Julian’s Rise and His Turn to Paganism

The emperor Constantius died on the frontiers of Cilicia on the third of November, in the consulship of Taurus and Florentius. Julian left the western parts of the empire about the eleventh of December following, under the same consuls, and came to Constantinople, where he was proclaimed emperor. Since I must speak of the character of this prince, who was so remarkable for his learning, let his admirers not expect me to attempt a grand rhetorical style, as if the portrait had to match the dignity of its subject. My object is to compile a history of the Christian religion, and so it is both right, for the sake of being better understood, and in keeping with my original purpose to hold to a plain and unadorned style. Still, it is proper to describe his person, his birth, his education, and the way he came to possess the sovereign power; and to do this I must go back to some earlier events. [a]

Constantine, who gave Byzantium his own name, had two brothers, Dalmatius and Constantius, sons of the same father but of a different mother. The first of these had a son who bore his own name; the second had two sons, Gallus and Julian. Now when Constantine, the founder of Constantinople, died, the soldiers put the younger brother, Dalmatius, to death, and the lives of his two orphaned children were in danger too. But a disease that seemed likely to be fatal saved Gallus from the violence of his father’s murderers, while Julian’s tender age protected him, for he was only eight years old at the time. The emperor’s jealousy toward them gradually died down. Gallus attended the schools at Ephesus in Ionia, a country where considerable family estates had been left to them. Julian, when he was grown, pursued his studies at Constantinople. He went constantly to the palace, where the schools then were, dressed as a private citizen, under the supervision of the eunuch Mardonius. Nicocles the Spartan taught him grammar, and Ecebolius the Sophist, who was a Christian at that time, taught him rhetoric. For the emperor had made sure that he would have no pagan teachers, so that he would not be lured into the pagan superstitions; for Julian was a Christian at the beginning.

His progress in learning soon became so remarkable that people began to say he was capable of governing the Roman empire. This talk spread widely and greatly troubled the emperor’s mind, so he had him moved from the Great City to Nicomedia, and at the same time forbade him to attend the school of Libanius, the Syrian Sophist. Libanius had been driven out of Constantinople at that time by a combination of the teachers there, and had withdrawn to Nicomedia, where he opened a school. There he vented his indignation against those teachers in a treatise he wrote about them. Julian, however, was forbidden to be one of his hearers, because Libanius was a pagan in religion. Even so, he privately got hold of his speeches, which he not only greatly admired but also read often and studied closely. As he was becoming very skilled in the art of rhetoric, Maximus the philosopher arrived at Nicomedia. This was not the Byzantine Maximus, the father of Euclid, but the Ephesian, whom the emperor Valentinian later had executed for practicing magic. That happened later; at that time the only thing that drew him to Nicomedia was Julian’s fame. From him Julian received, besides the principles of philosophy, his own religious views and a desire to possess the empire.

When these things reached the emperor’s ears, Julian, caught between hope and fear, became very anxious to quiet the suspicions that had been aroused. So he began to put on the outward appearance of what he had once truly been. He had his head shaved to the skin and pretended to live the life of a monk. In private he pursued his philosophical studies, but in public he read the sacred writings of the Christians, and he was even made a reader in the church of Nicomedia. By these plausible pretenses he succeeded in turning aside the emperor’s displeasure. He did all this out of fear, but he by no means gave up his hope. He told his friends that happier times were not far off, when he would hold the imperial power. While things stood this way, his brother Gallus, who had been made Caesar, came to Nicomedia to see him on his way to the East. But when Gallus was killed not long afterward, the emperor suspected Julian and ordered a guard to be set over him. He soon found a way to escape from them, however, and by fleeing from place to place he managed to stay safe. At last the empress Eusebia discovered where he was hiding and persuaded the emperor to leave him unharmed and let him go to Athens to pursue his philosophical studies. To be brief, the emperor recalled him from there and afterward made him Caesar. Besides this, he gave him his own sister Helena in marriage and sent him against the barbarians. For the barbarians whom the emperor Constantius had hired as auxiliary forces against the usurper Magnentius had proved useless against him, and were beginning to plunder the Roman cities. And since Julian was young, Constantius ordered him to undertake nothing without consulting the other military commanders.

Now these generals, having been given such authority, grew slack in their duties, and as a result the barbarians grew stronger. Seeing this, Julian let the commanders give themselves up to luxury and revelry, but he worked hard to put courage into the soldiers, offering a fixed reward to anyone who killed a barbarian. This measure effectively weakened the enemy and at the same time won him the affection of the army. It is reported that as he was entering a town, a civic crown that hung between two pillars fell onto his head, which it fitted exactly. Everyone present gave a shout of admiration, taking it as a sign that he would one day become emperor. Some have claimed that Constantius sent him against the barbarians in the hope that he would die fighting them. I do not know whether those who say this are telling the truth. But it is certainly unlikely that he would first have joined him to himself by so close a marriage tie and then have sought his destruction, to the harm of his own interests. Let each reader judge the matter for himself. [g]

