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LIFE AND LETTERS
IN
THE FOURTH CENTURY
BY
TERROT REAVELEY GLOVER M.A.
CLASSICAL LECTURER AND FORMERLY FELLOW OF ST JOHN'S COLLEGE CAMBRIDGE LATE PROFESSOR OF LATIN IN Ql'EEN*S UNIVERSITY CANADA
SEEN B/
PRESERVATION
SfckVICES
CambriHgt :
PRINTED BY J. & C. F. CLAY AT THE UNIVEB81TY PRESS.
OG "2, (2
TO
JOHN WATSON JOHN MACNAUGHTON
AND
JAMES CAPPON
IN MEMORY OF
FIVE WINTERS IN CANADA
PREFACE
WHEN studying the history of the early Roman Empire the reader has at call a thousand impressions of the writers of the day, whom he has read from boyhood, and who have helped to form the mind and the temper with which he reads. But the same does not hold of the period of the Gothic invasions and the fall of Paganism. The litera- ture is extensive, but it is not known, it is hardly read. No one who has given it a sympathetic study can call it wanting in pathos or power, but the traditions of scholarship point in another direction. An age that can boast an Augustine and a Syuesius in prose, a Claudian and a Prudentius in poetry, is nevertheless in general ignored, except by scholars engaged in some special research, who use them as sources.
My endeavour has been, by reading (if I may use the expression) across the period, to gain a truer knowledge be- cause a wider. Then, bearing in mind its general air and character, I have tried to give the period to my reader, not in a series of generalizations but in a group of portraits. I have tried to present the men in their own way, carefully and sympathetically ; to shew their several attempts, successful or unsuccessful, to realize and solve the problems common to them all ; and to illustrate these attempts from their environment, literary, religious and political. As far as pos- sible, I have tried to let them tell their own tale, to display themselves in their weakness and their strength.
viii Preface
I have deliberately avoided the writers, whose work may be strictly called technical or special, for those whose concern was more with what is fitly called literature, but I have at the same time not forgotten the former. For instance, to have treated the theological writings of Athanasius or Augustine at all adequately would have gone far beyond my present limits. And indeed it was less necessary to attempt this, as it has been done fully and ably by others. Rather my concern has been with the world in which the philosopher and the theologian found themselves, and I trust that some who study them may find help in my effort to picture this world. For such students I am only supplying background. Still I hope this background may have for those who are interested in the refraction of light as well as in light itself, a value and an interest as a presentment of an important and even pathetic moment in the history of our race.
As my course has been across the period, I have had again and again to explore a fresh stream upward and toward its source. Every writer has his own antecedents, and some consideration of these has been in every case necessary. No stream however lacks tributaries, and some have many. I suppose that of all of these I should have had some personal knowledge, but as this would have meant a constantly widening and never-ending series of independent researches, I have done the human thing in accepting the work of other men in outlying regions, while surveying as far as I could myself the lands adjacent to my particular subject in each instance. In such cases I have generally given my authority. It may very well occur that specialists will find blunders in detail in my work. I have found them myself in places where I felt secure. But I trust that no blunders will be found of such dimensions as to un-focus any of my portraits or at least to affect at all materially my general picture.
I have made constant use of the works of Gibbon, of M. Boissier, of Dr Hodgkin and Professor Bury. Other books
Preface ix
which I have consulted are mentioned in the various notes. Professor Dill's interesting book, Roman Society in tfie last Century of the Western Empire, I did not see till some seven of my chapters were written. As in one or two places his work and mine have overlapped, I felt I had less freedom to use his book, but in general it will be found that our periods and provinces have been quite distinct. My table of dates is based chiefly on Goyau, Chronologie de I' Empire Romain. Dr Sandys has been kind enough to read some of my proofs.
Most of my work on this volume has been done in Canada. Those who know the difficulties with which young Universities have to contend in "all the British dominions beyond the seas," difficulties incident to young countries and as a rule bravely faced and overcome, will not be surprised that the Library at my disposal was small. But any one who knows Queen's University will understand what compensations I have had for a limited number of books in the friendship, the criticism and the encouragement of the colleagues to whom I have dedicated my work.
ST JOHN'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE, September, 1901.
CONTENTS
PAGE
Table of Dates xii
Chapter I. Introduction 1
„ II.— Ammianus Marcellinus 20
„ III.- Julian .' 47
„ IV. Quintus of Smyrna 77
„ V. Ausonius L • . . 102 v
„ VI. Women Pilgrims 125
„ VII. Symmachus 148
„ VIII. Macrobiua 171
„ IX. St Augustine's Confessiont 194
„ X. Claudian 216
„ XL Prudentius 249
„ XII. Sulpicius Severus 278 t,
„ XIII. Palladas . 303
„ XIV. Synesius 320
„ XV. Greek and Early Christian Novels . . . 367
NOTE. Summaries of the contents of the chapters may be found by reference to the index under the names of the authors treated.
TABLE OF DATES
310 ? Ausonius born at Bordeaux.
325 Council of Nicaea.
Gallus, brother of Julian, born.
? Ammianus Marcellinus born (or later).
? St Silvia of Aquitaine born.
326 Helena goes to Palestine.
328 Athanasius bishop of Alexandria.
Death of Helena on her return from Palestine.
330 Consecration of Constantinople.
331 Julian born.
332 Monnica born.
333 The "Bordeaux pilgrim" goes to Palestine.
337 Death of Constantino. Succession of Constantius and his brothers
Constans and Constantino. Murder of eight members of the Imperial family.
338 Sapor besieges Nisibis for sixty-three days, but cannot take it. Eusebius of Nicomedeia, bishop of Constantinople.
339 Death of Eusebius of Caesarea, the historian.
340 Constantino the younger invades Italy and is killed. His share of
the Empire passes to Constans. ? St Ambrose born. ? St Jerome born. ?Symmachus born (or later).
341 Incursions of Franks into Gaul.
342 Death of Eusebius of Nicomedeia. Peace made with the Franks.
343 Councils of Sardica and Philippopolis.
Table of Date* xiii
:*l»; Sapor again besieges Nisibis, but after seventy-eight days al>andons tin- siege.
347 ?John Chrysostom bom.
348 War with Persia. Prudentius born.
349 Sapor for the third time besieges Nisibis in vain.
350 Magnentius, a German, declared Emperor in Gaul. Death of Constans.
Vetranio proclaimed Emperor at Sirmium (1 March). Magnentius master of Rome.
Conference of Constantius with Vetranio (25 Dec.). Vetranio's sol- diers desert him. Ho is pardoned by Constantius. Gallus recalled to Constantius' court, and made Caesar next year.
351 War between Constantius and Magnentius.
352 Magnentius loses Italy and falls back on Gaul. Liberius bishop of Rome.
353 Constantius marries Eusebia.
Magnentius, defeated and deserted, kills himself. Paulinus (afterwards bishop of Nola) born at Bordeaux.
354 Constantius at war against the Alamanui. Fall of Gallus.
Augustine born (13 Nov.) at Thagaste.
355 Campaign of Constantius against Alamanni. Julian at Milan, and afterwards at Athens. Revolt of Silvanus.
Franks, Alamanni and Saxons invade Gaul.
Julian declared Caesar, and married to Helena. He pronounces his first panegyric on Constantius and goes to Gaul.
356 Julian retakes Cologne, held by Germans 10 months.
357 Julian, in supreme command in Gaul, crosses the Rhine and defeats
the Germans. Constantius visits Rome.
359 Gratian born.
Sapor crosses the Euphrates. Siege and fall of Amid.
360 Julian's second panegyric to Constantius.
Kurther operations of Sapor. Constantius prepares to meet him. Soldiers proclaim Julian Emperor. The Empress Eusebia dies. ?Stilicho born (or earlier).
xiv Table of Dates
361 Constantius marries Faustina.
Julian crosses the Rhine and Constantius the Euphrates ; both suc- cessful in their foreign campaigns and march against each other.
Death of Constantius (Nov.).
Julian enters Constantinople (Dec.), and orders re-opening of temples, and proclaims toleration.
Bishop George murdered in Alexandria.
362 Julian goes to Antioch (midsummer). Heathen revival.
363 Julian's Persian campaign. Death of Julian (June).
Jovian, Emperor, surrenders Nisi bis and five provinces to Sapor.
