperor after Valens. Theodorus became so involved in these follies that he continuallyran after jugglers and sorcerers, consulting them as to the future. Finally he wasdenounced to the Emperor and duly punished.

Oddly enough, in 379, Theodosius became Emperor of the East after Valens, andas far as it went the oracle was amply justified.

But the incident, small in itself, led the way to a great oppression. Fortunatianus,the Emperor's Treasurer, ordered a soldier to be punished with the lash for practisingsorcery. To save himself, the soldier accused others as his accomplices, whether theywere so or not. Some of these were not subject to the Treasurer's jurisdiction and the casewas taken before Moderatus, the Prefect of the Court. The Emperor was extremelyincensed, suspecting all the most celebrated philosophers and men of learning, also someof the most distinguished men at court, of conspiracy against himself. Probably sinceValentinian was illiterate, his brother Valens was also, and this anger may well have beenpartly due to jealousy of more learned men than himself. Also, without doubt, there wassectarian fanaticism in it.

Being himself immune, the soldier accused people right and left, as did otherinformers. All the accused were imprisoned until the jailers declared that the cells wouldhold no more. The country roads were thronged with marching convoys of the accuseduntil they resembled the congested streets of great cities. Their money, their property, theirlives, were taken. The Christian Emperor's treasury grew fat on the proceeds. The wives,children, and dependents of the philosophers were left destitute.

"The first philosopher of note who suffered was Maximus, the next was Hilarius ofPhrygia, who had interpreted clearly some obscure oracles; after these, Simonides,Patricius the Lydian, and Andronicus of Caria, who were all men of extensive learning, andcondemned more through envy than with any shadow of justice."

The bitterest accusation against Maximus was that he had been given monetarysupport by Julian.

"A universal confusion was occasioned by these proceedings, which prevailed tosuch a degree that the informers, together with the rabble, would enter without control intothe house of any person, pillage it of all they could find, and deliver the wretched proprietorto those who were appointed as executioners without suffering him to plead in his ownjustification. The leader of these wretches was a man named Festus, whom the Emperor,knowing his expertness in every species of cruelty, sent into Asia as Proconsul, that noperson of learning might remain alive, and that his design might be accomplished. Festustherefore, leaving no place unsearched, killed all whom he found, without form of trial, andcompelled the remainder to fly from their country."

Meanwhile the Age of the Fathers was fashioning and crystallizing and petrifyingWestern theology into the form which was to carry it down for the next fifteen centuries.Jerome, Augustine, Basil - the college friend of Julian - Gregory Nazianzen, Ambrose, JohnChrysostom, to say nothing of Athanasius and even Cyril, all are names that writethemselves large on the screen of ecclesiastical history of the half-century.

Of these only one interests us at the moment; Gregory of Nazianzus. We have methim as a young man at Athens University in the company of Basil and Julian. If the firstcharacteristic of Basil was that he was a man of gentlemanly manners, Gregory's was thatof a rather sour blusterer who often carried his point in argument by his own prescriptionof 'words.' He even went so far as to make this a compliment to the second person of theTrinity who, as an abstraction, was called the 'Word.' But Gregory's words, though oftenconvincing to his ignorant audiences on the spur of the moment, had no backbone, noheart, no base. He was very much the type of a park tub-thumper who convinces more bythe torrent of his verbiage than by his reasoning.

"There is nothing so well calculated to deceive the people as verbiage," Gregory issaid to have written to a friend. In another place he says, "It is well-fitting for us to returnthanks to God in behalf of words."

After Julian's death, this Gregory thought it incumbent on him to attack the dead lionin a long wordy invective, which for centuries was regarded by partisans of one or the otheras either seriously damaging, or a monument of reasoning, according to the point of view.In fact, it is neither; it is an excellent specimen, a hundred and twenty pages long, of the

jugglery of words, full of sound and fury, meaning nothing. You can read diligently throughthe whole wilderness of words and find hardly half-a-dozen lines worthy of serious attentionin the light of their avowed purpose, vilification of Julian. However, Gregory's haranguedoes give a few sidelights on the manner of man he himself was and, by inference, on thedeep ignorance of his audience.