Julian complained to the emperor about how inactive his military officers were, and this got him a colleague in the command who was more in sympathy with his own zeal. By their combined efforts they attacked the barbarians so hard that the barbarians sent him an embassy, assuring him that they had been ordered by the emperor’s letters, which they produced, to march into Roman territory. But he threw the ambassador into prison, attacked the enemy’s forces vigorously, and defeated them completely. He took their king prisoner and sent him alive to Constantius. Immediately after this brilliant success the soldiers proclaimed him emperor. Since there was no imperial crown at hand, one of his guards took the chain he wore around his own neck and bound it around Julian’s head. That is how Julian became emperor. Whether he afterward conducted himself as a philosopher should, let my readers decide. For he did not send an embassy to Constantius to open communication with him, nor did he pay him the least respect in acknowledgment of past favors. Instead he appointed other governors over the provinces and ran everything just as he pleased. Moreover, he tried to bring Constantius into contempt by reading out publicly in every city the letters Constantius had written to the barbarians. Having in this way turned the people of these places against Constantius, he easily persuaded them to revolt from him to himself. After this he no longer wore the mask of Christianity. Everywhere he opened the pagan temples and offered sacrifice to the idols. He called himself “Pontifex Maximus,” and gave permission to anyone who wished to celebrate their superstitious festivals.

In this way he managed to stir up a civil war against Constantius, and so, as far as it depended on him, he would have dragged the empire into all the disasters that war brings. For this philosopher’s aim could not have been reached without much bloodshed. But God, in the sovereignty of his own counsels, checked the fury of these rivals without harm to the state, by removing one of them. For when Julian arrived among the Thracians, news was brought to him that Constantius was dead; and so the Roman empire was saved at that time from the internal strife that threatened it. Julian at once made his public entry into Constantinople, and considered how he might best win over the masses and secure popular favor. So he took the following measures. He knew that Constantius had made himself hated by the defenders of the homoousian faith by driving them out of the churches and banishing their bishops. He was also aware that the pagans were extremely discontented with the prohibitions that kept them from sacrificing to their gods, and were very eager to have their temples opened, with freedom to practice their idolatrous rites. In fact, he saw that while both these groups secretly nursed bitter feelings against his predecessor, the people in general were deeply angered by the violence of the eunuchs, and especially by the greed of Eusebius, the chief officer of the imperial bedchamber. In these circumstances he dealt cunningly with every party. With some he hid his intentions; others he attached to himself by doing them favors, for he liked to put on a show of generosity; but to all alike he made plain his own preference for the idolatry of the heathen.

First, in order to brand the memory of Constantius by making him look cruel toward his subjects, he recalled the exiled bishops and gave them back their confiscated property. Next he ordered the proper officials to see that the pagan temples were opened without delay. Then he directed that those who had been victims of the eunuchs’ extortion should receive back the property they had been robbed of. Eusebius, the chief of the imperial bedchamber, he punished with death, not only for the injuries he had done to others but because he was convinced that it was through Eusebius’s schemes that his brother Gallus had been killed. He honored the body of Constantius with an imperial funeral, but he expelled the eunuchs, barbers and cooks from the palace. He did without the eunuchs because they were unnecessary now that his wife had died, since he had resolved not to marry again; the cooks, because he kept a very simple table; and the barbers, because, he said, one was enough for a great many people. These he dismissed for the reasons given. He also returned most of the secretaries to their former station, and set a salary fitting their office for those he kept. He reformed the public post and the conveyance of supplies as well, abolishing the use of mules, oxen and donkeys for this purpose and allowing only horses to be used. A few people highly praised these various cutbacks, but everyone else strongly condemned them as tending to bring the imperial dignity into contempt, by stripping it of the trappings of pomp and splendor that have such a powerful influence on the minds of ordinary people.

Not only that, but at night he used to sit up composing speeches, which he afterward delivered in the senate; and in fact he was the first and only emperor since the time of Julius Caesar to make speeches in that assembly. He gave the most flattering patronage to those who were distinguished for learning, and especially to those who were professional philosophers. As a result, a crowd of pretenders to this sort of learning flocked to the palace from every direction, wearing their philosophers’ cloaks, and more noticeable for their dress than for their learning. These impostors, who always adopted the religious views of their prince, were all hostile to the welfare of the Christians. And Julian himself, whose excessive vanity led him to mock all his predecessors in a book he wrote called The Caesars, was led by the same haughty spirit to write treatises against the Christians as well. Dismissing the cooks and barbers is, in a way, the act of a philosopher indeed, but not of an emperor. But ridiculing and caricaturing others is the part of neither a philosopher nor an emperor, for such persons ought to be above the influence of jealousy and slander. An emperor may be a philosopher in everything that concerns moderation and self-control; but if a philosopher tries to imitate what might suit an emperor, he will often abandon his own principles. We have now spoken briefly of the emperor Julian, tracing his descent, his education, his temper of mind, and the way he came to be invested with the imperial power.