364 Death of Jovian (Feb.).
Valentinian and Valens, Emperors, in West and East respectively. Saxons, Picts and Scots ravage Britain. Alamanni in Gaul.
365 Avianius Symmachus prefect of Rome. Revolt of Procopius.
? Sulpicius Severus born. ? Synesius born (Volkmann).
366 Fall of Procopius.
Death of Liberius bishop of Rome. Fight of Ursinus and Damasus for see of Rome. Damasus bishop.
367 Valens crosses the Danube to meet the Goths.
368 The Count Theodosius in Britain. He takes London.
369 Campaign of Valentinian against Alamanni across the Rhine.
Symmachus and Ausonius follow the expedition.
370 Ausonius writes the Mosella.
371 Rising of Firmus in Africa.
Death of Patricius, Augustine's father.
372 Adeodatus, son of Augustine, born.
373 Death of Athanasius.
374 Ambrose bishop of Milan.
375 Death of Valentinian. Gratian succeeds him and refuses the title
Pontifex Maximus. Valentinian II also Emperor, aged 5 years.
376 Count Theodosius beheaded at Carthage.
377 Arcadius born.
378 Paulinus consul.
Gothic war. Defeat and death of Valens at Adrianople. The younger Theodosius (I) succeeds him as Emperor in the East (379).
Table of Dates xv
379 Ausonius consul.
381 Council of Constantinople.
383 Maximus proclaimed Emperor by his soldiers in Britain. He crosses
to Qaul. War with Gratian.
Murder of Gratian. Peace between Maximus and Valentinian II. Augustine goes to Rome.
384 Honorius born.
Death of bishop Damasus, who is succeeded by Siricius.
385 Stilicho's campaign in Britain against Picts, Scots and Saxons. Theophilus bishop of Alexandria.
387 Affair of the Statues at Antioch. Baptism of Augustine. Maximus invades Italy.
388 Defeat and death of Maximus.
390 Massacre at Thessalonica by Theodosius' orders. Ambrose forbids
him the church.
391 Symmachus consul.
Anti-pagan legislation by Theodosius.
392 Valentinian II murdered by order of Arbogast, who makes Eugenius
Emperor, in Gaul.
393 Eugenius comes to Italy and issues decrees in favour of paganism.
394 Flavian reestablishes pagan rites in Italy. His soldiers desert
him on approach of Theodosius, and he commits suicide. Battle of the Frigidus between Theodosius and Eugenius (5 Sept). Theodosius defeats and kills Eugenius (6 Sept.). Theodosius visits Rome.
395 Death of Theodosius at Milan. The Empire is divided between his
sons Honorius (West) and Arcadius (East). Probinus and Olybrius consuls. Alaric invades Greece.
Fall of Rufinus, minister at Constantinople. Augustine bishop of Hippo.
396 Stilicho blockades Alaric at Pholoe. Alaric escapes somehow.
397 Synesius goes to Constantinople.
Gildo the Moor transfers his allegiance from Rome to Constantinople,
and stops the corn supply of Rome. Chrysostom bishop of Constantinople.
398 War with Gildo, who is defeated and killed.
xvi Table of Dates
399 Revolt of Tribigild the Goth in Phrygia.
Fall of Eutropius. Affair of Gainas in Constantinople.
400 Stilicho and Aurelian consuls. ? Death of St Martin.
402 Battle of Pollentia (Hodgkin).
403 Honorius visits Rome.
404 Deposition of Chrysostom.
405 Cerealis governor of Pentapolis.
407 Death of Chrysostom.
408 Murder of Stilicho.
First siege of Rome by Alaric.
Death of Arcadius. Succeeded by Theodosius II.
409 Second siege of Rome by Alaric.
410 Third siege of Rome and its capture by Alaric (24 Aug.). Synesius bishop of Ptolemais.
412 Death of Theophilus bishop of Alexandria. Succeeded by Cyril.
413 ? Death of Synesius.
415 Murder of Hypatia.
416 Return of Rutilius Namatianus to Gaul.
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
BEFORE proceeding to the study of the fourth century in the lives and writings of a series of typical men, it will be well to take a general survey of the period as a whole. Such a course, without the further study, is apt to be unfruitful and unsatisfactory, yet as a preface to it, it may help the student to a right orientation. The different phases of the century's life will be dealt with at more length in the various essays, in which many things set here will find fuller illustration. Here however in the meantime our concern is with general outlines and broad statements. For the sake of clear- ness certain main lines will be followed, — a plan which has the drawback, incidental to all such dissection, of failing to shew in the fullest way the interlacing of forces and tendencies which con- stantly react on one another. I shall try to shew something of this in my summary, but it is best felt when we read the period in flesh and blood.
Let us begin with the Roman Empire — difficult indeed to grasp in all its meanings, and apart from the Church the greatest factor in history. What it first meant to /; ™^ ^ mankind was peace and law. We may be shocked to n^e read here of a Roman governor in Spain or there of one in Asia burning men alive in the days of Cicero and Virgil, of endless crucifixions, of the extortions of a Verres, of venal rulers and infamous publicans. Yet there is another side to all this, for in the first place we know of all these things chiefly because they shocked the Roman conscience. 'There was a great deal more that should have shocked it but did not, because the world was not yet
1
2 Life and Letters in the Fourth Cent tin/
educated. In the next place, what did the Empire replace ? We do not know this so well, but where we have any light we see that it was generally a change for the better. The sentimentalist may sigh for Greek freedom and for the national independence of other races, but in the great age of Greece liberty had meant the right of single cities to rule themselves, and what was now left of it was worse than worthless, while the other peoples had never (with one exception) been very clearly conscious of their nationality. The peoples of the East had reached high levels of civilization and organization, but through all the centuries of their intellectual and commercial development they had been under the sway of the foreigner. In the West there was even less national conscious- ness1, for there Rome had faced not nations, but clans, never united except by accident and always ready to quarrel. When at last the peoples of Gaul and Spain began to feel conscious of their race, they voiced their feelings in Latin. Rome thus had not to extinguish nationalities, but rather she replaced here despotism and there anarchy with the solid advantages of a steady govern- ment, if severe, at least conscientious.
If Rome's yoke was heavy (and at times it weighed very heavily on some unlucky province), still hardly any attempt was made to throw it off. Rome had not as a rule to dread rebellion when once the charm of a hereditary dynasty was broken. Almost the sole exception is the Jewish people, a race made self-conscious by its own prophets, by its Babylonian captivity and by the tyranny of Antiochus Epiphanes and his like. Here the Roman met his match, and here was the one people to impose its will upon him. While everywhere the Roman government was sensitive to local peculiarities of administration and religion and careful to respect them where it was possible not to alter them, with the Jew special terms had to be made wherever he was. His Sabbath, his syna- gogue, his temple dues, the jurisdiction of his elders were all conceded to him; but even so Rome had to face rebellion after rebellion, and when that stage was past there still survived the Jewish riot in Alexandria. Here alone Rome failed, but with every other race once mistress she was mistress for ever, making all peoples equal and members one of another under her sway.
The Roman roads bound the Empire together. They were kept
1 Cf. Seeck, Gesch. des Untergangs der antiken Welt i. (second edition), pp. 207 — 212, on "diese Schwache des Staatsbewusstseins und des National- gefiihls" among the early Germans.
I nt mil action .'{
in onW and they were safe, and freedom of travel and trade prevailed as never before. In the West the schoolmaster was the sturdy ally of the government, and Latin culture bound Gaul and Spaniard to Rome till any other form of rule became inconceivable. R<>man law found one of its most famous seats at the university of Berytus in Syria, while in the West it shaped the thoughts and conceptions of men to such an extent that it imposed itself at last upon the Church and its theology, from which it is not yet eradi- cated nor likely to be. East and West agreed in the belief that Rome's rule was eternal. Afrahat the Syrian and Tertullian the first great Latin father alike inculcate that the fall of the Roman Empire will not come till the Day of Judgment and the world's end. In a certain sense they are no doubt right, but their prophecy was of the formal government of Rome. The distress caused by the Gothic invasions is partly to be traced to the feeling that, if Rome fell, there was no possible power to take her place. Thus she stood for law, for peace and quiet, and for the general order of the universe. She was a necessary part of the universe, and her rule was a postulate for all rational thought on society.