He appeals to the soul of the Great Constantius - a soul washed in the blood ofmost of his own family and a sprinkling of others' for good weight - though Gregorydiscreetly omits that. Gregory actually declares that Constantius ought to have murderedthe baby Julian with the rest, and lest his audience should think he is only speakingrhetorically he repeats the pious sentiment more than once.

As a specimen of a preacher's argument of the day we can see how he speaks ofthe way in which Julian actually made some of the Christians restore what they had stolenfrom the destroyed temples. He talks of this as "submitting with joy to the robbery of theirpossessions" - this, fittingly enough, on the same page where he declares himself to be amaster of words. The fact is, try as they might, neither Gregory nor Julian's bitterestenemies could find any accusation of evil or oppression against the latter. Gregory saysso.

It is an interminable harangue, this Invective against Julian. But in the torrent ofwords Gregory manages to wrap up some very foul calumnies in such a way as toconvince his hearers and yet leave a loophole for his own escape, if challenged, bydragging in rumor and gossip. He goes so far as to say that Julian's oracles of the comingdeath of Constantius were not foreknowledge but knowledge, that Julian had arranged topoison Constantius on that date, through a trusty hand! Unfortunately for the argument theidea was not original. It was dangerous to Gregory's cause to suggest such a thing sosoon after the death of Arius and the triumph of Athanasius; or was it the old trick of loudlyaccusing your enemy of doing what you yourself have done or are about to do? TheAthanasians had not thought of producing an oracle previous to the death of Arius, inagony in the market-place of Constantinople - they had no oracles. But it would have beena good alibi if they had. Therefore when Julian does so, it is a proof of his cheating.

Gregory is positively dishonest in his political bias. He is obliged to mention theawful persecution of his own sect, the Athanasians, by Constantius, who favored theArians. So he used the term "He vexed us a little"! A man who can so denature historyis not to be trusted in anything said against a man he unreasonably hates. He even goesso far as to say that the Christian God was behind all the acts and deeds of Constantius!

Gregory's oratory carries him away into saying that Constantius had Julian caughtin a net between his forces and then,

"Alas for our wickedness! In the very middle of his march (Constantius) closes hismortal career, after offering many excuses to God and man for his misplaced humanity andhaving set an example to all Christians by his zeal of affection for the Faith!"

This touching picture of Constantius praying for forgiveness for not having murderedthe baby Julian with the rest did not seem to strike the congregation as peculiar in any way.C. W. King, the eminent translator of this sermon, says that in reality the dying Emperor,caring for nothing but his infant daughter and wife, publicly declared Julian his heir andsuccessor, assured of their safety under his protection.

The Mithraic initiation is quoted against Julian as a terrible dealing with demonsunder the guidance of Maximus, who, by the way was quite as much of a saint as Gregory,and in the opinion of many, much more so. Julian is represented as quailing before thedemons he challenged in the Mithraic cave and successfully making the sign of the crossto drive them away before facing them a second time. There is a curious suggestion in thisgarbled account of what was an inviolable secret. (How did Gregory know about it? Hisexcuse of popular rumor will not hold water for the moment.) This is the Mithraic form ofwhat was in another derived Mystery called the Temptation in the Wilderness, such as allchrests or neophytes had to pass through. And the talisman of the cross was used in theMysteries thousands of years ago. Did Gregory know if this symbol was used in thisparticular connexion? The Labarum with its "In hoc signo vinces" - was it part of thisceremony, or only of others? Certainly the Labarum differs from the later adopted Romancross, but so does the early Christian swastika-cross derived from India. There is extanta picture from a Roman catacomb showing a grave-digger who wears on his cloak theswastika as the Christian cross. This is one of the very earliest Christian representationsof the cross.

Gregory either knows too much or too little. He describes Julian as being reborn inthe Mysteries as a magician and therefore wicked, forgetting that his own ritual describesthe physical birth of an Initiate as being honored by the holy magicians - or in the Latin formof the word, magi.

The pious trust of Gregory in the power of words - verbiage - leads him very fartowards treating his audiences as possessing no intelligence whatever. He brings upJulian's greatest crime against the political Christians.