Yet there was a bad side to all this. All power was cen- tralized in the Emperor, more and more so as the generations passed, partly from the jealousy of the ruler and partly from the habits of obedience and reliance induced by long dependence. The faculty for self-government was paralysed by long disuse. Men were at first afraid and afterwards unable to think and move for themselves1. The consequences of such a decline are hard to compute, but the general helplessness of the Roman provinces in the face of invaders, numerically inferior but strong in the self-reliance of a free people without much govern- ment, is perhaps the most striking evidence of decay.
Another source of mischief was bad finance. From very early days the prejudice that trade is an unworthy occupation for a noble and high-spirited man had survived. No great industries were developed, and the world was poorer for want of the ingenuity they stimulate and the wealth they bring. The slave system was no doubt in ]iart responsible for this, but not altogether. Industries depend
1 Tacitus already remarks an irucitia reipublicae ut alienae — a striking phrase (Hist. i. 1). Seeck, op. cit. pp. 287—8, calls attention to the effect of the proscriptions in removing the brave and independent, and leaving only the weaker to be the fathers of a new generation — themselves and their children alike cowed by these examples of the results of independence. See p. 343.
1—2
4 Life find Letter* in the Fourth Century
on intelligence and observation, and these were depressed by the conditions of absolute government, and there was no foreign society to quicken them by competition and correspondence. As if this were not enough, taxation was arranged on fatal principles. The middle classes paid all the taxes, and, the towns being taxed as units, with every loss to the circle of tax-payers the burden was more and more intolerable for the rest. The lower classes, at least in Rome, were fed, amused and bathed for nothing. Free grain, free wine, free pork and free oil may trace their descent from the laws of Gains Gracchus. The extravagant beast-shows and gladia- torial games were another legacy from senatorial Rome, and these were a tax on the rich all over the Empire. Symmachus spent £80,000, equivalent I suppose to four times the sum to-day, on one set of shows. Beast-catching was indeed a flourishing, if an unpro- ductive, industry. Money was wasted in other ways, especially after Diocletian's remodelling of the imperial system and his establishment of two Emperors and two Caesars, each of the four with an extravagant court. Presents to the Emperor were another form of extortion.
Beside these elements of decay, and connected with them, was the terrible legacy left by the Republic in debased morals. The Roman character had its fine side, as we see in the qualities a Roman loved — gravitas and modestia, and in the ideals to which he aspired — honores and anctoritas, and while this is written for good all over the face of the Roman Empire and Roman institutions, there was another side. It may seem fanciful to go back to Hannibal for the beginning of Rome's decline, but he began the decay of Italian agriculture, and from his day Italian yeomanry died away. Following immediately on the Hannibalic war came the conquests of Greece and Western Asia, and the simultaneous flooding of Rome with Greek philosophy and Asiatic wealth. The one taught the Roman to despise the rustic gods of his fathers, and the other their thrifty, farm-bred ideals. Sudden wealth joined forces with a flippant scepticism to sap the Roman character, just as a successful rebellion and an enormous and rapid accumulation of -ealth in the hands of persons without traditions have given a modern people a bad repute for lawlessness and want of taste. Neither in the one case nor in the other are redeeming features wanting, as we have seen, but the Roman aristocracy and the middle class were almost entirely corrupted. The last century of the Republic is marked by reckless and tasteless selfishness of the
most violent type and by its fruits in chaos, massacre and Over all this rose the Empire, heir to a weakened manhood and lowered ideals. It stopped in some measure the rapid progress of the disease, but the germs of Rome's decay it could not reach. It • •mild not touch the essential scepticism of Roman society; it might try to revive a discredited religion and restore a forgotten ritual, but the profound unbelief underlying all the ideas of the upper classes was beyond its power to cure. Slavery was too deeply rooted in the social scheme to be meddled with, and indeed it seems to have occurred to no one to meddle with it. Marriage fell into disuse, as was natural when the sceptical and self- indulgent had the slave-system in their homes. And in spite of wars and proscriptions there was still the great wealth and still the tradition of replenishing it more or less honestly by the spoliation of the provinces. There was still the passion for the gladiatorial games and for the theatre — the schools of murder and of lust whose lessons were only too faithfully learned.
The wars of the year 69 A.D. mark a stage in Roman history. It is as though the world now definitely accepted the fact of the Empire. The restlessness that marks its first century is past. Then the sons of men, who, if not statesmen, had played great parts on the world's stage, were settling sullenly down to splendid and caged insignificance in Rome, eating, drinking, conspiring, raging and failing. Now, a quieter mood comes over the world. There is less rage and less extravagance, and the fruits of a quiet move- ment of thought begin to appear. Scepticism is yielding place to Stoicism, the philosophy of endurance. It was followed by a genuine revival of religion, genuine in that men believed in their convictions of its truth, but after all a sentimental revival. Scepticism and despair had yielded to philosophy, but the human heart wanted more'. Still sceptical it turned to religion, and of this mood of faith and uufaith, of this wish to believe and this doubt of the possibility of belief, came the revival. It was not of the best or the strongest, but it did good. It had an air of asceticism about it, and decency revived and society grew purer. But it could not check the decline. w
1 Cf. Strauss, tier n»m<nitiker auf dem Throne p. 20, "In such times of trantution in the world's history, men in whom feeling and imagination out- weigh clear thinking, souls of more warmth than clearness, will ever turn backward toward the old." This is written of Julian, but it applies to the whole revival in question.
0 Life mid Letters in the Fourth Century
At the end of the third century Diocletian orientalized the The Empire Empire — to borrow an expression of Synesius1. I tn the 4th cen- give the story in the words of a hostile critic, tltnJ- Lactantius (if he wrote the De filwtibiis Perse-
cutor um). " This man ruined the world by his avarice and cowardice. For he set up three to share his kingdom [remark the word at last, regnuiri], and divided the world into four parts. This meant the multiplication of armies, since every one of them strove to have a far larger number of soldiers, than former princes had had, when they governed the state single-handed. So much greater did the number of those who received begin to be than of those who gave, that the strength of the farmers was exhausted by the enormity of taxation, the fields were deserted and cultivated lauds returned to forest. And, that everything might be full of terror, the provinces also were cut into scraps, many rulers and more officials swooped down on the various regions and almost one might say on the several cities... [He enlarges on their number and greed.] ...He was also a man of insatiable avarice, and wished his reserves never to be lessened ; but he was always gathering in extraordinary sums of money and ' presents,' in order to keep what he was storing intact and inviolate ...... To this was added his boundless
passion for building, no less a tax on the provinces in supplying workmen and artificers and waggons and every sort of thing neces- sary for building. Here basilicas, there a circus, here a mint, there an armoury, here a palace for his wife and there for his daughter ......
Such was his constant madness, his passion to make Nicomedeia equal to the city of Rome " (de Mort. Pers. 7).
This is the bad side of the story. There was, however, another. The division of the imperial power, it is fair to assume, was to secure the world against being left without a head, as it had so often been in the third century, when the murder of an Emperor again and again plunged society into anarchy and civil war. The removal of the capital from Rome was a necessary and wise step2.
1 de Regno 10 : TT\V irt.pl ri> fiacriKiKw <ru>fj.a aK.-r\vT)v Kal Oepairtlav, rjv uwnrtp ifpovpyovvres rifi.lv tv diropprfT^ iroiovvTcu. Kal rb papfiapixus ^KTfOfiffOai TO. nad' V/J.3.S. Lactantius, M. P. 21, had already said (Valerius deliberately copied the Persian court. See Sceck, Untergang der antihcn ll'clt (opening pages), for a brilliant portrait of Diocletian, an Emperor with a Radical M.P.'s love of reforming everything with one fresh plan after another. In his reign of twenty years the Empire was more fundamentally changed than in all the preceding three centuries.
a Borne personified says in a poem of Claudian's His minis ijiii Instni milii bis delta recensent | nontrtt tcr Augustus intra jtomueria I'i'li (ci. <
Introduction ^
The i>o|>ulace of Rome were no longer masters of the world, and their opinions not now being needed, there was no reason, but th.it of sentiment, for the seat of government remaining in a town >te from all important points. Nicomedeiu was convenient, for it allowed the Emperor to be so much nearer both Danube and Euphrates. Thirty years later Constantino further developed the new system, making the Emperor the splendid head of a hierarchy of officials and transferring the capital across the sea to Europe. The foundation of Constantinople is no unimportant moment in the world's history '.
Constantino was succeeded by his three sons, of whom Con- stantius became sole ruler. He was followed by Julian, who reigned some two years; and when, on Joviau's death (following speedily that of Julian), Valentiniau became Emperor, he was bidden by his soldiers to name a colleague. He chose his brother Valens, and they divided the Empire. Valens became Emperor at Constanti- nople, and Valentinian in the West. Theodosius succeeded Valens, and in 395 left the world to his two sons, Arcadius, Emperor in the East, and Honorius in the West. From this point East and West begin to fall more conspicuously apart.
I have said nothing so far of the Goths. For some generations German barbarians had been menacing the Empire. Sometimes they were driven off or killed; sometimes they were given lands in the Empire and admitted to service in the army ; but still they pressed on and on. The Goths' first really great victory was at Adriauople in 378, where they killed Valens. It seemed then as though they would at once finally overflow the Eastern half of the Empire, but they were beaten back, and it was not for thirty uneasy years that they had their will of the Roman world, and then it was not Constantinople but Rome they captured (410). They had little mind to destroy what they found; rather they wished to share and to control.
With bad finance, cruel taxation, civil wars, slavery and Gothic inroads the Roman Empire suffered terribly, but its most serious danger was the steady loss of population resulting from these causes, or at least speeded by them. The army was sterile; for
Han. W2). These Emperors were Constantino, Constantius, Theodosius (twice). Diocletian may be added a little before (Lactantius, M. P. 17), bat in any case this habitual absence of the Emperor is noteworthy.
1 For one thing it gave the Bishop of home a much freer hand than he could otherwise him: had, for now the only serious competing world- power was hundreds of miles away.
8 Life and Letters in the Fourth Century
Jtill the reigii of Severus soldiers were forbidden to marry during service1, and did not care to afterwards2. The Christian apologists never fail to bring home to the heathen their exposure of their new-born children. At the same time the tendency to asceticism and celibacy which went with the general revival of religion did not help the world, the finer natures leaving no children. The same unhappy result followed the persecutions of the Christians. The great plague, which lasted for twenty years in the latter half of the second century, also contributed to the depopulation, which had long ago begun to be marked, in Greece for example3. German immigration to some extent re-peopled the Empire, and greatly modified its character. The army and the peasant class became predominatingly German ; and when the great inroads of the fifth century came, the Empire in the West was half German already. In the East the Persians and in Africa mere barbarians, neither easy to assimilate, wrought havoc with the Roman world, plunder- ing, murdering and kidnapping.
This then is the Roman world, a society splendidly organized ; training in laws and arms the Goths who were to overthrow it; giving its character and strength to the Catholic Church which was to check, to tame and to civilize these conquerors; and all the wfc$Je gradually decaying, yet never quite losing all power of staying for a little its decline, as the wonderful history of Con- stantinople shews. We can see in some measure why the Empire fell, but how it was able to endure so long in the East is a harder question, which is not to be solved here. There its story is some- what different, but there too it shaped a church and made nations, and held barbarism at bay for a thousand years after Rome had been taken by the Goths. Even the victorious Turks but adopted the traditions of government which they found.
Virgil had seen aright the genius of his countrymen, when he apostrophized the Roman ;
Thou, do thou control The nations far and wide: Be this thy genius — to impose The rule of peace on vanquished foes, Show pity to the humbled soul And crush the sons of pride.
1 Dio Ix. 24, 3.
2 Nequeconjugiissiiscipiendix ncqiiealendis liberissuetiorbassineposterisdomos relinqucbant, Tuc. Ann. xiv. 27. See also Boissier Roman Africa (tr.) ]>. 1'JOf.
3 See Seeck's excellent chapter on " die Entvolkerung des Keiches " in his Untergany der antikcn H'clt. In the next essay (die Barbareu im Reich), p. 398,
9
Under the Empire there was a general decline hi nearly all A the activities of the human mind, art, literature // ,,., and philosophy alike falling away. Not all the Edw<aion,aHd blame for this is to be laid upon Rome or her Literature. government, for the impulse in all these things came from Greece and was already well-nigh exhausted with the general exhaustion of the Greek world. Faction, with its retaliatory massacres, had in Greece steadily eliminated eminence and capacity. In Rome much the same thing had befallen in the last century of the Republic and in the years of usurping and suspicious Emperors. The level therefore of Greek and Roman genius steadily fell1.
By the fourth century, says Gregorovius, "the creative art, like the poetry and learning of the ancients, was taking its leave of mankind ; the date of its disappearance being manifested in the Triumphal Arch of Constantino, the border of two epochs. This arch the Roman Senate adorned with sculptures robbed from another arch dedicated to Trajan. As these were not sufficient, the artists of the time, to whom some of the reliefs were entrusted, were obliged to confess that the ideals of their forefathers had vanished and that the day of the barbarians had dawned. The Triumphal Arch of Constantino may thus be described as the gravestone of the arts of Greece and Rome*." The Christians borrowed the form of the court of justice, the Basilica, for their churches. St Peter's, the foundation of Constantino, like many later churches, was built in some measure of relics and fragment* of paganism. The so-called chair of Peter, set in the church by Pope Damasus, is typical of much. It is an ancient sedan-chair decorated with minute carvings in ivory — heathen pictures of beasts and centaurs and the labours of Hercules, some fastened on upside down. Statues were still made and so were pictures, but the great arts of the day, as we learn from Claudian and Prudentius, were embroidery and mosaic, and where all else failed a lavish profusion of gold and jewels did instead of art.
he alludes to the plague, which he estimates cost the Empire half its popula- tion, and goes on to shew the influence of German settlers on the Empire from the days of Marcus Aurelius.
1 See Seeck, Getch, des Untergangs der antikcn Welt, pp. 280 ff. Seeck holds that in the fourth century thought and literature throve only where there was some Semitic element in the people — Syria, Egypt, Africa. Certainly one Semitic stock has not even yet declined if we may trust a Disraeli and a Urine. Seeck's chapter Die Ausrottuny der Besten is well worth study.
- Hume in the Middle Age*, vol. i. p. 85 and following pages.
10 Life and Letters in the Fourth Century
In literature we find the same sterility. Latin literature had from the first been imitative, but imitation is one thing in strong hands and another in weak, and the surest road to decline is to copy the copy. Virgil and Horace had drawn their inspiration from Greek poets ; Lucan and Statius from them ; and these last almost as much as the former were the models of later poetry. It was no better in the Greek world. East and west, education and litera- ture were infected with rhetoric, and the chief task of culture was to echo and distort in echoing the ideas of the past. Here and there a poet has something of his own to say, and then the old language has something of the old power. Claudian's poetry is quickened by the thought of Rome, Prudentius' by the victory of the Church and the unity of mankind in her, and both poets rise conspicuous above their age. In Greek the best is Quintus, the quiet amiable imitator and completer of Homer, the longest is Nonnus, whose poetry is like nothing so much as the playing of a prismatic fountain, the waters of which on analysis in a cold light prove to be dirty and full of infection.
Serious prose, apart from the church and technical writers, was almost unknown. History was a dying art, but for Eusebius and Ammianus — a very large reservation it is true. Letter-writing on the other hand was never so flourishing or so sterile ; as a few pages of Symmachus will shew. Yet Neo-Platonism, if it could not re-create, could revive literature, and the fourth century has much more to shew than the third — more books and books worthy of study for the light they throw on a great change taking place under the cover of old forms. It was an age of schools and uni- versities, but all of a conservative type. Education flourished, but it was rhetorical. Chassang remarks that there was no chair of history in any of the foundations, but a certain amount would be involved in the study of literature, which was a branch of grammar '. Philosophy still lived, but it was not satisfactory. It was concerned more with the tradition of dogmata than with the independent investigation of reality, and magic followed it like a shadow. There was some astronomy and a little other natural science, but these too were traditional. But all these studies were overshadowed
1 Chassang, le Roman dans Vantiquitc, p. 98. Among the commemorated by Ausonius is a rhetorician, Staphylius (20), who besides being a consummate grammarian is described as historiam caltens Livii et Herodoti. Chassang is however right in his main contention that the subject was held of minor importance. There had always been a tendency in Borne to regard history from the point of view of style almost exclusively.
tut roil net ion 11
by the baleful rhetoric, infecting everything with pretentious un- reality, as every system of education will that teaches style first and forgets nature.