He will not make martyrs of them, thus depriving them of the greatest source ofpublicity! Let them suffer by being forbidden to speak, (Gregory himself would have burstif he had been muzzled for long!) but let them not have the honor of doing so. This wasthe wicked Julian's cruel device. Well, if Gregory could drag in no worse accusation thanthat, it seems regrettable that he should waste breath and ink in a hundred and twentypages of pious vituperation!

Incidentally there was a very real grievance for some in Julian's refusing to makemartyrs of certain of the worst of the anarchists. There were among them ignorant fanaticswho really believed that if they could insult all law and authority and order, and behave inan impossible way against public interest, they had only to call themselves 'Christians'before being put out of the way to earn eternal glory and a martyr's crown and the honorsthey could never attain on earth. Their courage was more admirable than their ignorance.To these insane seditionists it was a real hardship to find that they could in no way getthemselves 'martyred'! We do not refer of course to the few real martyrs who did suffer fortheir genuine religious opinions at other times, but merely to these fanatics of the middlefourth century who could not have given the remotest definition of what Christianity was,to save their lives.

King remarks pertinently that this in itself is an admission that is quite

"sufficient to disprove the existence of any persecution for religion's sake. Julian's grandoffense in the preacher's eyes was the depriving the Christians of the power of persecutingothers of different views, of which they had fully availed themselves during the twenty-fouryears of the reign of Constantius."

A curious accusation is that Julian in his tyranny "attacks our religion in a veryrascally and ungenerous way, and introduces into his persecution the traps and snaresconcealed in arguments!" The plea is illuminating as showing that the ignorant did not somuch mind martyrdom - it was a cheap way, as they themselves said, of earning eternallife and honor, and Julian, the brute, would not confer it on them! but the rascally andungenerous use of arguments was like a foul blow in a prize-fight, because, they held, theChristians could not stand up against reason!

When Julian became Emperor some of the vilest politicals were tried by a militarycourt, and punished by the court as they deserved. Gregory is injudicious enough tocomplain that these brutes were executed because they were Christians. Why, some ofthem were the very ones who during the reign of Constantius had bitterly persecuted theChristians of Gregory's own party! And Julian had nothing to do with their condemnation.But so eager is Gregory against Julian that he forgets himself like this many times. The'christians' were fortunate to be relieved of such court-pests - unless they were politicalsof precisely the same kidney, which in truth some of them were.

While trying to blame Julian for dismissing Christians from office in the state,Gregory carelessly shows that Julian did nothing of the sort, not for religious reasons, inany case. To make an argument, Gregory declares that there were many Christians inoffice and high station whom Julian kept there in the hope of some day subtilly convertingthem to the gods!

The preacher sneers at Julian's marching on foot with his armies, his eatingwhatever food was available, his doing everything for himself, and in the same breathrhetorically calls upon him to admire the unwashed feet and general filthiness of the holyChristian ascetics. This was not meant to be a funny argument, but quite serious, and onewonders what the congregation who heard this wild discourse were like? Their generalunwashedness is described as superiority to things below, a being above things human,the plea of many who disbelieve in soap. Gregory says nothing of it here, but actuallythere was a real 'philosophical' argument behind this aversion. The idea was that whenChristians had undergone the ancient Jewish rite of baptism they were washed clean ofall sin and everything else, and it was thereafter an insult to the Deity to wash their bodiesor faces! So far was this carried that the greatest authority of the day, or a few years later,accounts for the shearing of nuns' tresses as being a convenience to enable them toscratch more easily, since they must not wash!

Gregory is quite indifferent to consistency when he can raise an argument.Glorifying words, he does not hesitate to claim it as a great virtue when he describes someof his party inventing sufferings for themselves and then keeping silent about them.

King notes a curious giving-away of his case when Gregory says:

"That thing, however, was very bad and ill-natured in him when, not being able topersuade us openly, and being ashamed to force us like a tyrant he.... forced us withgentleness!"

According to the curious rhetorical custom of the time, Gregory never once actuallynames Julian.

A great case was made of the setting-up of statues and pictures of the gods andthose of the Emperor. By this means the common soldier's salute was said to be a

cunning device to make them honor the gods. But the noisy agitators were quite unableto show that more than a very few even noticed this. The congregation listening to all thisstuff without protest must have been appallingly ignorant to swallow it; unless they hadmostly gone home to dinner after a few hours of it, weary of the non-stop sermon, andleaving the remainder asleep and unattentive.