One of the most striking facts about the education of the day is the undeniable charm it exercised over men, jwirtly no doubt because in sterile ages men most prize correctness, but partly because it introduced them to masterpieces which they must have felt beyond them, however much they called one another Ciceros and Virgils. The Christians are as much captivated as the pagans, as we see in Augustine's enthusiasm for the Aeneid and Jerome's studies of Cicero and Plautus, and above all in the intense passion roused by Julian's decree excluding Christians from the teaching profession. This enthusiasm was not always healthful, as it limited the range of interests with the most cramping effects. Macrobius for example devotes himself to Virgil (whom he does not really<- understand) and only touches his own day in Neo-Platouism. He knows something of Christianity, but his culture forbids his men- tioning it. When all is weighed, perhaps Ammianus, with all his naive "readings of Antiquity" and "sayings of Tully" and his wonderful style, is as honest and wholesome a man as any who wrote in the century. And he had seen life and death as they are, before he began his studies. It is this contact with reality that lifts Augustine and, in his own way, Sulpicius into a spirit that speaks to the heart
Literature was one of the great strongholds of paganism and the other was philosophy. It was not the philosophy of the great days of Greece, and indeed it could not M1)hy be expected to be. The fall of Greek civic independ- ence, the breaking down of barriers of tribal, communal and religious tradition, and the levelling of mankind under the weight of the immense empires that followed Alexander's conquest of Asia, affected philosophy profoundly. It is hardly saying too much to assert that the philosophers "despaired of the republic" and turned to the individual instead. There were no doubt still Utopias, but kings and armies made them look even more foolish than demagogues and assemblies had done, and the main concern of thought was the sad adaptation of oneself to the new world without landmarks. The schools of Epicurus and the Porch, both appealing directly to the individual man, carried all before them. The Stoics had no disreputable following to give them a bad name and they appealed more to the serious and manly with their doctrine of
12 Life and Letters in the Fourth Century
living according to nature. Thus while Epicurus made disciples of honest Romans like Lucretius and Horace, Stoicism had more influence on Rome, particularly affecting the development of Roman law. This is not very surprising when we consider what the Roman character was.
As in the Greek world, so in the Roman, philosophy became a more important factor in life with the fall of the Republic and the rise of the Empire. There had been many Romans before this interested in philosophy, but now there was no alternative for serious people, except perhaps literature, and that also shews the influence of philosophic teaching. Stoicism had its popular preacher in Seneca, a more^genuine exponent in Epictetus, and in Marcus Aurelius its lagt grekt example, and he indeed gives us a hint of the change thai was coming.
Mr Pater in his Marim jseizes this singularly interesting moment of the world's hWoryyand exhibits to us this great Stoic Emperor with his assiduousMSacrifices standing as it were between the two extremes represented by Lucian, the most distressing advocate of the blankest unbelief, and Apuleius the philosopher, the disciple of Plato and the magician, while in the background, as yet without prominence, is the new school gently bringing home to man that his soul is " naturally Christian." The great African who coined this plirase was a younger contemporary of the other three. With Tertullian and with Apuleius lay the future. Lucian might shew his age the rottenness of all its beliefs and mock it for their vanity, and Sextus Empiricus might give a philosophic account of Pyrrho's doctrine of scepticism, but the world swung violently away from them and beyond the cautious and melancholy Marcus. It would believe and it must believe, and a new spirit filled the third century.
The New Pythagoreanism found its literary exponent in a sophist — Philostratus, and its patroness in an
Neo-Platomsm. . r
Empress of Syrian extraction. It led the way to the New Platonism, a form of thought that had more and longer influence. Plotiuus is its great thinker, Porphyry and lambli- chus brought it into common life ; nearly all the pagan writers of the fourth century are touched by it, and still later Proclus taught it in Athens and Boethius found it his consolation in prison.
It owed its popularity to the fact that while retaining for the simple-minded all the gods of all the creeds as legitimate objects
Introduction 13
of worship, supporting their service and defending them against attack, it allowed more cultured minds to transcend them1 and soar unfettered by literalism into an ecstatic communion with the divine beyond all gods. It justified every heathen religion, for all things were emanations from the one divine, and the gods were intermediaries between it and man and deserved man's worship by their larger measure of divinity or real being, and by their benevolent care for men, their weaker brethren or children. Every heathen god had thus his place in a splendid fabric, that reached from Absolute Being down to " the lowest dregs of the universe." Man was not left alone in a godless world to face riddles he could not guess. The world swarmed with gods as it did with demons, divine and beneficent powers contending .against the demons of matter. The riddles were now beautiful mysteries man might see into, if he could overcome the divine reticence by a holy abstinence, an even more potent ritual and, more awful still, the strange powers of magic. By all of these man might learn how he could rise from one plane of being to another, ever growing more clear of matter, which was not-being, and ascending gradually into heights of purer and purer existence. It will be readily remarked what freedom this gave the wandering fancy — a pantheon wide as the world ; a creed broad enough to include everybody, except Epicureans, for, if Christians would but permit it, Christ might be an emanation as well as Dionysus ; a theory of the universe, superior to reason, far above proof, and remote from the grimy touch of experience. Everybody might believe anything and every- thing, and practise all rituals at once, and thus storm by a holy violence the secrets of all the gods. Naturally then we find very different types of Neo-Platonists, as they incline to this or that side of the general teaching of their school
Loose and fanciful thinkers like Julian, pagan antiquarians like Macrobius, conjurers like Maximus, pious and beautiful natures like Praetextatus and Hermes Trismegistus (whoever he was), were all captured and held by this wonderful mixture of philosophy and relii^ion. Stronger men too than they were attracted by it, and it left permanent traces of itself on Augustine's theology. It was the greatest of all heathen systems, recognizing and satisfying
1 St Augustine (de Vtra ReUpione v. 8) makes the point that in the Church philosophy and religion are entirely at one, while pagan philosophy is really at issue with popular religion. It was at least the aim of the Neo-Platonists to avoid this.
14 Life and Letters in five Fourth Centwry
every impulse and energy of the human mind, except inquiry. It felt the unity of nature, the divinity of man as God's kinsman, the beauty of a morality modelled after God, the appetite of the human heart for God, and something of man's hunger for redemp- tion. It had an explanation for everything, but it was not con- cerned to verify its explanations. Happy in imagination, it had no interest in observation. It was in one way essentially claustraL The common people it left to worship their gods unintelligently. For them it had no communion with the divine, no salvation from sin, no consolation for sorrow. Celsus had long ago sneered at Christianity as a faith for fullers and bakers. Porphyry calmly warns off athletes, soldiers and business men — he is not writing for them. The Neo-Platonist thus has the Greek temper still, pre- ferring the life with advantages, and inculcating the old Greek ideal of self-rule, and progress toward a goal to be reached by contemplation. All things are divine in so far as they really exist, so the Neo-Platonist is not properly ascetic. But they are not always quite consistent, and some of them have an Oriental tinge about their views. Evil, they say, is not-being, but here a negative term covers a force felt to be positive, and they have not clearly explained their attitude toward matter. They say that it is failure-to-be, that it is nothing ; but their " flight " from it and their general conduct with regard to it seem to imply that they feel sometimes it is something more. They make guesses at it, but they do not inquire.
The general effect of Neo-Platonism was, I think, for good. Any belief is better than none, and a great faith, however con- fused, is apt to raise the moral tone. The literature of the fourth century has not the swing and surge of that of the first, but it is gentler and graver and purer. The general mind of man is not so robust, but it feels elements in the problem, which escaped it in its younger and more impetuous days. It cannot solve them, it can hardly state them, but in a confused way it recognizes them as affecting the general solution, and, where once it was dogmatic even to arrogance on the one side, now it instinctively takes the other, feelh.'g it is nearer the truth but not realizing why. So though humaa nature was the same and people loved pleasures, they sought thcjm after all with more restraint. In no previous century could a historian, without meaning to sneer, have coined the phrase imperialis verecundia. Most of these Emperors were Christian, but Julian morally the peer of the best was a Neo-
Introduction 15
Platonist, and Jovian, the one licentious Emperor, said he was a Christum1.
Neo-Platonism with its acceptance of dogmata was essentially a religion of disciples. It will be remarked how it fits in with the literary tendencies of the century— philosophy and literature ex- plaining each other, both content with transmission, and happy in imitation, neither fertile in fresh discoveries or new ideas. They were alike exhausted.
So far we have discussed the heathen world, picking up the main threads separately for clearness' sake, and one has been omitted, which now calls for attention. „. 'f
The old Jewish prayer, " I thank thee, 0 God, who hast made me a Jew and not a Gentile, a man and not a woman, a free man and not a slave," was repudiated by St Paul in an utterance which expresses a fundamental doctrine of Christi- anity— a doctrine to which the Roman Empire with its gradual levelling must have helped thoughtful men. Yet it should be noted that Paul proclaimed all human beings equal in the kingdom of God a century and a half before Caracalla made them equal in the world, and Paul included the slave whom Caracalla did not. The Stoic had already reached the dogma of the equality of all men, and Roman law was slowly working towards it. Thus the tendency of Greek philosophy and Roman imperialism co-operated with the new religion2.
Again, the revival of paganism, of which I have spoken as a reaction against scepticism and despair, may or may not have been affected by the spreading of the Gospel. If not at first it was so at a later time. But here too there was common ground. Both the new paganism and the new gospel were helped by that pressure of circumstances, which drove men to seek in their own hearts for a stronger comfort to meet a more searching need than their fathers had known. This relation between the state of the Empire and
1 Seeck, it should be said, believes the improved tone of morals to be due largely to the intermixture of German blood and German ideals. Like Gregorovins, he has a high opinion of the German invaders, and they can both present a good case, though when one learns elsewhere that Virgil must be semi-Celtic and Tertullian semi-Semitic, one accepts racial panegyrics with reserve. The English seem to be the only race "whom there are none to praise, And very few to love."
2 When Tertullian (Apol. 38) said unam omnium rempublicam agnoxcimu* munduiH, it was at once an expression of the nnity of mankind and in some degree of revolt from the narrower conception involved in the Roman
16 Life and Letters in the Fourth Century
the Church should not be forgotten, for it will also help to explain the rapid spread of monachism.
The Church was thus in contact with the whole life of the Empire, and though it was some time before she could much affect it, it helped to mould her. Her earliest organization was on secular models. She first held property under the law of burial associa- tions. Her bishops were developed out of the presidents of these, and her architecture was in some degree influenced for ever by memories of her catacombs. But more significant were other con- tacts. She soon caught the ear of the philosophical world, some members of which merely sneered, some borrowed from her and some joined her. She had to reckon with all three, and first by the necessity of apologetic against heathen and heretic, and thence by that of a clear presentation to herself of her vital doctrines, she became philosophic. Then by the interaction of thought and organization the office of the bishop gained a new importance, when he became the repository of true doctrine, the test by which doubtful views were to be tried. But the world was wide and there were many churches ; the world was one, and the churches needed some common base and found it in a united episcopate which held truth in solidum, as the converted lawyer said — as a corporation. Episcopatus unus est cujus a singulis in solidum pars tenetur1. These examples may serve for many that might be brought to shew how not only Greek philosophy, but Roman law, influenced the Church, shaping her theories of government and moulding her theology2.
The State came first into collision with the Church by accident, and merely added a new form of crime to be suppressed to those it knew already. The Christian, according to the statesman, divided families and spoiled trades, and from both causes public disorder resulted. In the next place the Christian by asserting the supre- macy of a higher power than the Emperor's introduced a disturbing element into society, and an imperium in imperio was not to be tolerated. So efforts were made to extinguish the Church— HUH licet esse vos. Persecution failed because the persecutors were less in earnest about it than the persecuted and had other interests. The last persecution inaugurated by Diocletian and his circle shewed by its failure the solidity of the Church, and it was the real instinct of a statesman that led Constantino to make peace with it.
1 Cyprian, de Eccl. Cath. Unitate, c. 5.
2 See Sir Henry Maine, Ancient Law, ch. ix.
Introduction 17
" By doing so," says Seeley ', " he may be said to have purchased an indefeasible title by a charter. He gave certain liberties and he received in turn passive obedience. He gained a sanction for the Oriental theory of government ; in return he accepted the law of the Church. He became irresponsible to his subjects on condition of becoming responsible to Christ."
The Nicene Council in 325 was a revolution. The bishops were here recognized by the State as constituting the Church, and as the Church they met to decide what was its faith. Constantino awaited their decision and then made his pronouncement. This was the Christian faith and uo other ; consequently all bishops must accept it. A number of new principles were involved here, and many consequences followed. First there was a series of fresh councils to re-try the question, which continued through the cen- tury. And it had to be settled by move and counter-move how far the Emperor was bound to accept the ruling of the Church which he had recognized.
The battle of the councils was about a diphthong according to one account ; it was a fight between Christianity and paganism according to another. If the Son was 6/xooverios, he was God while still man — that is, the antithesis of God and man is superficial, the ideal man being at the same time God's best expression of himself ; but if the Son was 6/ioiovo-ios, he was not God but a creature, a demigod perhaps or a Neo-Platonist emanation, and neither on the other hand was he man. It is no wonder that the conflict raged.
There were other results of the peace between the State and the Church. It was no longer dangerous to be a Christian, but it was even profitable, and the stalwart Christians Diocletian had killed were replaced by time-servers and half-converted pagans. I do not say there was less Christian life at once, but at least the average Christian was of a lower type. This soon meant the general lowering of ideals, and was followed by the inevitable reaction, just as in former days the succession of easy times to difficult had meant first a lower tone in the Catholic Church, and then a Montanist and a Novatian revolt. Now the revolt took another form. Novatianism was conceived by an essentially Roman mind which worked from a new point of view to a new organization. The new revolt was more Oriental in character.
1 Lectures and Essayt, iii. o. 2
18 Life and Letters in the Fourth Century
We have seen how Neo-Platonism had, like most serious forms of faith, a leaning to self-discipline which might fall into asceticism. Every eastern worship which the Roman world knew, except Judaism and Christianity, laid stress on asceticism. Celibacy had early invaded the Church, and Montanism had brought in asceticism. But monachism was a combination of both which was new to the Church in the fourth century, and its entrance coincides with the conversion of the monasteries of Serapis. It must not be lightly supposed that this was the source of the monastic movement in the Church, but rather it gave a new idea which fitted well with tend- encies long since at work. The Life of Antony is a Greek novel telling about a Coptic monk, a simple tale but on fire for those prepared for it. It offered in the desert a holy life, dependent on grace alone, victorious over all devils, Neo-Platonist or otherwise, free from all the cares and sorrows of a sinful world and unvexed by the worldliness of a sinful church. For though Antony is habit- ually respectful to clergy and bishops, other monks, e.g. Sulpicius Severus, thought and spoke less well of them. The feelings that moved the unknown author of Antony and Sulpicius were shared by thousands. In a world of distress and despotism, in a church engaged in perennial debates about a question the simple-minded could not fathom, the ascetic ideal, preached by Neo-Platonist and Christian, triumphed and carried monachism with it. Neither was a part of primitive Christianity any more than the passion for relics and pilgrimages and the building of martyries, which invaded the Church from much the same quarters at the same time.
In the essays that follow I shall try to shew how the threads here separated interlace in the lives and thoughts of men and women. In this man one influence overweighs the rest ; in that, another, but none wholly escape them all, while in some men all the influences of their time seem to meet and require expression. In Augustine, for example, we have the rhetorician, the man of letters, the Neo-Platonist, the admirer of Antony, the Christian believer in grace, the Christian bishop, the Christian statesman and the thoroughly Roman constitutionalist of the Church.
It is hard to form a completely unprejudiced judgment, but the conclusion is forced upon me when I survey the fourth century, its interests and its energies, that the Church had absorbed all that was then vital in the civilized world. It had not assimilated all of the beauty and wisdom of the great Classical period, for much of
19
them was lost to that age and was not to be recovered for cen- turies. The Church of that day had her weaknesses, she made grave mistakes and she was not without sins that bore bitter fruit, but she rose superior to all the world around her, and to whatever sphere of work and thought we turn, literature, philosophy, ad- ministration, we find her marked off from all her environment by one characteristic it had not and she had — life and the promise of life.