The customary salute of the soldiers at the Emperor's distribution of bounty seemedto offer even better ground for noisy agitation. Some one in a brilliant momentremembered the test for Christians in the days of the Diocletian persecution. They had tothrow a few grains of incense on the burning tripod; the mild Roman officials were satisfiedwith even a motion pretending to do it in the case of ordinary fairly decent befooledcitizens; soldiers had even been known to shove the trembling ignorant Christian's arm,so as to save his life, by pretending that he had thrown the pinch of incense on the altarof his own accord. But now the same ceremony was merely the ordinary Imperial saluteand meant nothing more. The Emperor sat on his throne, with the tripod before him andthe master of ceremonies close by. The soldier took the bounty and at the same timethrew a pinch of incense on the fire; the soldier thought no more of it than he did ofsaluting the Emperor in any other way, except that he was the more pleased to do it seeingthat he was receiving a valuable cash-present at the same time from the Emperor's hands.

The Emperor had been generous and the soldiers did as soldiers do, went homeand 'treated' their comrades to a good dinner. This is what Gregory says of the way thesubtil agitators improved the occasion to spread disaffection.

"After the meal, when the drinking had advanced as far as the customary colddraught, they, as though no harm had happened, invoked the name of Christ over the bowlcontaining the liquor, casting their eyes upwards with the sign of the Cross."

This is an extraordinary picture of the degradation of the Mysteries into publicity.Julian knew well what the Christ was and is, and realizing such things how could he dootherwise than as he did - keep reverent silence over the mystery, even if for so doing hewas accused of being anti-Christian by those who knew nothing whatever of the mysteryand almost nothing of the name, except its sound.

Gregory continues:

"Some of their messmates, wondering at it, said: 'What means this? Do ye mentionChrist, after renouncing him?' 'How have we renounced him?' reply they, half-dead withfright [Gregory loves to make his audience shiver!] and, 'What is this strange news wehear?' On his reply, 'You have thrown incense on the fire,' and informing them that wasthe renunciation, immediately, leaping up from the banquet, like men out of their sensesand frantic, boiling with zeal and fury [and wine?] they rushed through the grand square,shouting out and calling, 'We are Christians! Christians in our souls! Let every man hearit, and God above all, unto whom we live and will die! We have not been false to thee, OSavior Christ; we have not denied the blessed Confession; if the hand has erred at all,the conscience has not gone with it. We have been cunningly entrapped by the Emperor;we have not turned traitors for gold. We cast off the impiety; we cleanse ourselves withour blood!' Then, running up to the Emperor, they cried out very boldly, 'We have notreceived gifts, O Emperor, but have been condemned to death; we have not been

summoned for honor, but have been sentenced to disgrace. Grant a favor to thy ownsoldiers: sacrifice us to Christ, of whom alone we are the subjects; give us fire instead ofthe fire; make ashes of us instead of those ashes; cut off the hands which we so wickedlyextended; the feet with which we so wickedly ran. Honor with thy gold others that will notrepent of having taken it; Christ suffices us, whom we have in the place of all things.'Saying these things all with one voice, they also exhorted the rest to understand the fraud,to recover from their intoxication, to make excuse to Christ with their blood. The Emperorwas exasperated at this, but avoided putting them to death openly, that he might not makemartyrs of them - they who, as far as depended on themselves at least, were true martyrs;he sentenced them to banishment and so took his revenge on them, thereby conferring onthem the greatest benefit, that they should be stationed at a distance from his stratagems."

Thus Gregory. Assuming for the purpose of argument that what he says is truerthan the rest, this gives a very strange picture of the times. Imagine such a scene in anyarmy today among soldiers who had well dined! Comment is unnecessary. But one hassuspicions that their comrades would have done peculiar things to the agitators in theprivacy of the barracks. They wouldn't let an Emperor treat the agitators so good-naturedlyand gently.