2—2
CHAPTER II
AMMIANUS MARCELLINUS
I have at last begun my historical labours.... The materials for an amusing narrative are immense. I shall not be satisfied unless I produce something which shall for a few days supersede the last fashionable novel on the tables of young ladies. ^
MACAULAY Letter to Macvey papier
A MAN must have fine qualities so to write the history of his own times that his judgments on his contemporaries shall be sus- tained on appeal to the court of History, and posterity, after fifteen centuries, accept them still. He must be cool and dispassionate in his survey, and yet sympathetic. He should be alive to every aspect of the problems that beset his fellows, and take into account every advantage or disadvantage arising from age and environment. Commonly to attain the true perspective one must stand a century or at least a generation away. But in the fourth century, in the midst of the quarrels of Arian and Nicene, through all the turmoils of civil strife and barbarian war, lived and wrote a man, whose verdict on most of the men of his time- is with some reservations substantially our own.
Ammianus Marcellinus1 was born of Greek parents at Antioch*,
1 The Abbe Gimazane, not finding " fifteen consecutive pages " on Ammianus, has written 400 in his A . M. sa vie et son anivre (Toulouse 1889), a work of some interest with some rather improbable theories. Max Biidinger's A. M. u. die Eigeiuirt seines Geschichtswerkes is careful but too severe. The various historians of the period, and writers on Julian, generally refer to him more gratefully and, I think, more truly.
2 We are curiously reminded of his birthplace when he speaks of Julian's invective against the Antiochenes (the Misopogon), which he wrote " in a rage. ..adding a good deal to the truth." Socrates, the fairest of Church historians as became a lawyer of Constantinople, lets the book pass with the
M<ir<-<llinu& 21
somewhere about the date of the Nicene Council, 325 A. D. It is not possible, nor is it necessary, to name the exact year. More we cannot say than that he was of noble birth. Sooner or later he was as well read a man as any of his day, but we cannot say what his early education was. We first find him in the army among the Protectores Domestic!, for admission to whose ranks personal beauty and noble birth were necessary '. He tells us himself incidentally that at one critical moment he found it not pure gain to be fcifMttnif'.
We first find him in 353 at Nisibis, in Mesopotamia, on the staff of Ursicinus3, to which position the Emperor Constantius had appointed him. Ursicinus had been in the East for ten years4, we learn, without disaster, in spite of the rawness and inefficiency of his troops. Four years after we first see him, Ammianus includes himself among the adulexcentes'' who were sent back to the East with Ursicinus, while the older men were promoted. Men vary so much in their ideas of what is young and what is old, that it would be hard to guess his exact age in 357.
He saw a good deal of travel and warfare first and last. How long he was with Ursicinus during his first period of Eastern service we cannot say. However, in 353 whisperers round the Court suggested to the greedy ears of Constantius that it might be dangerous to leave Ursicinus in the East after the recall of Gallus Caesar, and he was summoned with all speed to Milan to " discuss urgent business." All conveniences for rapid travel were supplied6, and with long stages they made all haste to Milan to find they had come for nothing. Perhaps they were not greatly surprised. It was Constantius' method. Gallus had been hurried home in the same way to have his head cut off.
The next thing was the trial of Ursicinus for treason. Con- stantius was jealous7, and the creatures of the Court whispered. His friends at once deserted him for men in the ascendant, "just as when the magistrates in due course succeed one another, the
remark that "it left indelible stigmata on Antioch. " Sozomen says it was " excellent and very witty." Zosimus, a heathen, says it was " most witty, and blended such bitterness with its irony as to make the Antiochenes infamous everywhere." After twice reading the Misnpogon, I must say my estimate is nearest that of Ammianus.
1 Procopius, Hi»t. Arcana, 24. a xix. 8, 11.
8 xiv. '.I, 1 . < xviii. 6, 2.
6 xvi. 10, 21. • xiv. 11, 5.
7 Cf. Julian's comment on him; Or. vii. 233 c ^ irpia roin <(>l\ovt dvurria. ruined him.
22 Life and Letters in the Fourth Century
lictors pass to the new from the old '." Ammianus could hardly express his contempt more significantly. A plot was actually made to kidnap and kill Ursicinus untried. It seems the Emperor was cognizant of it ; a defect in our text may be used to defend him, but he was quite capable of the treachery. Delay prevented its execution.
In 355 they left Milan* under circumstances which seem strange perhaps, but are characteristic of the age. There was an officer in Gaul, Silvanus by name, loyal enough to the Emperor, but he had enemies, and they went to work in the usual way. They babbled to Constantius of treason till the wretched Silvanus found his only hope of life lay in treason — a desperate card to play, but his only one — and he boldly proclaimed himself Emperor. This was a thunderbolt indeed. But Constantius was not at a loss. He despatched Ursicinus (with Ammianus in his train) to quell the rebel, prepared to be glad to hear of the death of either of his generals. A mere handful of men went with Ursicinus, for craft or treachery was to be the tool employed. Ammianus felt, and they all felt, that they were in the position of gladiators condemned to fight beasts in the arena. They had to make haste to keep the rebellion from spreading to Italy, and so successful were they that Silvanus' reign was one of only four weeks8. They went, with a keen sense of their risk, to Silvanus as friends; they heard his complaints of unworthy men being promoted over his head and theirs ; and after much discussion in private, and many nervous changes of plan, they managed to tamper with the troops. In a day or two at daybreak a body of armed men burst out, slew Silvanus' guards, and cut down himself as he fled to a church for safety. Thus fell at Cologne " an officer of no mean merits, done to death by slanderous tongues, so immeshed in his absence that he could protect himself only by going to the extremest measures." Such is Ammianus' comment on a wretched affair which gave him nothing but disgust. Constantius, however, was so delighted as to feel himself "sky high and superior to all human risks now4."
Ursicinus and Ammianus remained in Gaul for a year perhaps*. In 356 they saw at Rheims the Caesar Julian, who had been sent to Gaul, as they had been themselves, to crush Constantius' enemies,
1 xv. 2, 3. 2 xv. 5.
3 Julian, Or. ii. 98 c -yeXotoj d\?;0ws rtpavvos ical rpayiKfa. Julian says Constantius spared Silvanus' sou afterwards.
4 xv. 5, 37. 5 xvi. 2, 8.
23
and if possible meet his death in doing it. Towards the end of the year came a welcome despatch summoning them to Sirmium', whence the Emperor sent Ursicinus once more to the East and Ammianus with him.
They were two years in the East, and meanwhile plots thickened. " The Court, hammering as they say the same anvil day and night at the bidding of the eunuchs, held Ursicinus before the gaze of the suspicious and timid Emperor as it were a Gorgon's head*," assuring him that his general "aspired higher." Chief among the enemies was the rascal chamberlain, Eusebius, " with whom," says Ammianus bitterly, "Constantius had considerable influence"; and the "piping voice of the eunuch" and the "too open ears of the prince" meant ruin for the brave soldier. But a good deal was to come first.
War with the Persians was imminent. A Roman subject of rank and some knowledge, harassed as Silvanus had been, though by smaller enemies, found life impossible within Roman frontiers, and fled to the Persians, and there he and his knowledge were welcome. A Persian invasion followed. Meanwhile the order had reached Ursicinus at Samosata to yield his command to one Sabinianus and come West8. The Syrians heard with consterna- tion, and all but laid violent hands on him to keep him4. But Ursicinus and his staff had to go, and they crossed the Taurus, and after a short delay had travelled through Asia Minor, and were already in Europe when fresh orders turned them back whence they came. Sabinianus was recognized by the Emperor to stand in need of a soldier at his side. Back they went to Nisibis, and there they found their "little fellow gaping" (oscitante homunculoY. Throughout the campaign this seems to have been Sabinianus' attitude. He visited Edessa and spent time among the "tombs," "as if, once he had made his peace with the dead, nothing were to be feared6." I suppose Ammianus means shrines and martyr- ies7. Abgar, king of Edessa, so a very old story goes, wrote to our Lord and had a letter from Him, both letters being preserved for us by Eusebius. In the Doctrine of Addai we have the who' story of our Lord's sending Addai to Edessa, the healing of Abgar
1 xvi. 10, 21. 8 xviii. 4, 2.
» xviii. 4, 7. 4 xviii. 6, 2.
6 xviii. 6, 8. • xviii. 7, 7.