The savage bent of Gregory's mind is shown by his detailed and most rhetoricalaccount of the torture of the aged Marcus by the mob of the Arethusians. This Marcus haddestroyed their temple when he was protected by Constantius, and they were unable tostop him. The mob in Julian's time, overwhelmed with hatred of this plundering fellow,sought him out and demanded replacement of the Temple and its treasures at a highfigure. Marcus, true to the principles of those who wanted 'martyrdom' and a cheappurchase of eternal happiness, refused to pay a penny. The mob came down and downin their demands almost to nothing, but the old man would not give a single coin.Bystanders even offered to pay the small final demands of the outraged and robbedpeople, but Marcus would not allow it. So they gave him what any other mob lessexasperated would have given him. They let their fury loose upon him, and the things theydid are not nice to repeat.

But Gregory is delighted with the opportunity this gives him for saying that Julian,the persecutor who would not persecute, was responsible for the old man's torments.Then as a crowning argument - they certainly did learn funny logic at the University ofAthens - Gregory declares that Marcus thoroughly deserved what he got for having savedJulian when a baby from the massacre set on foot by Constantius! It was in fact a seriouscrime against 'Christ' not to have murdered Julian when he had arrived at the mature ageof six!

Again we are tempted to see in the listening congregation a crowd of devoteescompared with whom the most unwashed Hyde-Park crowd are pillars of deportment andmonuments of learning. Perhaps this comparison really is no exaggeration.

As the interminable sermon proceeds, the preacher waxes less logical than ever.He declares vehemently that Julian meditated persecutions against the Christians whichnot even Diocletian, nor Maximian, nor Maximin, ever dreamed of; terrible, unspeakablethings, if there could be anything more terrible than those persecutions really were. Well,what are these super-terrible things? Just this; Julian intended to deprive the Christiansof all freedom of speech (sermons of a hundred and twenty pages long on nothing at all

were to be prohibited, presumably!) Gregory had this terrible thing reported by spies in thepalace. The Christians were to be excluded from all meetings, markets, and publicassemblies, nay, even from the law-courts! The very idea leaves this particular word-monger foaming at the mouth. And he quotes Julian's justification for these harshmeasures, compared to which mere death was nothing: a pleasure, in fact. Julian says:

"That it is part of our religion neither to resist injury nor to go to law, nor to possessanything at all, nor to consider anything one's own; but to live in the other world, and todespise things present as though they were not; neither is it lawful for any one to returnevil for evil, but when they are smitten on the one cheek to turn the other also to the smiter,and to be stripped of the coat after the cloak."

And perhaps he will add, "to pray for those that injured them, and wish well to theirpersecutors."

Says Gregory,

"'Tis very true he could not help knowing all this - he that once was a Reader of thedivine oracles, was a candidate for the honor of the great pulpit, and used to glorify theMartyrs by the gift of churches and of consecrated lands!"

Then wisely he runs off into a lot of red-herring talk calculated to relieve him of thenecessity of arguing away Julian's logic; there is a wistful suggestion that it seems a pitythat Julian knew about these once-Christian precepts and virtues. Julian is so absurd asto expect the Christians not to be politicals and agitators and office-seekers, but merelyreligious people!

Julian's preliminary plans are quoted by the preacher Gregory as though they werestolen from his own party.

"He also, having the same design, was intending to establish schools in every town,with pulpits and higher and lower rows of benches, for lectures and expositions of theheathen doctrines, both of such as give rules of morality and those that treat of abstrusesubjects; also a form of prayer alternately pronounced, and penance for those that sinnedproportionate to the offense; initiation also, and completion, and other things that evidentlybelong to our constitution. He was purposing also to build inns and hospices for pilgrims,monasteries for men, convents for virgins, places for meditation, and to establish a systemof charity for the relief of prisoners, and also that which is conducted by means of lettersof recommendation by which we forward such as require it from one nation to another -things which he had especially admired in our institutions."

Gregory makes an admission which is interesting to students of ancient church-practices. He says:

"There are, I will not deny it, among ourselves, also certain doctrines underconcealment, but what is the nature of their envelope, and what the effect on the mind?Neither the outward form is indecent, whilst the hidden sense is admirable and exceeding

glorious, to such as are introduced into its depth, and like some beauteous andunapproachable body, it is veiled by a robe by no means to be condemned."

This shows that there were even in Gregory's time a few remaining fragments of themystic symbolism of the ancients left in the church.

Gregory describes Julian's death as "truly seasonable and salutary for the wholeworld." In a note, King the translator says that Sozomen is even bolder and boasts that theblow was the vengeance of a Christian.

In contrasting 'our' dead, namely, Constantius, with Julian, Gregory becomes almostcomic in his eagerness to whitewash him. He dares not say that the angels sang to thefuneral cortege as it passed over Mount Taurus, but he does what he often does in similarcases, says that the people heard music and singing and that "he supposes" these werethe angels! This

"in honor of his piety and a funereal recompense of his virtue. For although he hadseemed to shake the foundations of the true faith, this, nevertheless, must be laid to thecharge of his subordinates' stupidity and unsoundness, who, getting hold of a soul that wasunsuspicious and not firmly grounded in religion, nor able to see the pitfalls in its path, ledit astray what way they pleased, and under the pretense of correctness of doctrineconverted his zeal into sin."

It is a bold statement that "Constantine laid the foundations of the Imperial powerand of the Christian religion." Says Gregory:

"Our Emperor was received in the tomb in the Church of the Apostles [atConstantinople], who received the holy race, and now guard their remains, which receivealmost equal honors with their own!"

You would hardly guess from this that Constantius most severely persecutedGregory's party. Nor would you realize that Julian treated Gregory well enough, makinghis brother his own physician.

There is a much-quoted passage of Gregory, usually given as though perfectlyserious and reliable instead of coming out of such a curious storehouse of illogicalarguments, wordy insults, and hopelessly twisted bits of fact. Gregory refers to Julian ashe knew him at the University of Athens:

"This character of his was made known by experience to others, and by his comingto the throne, which gave him free scope to display it. But it had been previously detectedby some, ever since I lived with this person at Athens; for he too had gone thither,immediately after the catastrophe of his brother, having himself solicited this permissionfrom the Emperor. There was a double reason for this journey: the one more specious -the object of acquainting himself with Greece and the schools of the country; the othermore secret, and communicated to but few - that he might consult the sacrifices and cheatsthere upon matters concerning himself; so far back did his paganism extend. At that time,therefore, I remember that I became no bad judge of his character, though far from beingof much sagacity in that line; but what made me a true guesser was the inconsistency of

his behavior and his extreme excitability (that is, if he be the best diviner who knows howto guess shrewdly). A sign of no good seemed to me to be his unsteady neck, hisshoulders always in motion and shrugging up and down like a pair of scales, his eye rollingand glancing from side to side with a certain insane expression, his feet unsteady andstumbling, his nostrils breathing insolence and disdain, the gestures of his face ridiculousand expressing the same feelings, his bursts of laughter unrestrained and gusty, his nodsof assent and dissent without any reason, his speech stopping short and interrupted by histaking breath, his questions without any order and unintelligent, his answers not a whitbetter than his questions, following one on top of the other, and not definite, nor returnedin the regular order of instruction.... I exclaimed as soon as I had observed these signs,'What an evil the Roman world is breeding!....'"

And so he goes on. As an argument, the whole rigmarole is rubbish. As an insultto the dead Emperor the audience may have drunk in every word like mother's milk withoutunderstanding in the least. The only value there is in it for us is the sidelight it throws onGregory, the people, and the character of the time.

By the time he had come to the end of the sermon - he had to make two sessionsof it, with an interval for dinner, maybe - Gregory has persuaded even himself that Julianreally was a terrible persecutor. "How bitterly thou didst persecute the Christians, and eatup so holy a people," he says, addressing the dead Julian.

And the only persecution he can really lay his hands on is that Julian had theintention of making him keep his mouth shut! What a pity Julian did not carry this dreadfulpersecution into actuality! Without the power of pouring forth a stream of words, words,words, and yet more words, Gregory could not have survived a single day!-------

The old adept of Ephesus was doubtless glad to go. His work was done. Thetwilight of the gods was deepening to the thick pall of the night that men call the Dark Ages.One star alone was yet to shine as a sign of hope for future days when the Egyptianblackness should clear away. Hypatia, the glory of Alexandria, was yet to rise and set.The magnificent city of Alexandria was built in the form of an enormous Roman Cross.True to the symbolism of the eternal Mysteries which claimed Julian as their Apostle to theend, Hypatia was 'crucified' upon it. After her.... the dark.

The End

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