7 It was believed by some that Julian, on bis Anabasis, avoided the place for the very fact of its early Christian associations. (Sozomen, vi 1.) It also happened to be out of his way.
24 Life and Letters in the Fourth Century
and the conversion of the whole place with such success and speed that they read the Diatessaron in the churches nearly a century before it was made. As our Lord's reputed letter or a copy of it was shewn to St Silvia twenty years later than, this, it is just possible this relic occupied Sabinianus' attention.
Leaving Sabinianus to his devotions, Ursicinus had to take what steps he might without hindrance. And now we are in the thick of the campaign. It was reported at Nisibis that the enemy had crossed the Tigris and that plundering bands were scouring the country1. " So," says Ammianus (and I translate his account of an incident commonplace enough perhaps, but illustrative of the times and the region), " to secure the roads we set out at a trot, and at the second milestone from the city we saw a child of gentle appear- ance, wearing a necklace, and about eight years old we supposed, sitting crying on the middle of a bank. He was the son of a free man, he said, and his mother, as she fled in hot haste for fear of the enemy who was hard upon them, had found herself burdened with him in her panic and left him there alone. The general was moved to pity, and at his bidding I took him up in front of me on my horse and returned to the city, and meanwhile swarms of marauders were surrounding the walls far and wide. Alarmed at the idea of an ambush, I set the boy within a half-closed postern, and rode hard to rejoin our troop in some terror; and I was all but caught; for a hostile squad of horse in pursuit of a certain Abdigidus, a tribune, and his groom, caught the slave while the master escaped, and, as I galloped by, they had just heard in reply to their question, "Who was the officer who had ridden out?" that Ursicinus had a little before reached the city, and was now making for Mount Izala. They slew their informant, gathered together in some numbers, and, without taking rein, made after us.
" Thanks to the speed of my animal, I outrode them and at Amudis, a weak fort, I found my comrades carelessly lying about with their horses grazing. I flung out my arm, and waving the ends of my cloak on high (the usual signal) I let them know the enemy was at hand. Joining them I rode off with them, my horse already in distress. What terrified us was the full moon and the dead level of the country, which offered no hiding place in case of pressing need, as no trees or bushes or anything but short grass was to be seen. We therefore devised this plan. A lighted torch was
1 xviii. 6, 10—16.
AIHH//OHHS Mnri-fllinm 25
set on a single horse and tied so as not to fall. The animal without a rider was sent oft* toward the left, while we made for the foot of the mountains on the right, so that the Persians, in the belief that it was the torch to light the general as he quietly rode along, might go in that direction. But for this device we should have been surrounded and captured and come into the enemy's hands.
" Escaped from this peril we came to a wooded spot planted with vines and apple trees, Meiacarire by name, so called from its cold springs. Its inhabitants had fled and we found but one man hid away in a corner — a soldier. He was brought to the general, and in his terror gave confused answers which made us suspect him. In fear of our threats, he sets forth the real state of affairs, and tells us he was born at Paris in .Gaul and had served in the cavalry, but to escape punishment for some offence he had deserted to the Persians. On his character being established he had married and had a family, and had often been sent as a spy among us and brought back true information. He had now been sent by Tamsapor and Nohodar, the nobles at the head of the marauding forces, and was on his way back to tell what he had learnt. On hearing this and what he knew of what was going on elsewhere, we slew him."
I pass over a reconnoitring expedition made by Ammianus, and the disgraceful loss of an important bridge through the carelessness of a force of cavalry fresh from Illyricum, and the rout which followed, in which Ursicinus' party got separated, Ammianus escap- ing to Amid1. The path up to the gate was narrow, and he spent a curious night jammed in a crowd of living and dead, with a soldier in front of him held erect by the press though his head was halved to the neck. Then followed the siege of Amid, the story of which told in his nineteenth book may rank for vividness and interest with the sieges of Quebec or Louisbourg. Remember that the story is told by a soldier, an eye-witness and the man of all men then living most fitted to tell such a tale.
The Persian army moved on to Amid2, "and when next dawn
1 xviii. 8, 11—14.
3 Amid (now Diarbekr) on the Tigris was one of the most important places strategically and commercially in the country, though less so than Niaibis, which was the key of the situation. This should be borne in mind when we come to Jovian's surrender. That Diarbekr is still the seat of the patriarch of the Jacobites shews its ancient importance (Stanley, Eastern Church, i.). It is now a town of 70,000 to 80,000 people, Turks, Kurds and Armenians, but not many Greeks, a great centre for trade, and capital of the vilayet of the same name (/>/ ••*• Wefcr, Abu Bfkr, the early caliph). It is sur-
rounded by ancient v nd some seventy feet high, and make it
the most remarkable place of the kind in Turkey.
26 Life and Letters in the Fourth Century
gleamed, all that could be seen glittered with starry arms, and iron cavalry filled plains and hills." The phrase is curious, as many of his phrases are. The sunlight caught a thousand bright surfaces and the reflexions suggested the starry heavens. The iron cavalry are the cataphracts or men in armour mounted on horses in armour. We bear a good deal of them in Ammianus and Julian, who com- pares them to equestrian statues. " Riding his horse, and towering over all, the King himself (magnificently if tersely described as ipse without another word) rode down his lines, wearing as a diadem a golden ram's head set with gems, exalted with every kind of dignity and the attendance of divers races." He was intent on a siege, and, though the renegade advised against it, the " divinity of heaven " (caeleste numen) ruled that all his force should be concen- trated on this corner of the Roman world and the rest should escape. Sapor the king in a lordly way advanced to the walls, called for a surrender, and nearly lost his life for his pains, and retired raging as if sacrilege had been committed. Next day a subject king, Grumbates, came near losing his life on the same errand, his son falling at his side. Over the prince's body there was a fight, which recalled the death of Patroclus. The Persians at last bore him off and for seven days he lay in state while they held his funeral, feasting and dancing and singing sad dirges in lamentation for the royal youth, much as women wail for Adonis. At last they burnt the corpse and gathered his bones to send home to his own people, and after a rest of two days war began again with a great display of Sapor's troops, cataphracts, elephants and all1. Next day Grumbates, in the character of a fetialis, hurled a blood- stained spear at the city, and fighting began. Catapults, "scor- pions" (for hurling great stones) and engines of all kinds2 came into play, and many were the deaths on both sides. The night fell and both armies kept watch under arms, while the hills rang as " our men extolled the prowess of Constantius Caesar as lord of the world and the universe, and the Persians hailed Sapor as saansaan (king of kings) and pirosen (conqueror in war)3."
1 This proceeding, strange as it may seem, occurs again at Daras, 530 A.D. On the second day fighting began and Belisarius won a great victory.
2 Elsewhere (xxiii. 4) Ammianus gives a description of these various machines.
3 Mr E. G. Browne informs me that this is a locus classicus with Orientalists, which some have tried very needlessly to emend. The passage is historical proof that the official language of the Sasanian kings was not pronounced as it is written, but for Aramaic words in the script their Persian equivalents were read. Saansaan is Shahin-Shah, pirosen Firuz.
.}/iiw//tnitx 27
Before dawn fighting began again. " So many evils stood around us, that it was not to win deliverance but with a passionate desire to die bravely we burned." At last night put an end to the slaughter, but brought little help for the wounded. There were seven legions in the city and a great crowd of country people beside the citizens, and there was no room or leisure for the burial of the dead.
Meanwhile Ursicinus was chafing to go to the rescue, but Sabinianus "sticking to the tombs" would neither let him go nor go himself. It was believed Coustantius was to blame for this in his anxiety " that, even though it ruined the provinces, this man of war should not be reported as the author of any memorable deed nor the partner in one either."
Now came pestilence from the bodies of the slain, and for ten days it raged till rain fell and stopped it. All the time the siege was pushed on, and the defenders' difficulties were increased by the presence of two Celtic legions fresh from Gaul and itching to be "up and at them." It took a good deal to hold them inside the walls at all. A deserter betrayed a secret passage leading to a tower, and, while engaged with foes without, the defenders suddenly found some seventy archers shooting at them from a post of vantage within the walls, and with difficulty dislodged them. A half day's rest, and then " with the dawn we see a countless throng, taken on the capture of the fort Ziata, being lea away U> i la- enemy's land, thousands of men going into captivity, many among them frail with age, and >»ged women; and if weary with their long march they failed, all love of life now gone, they were left hamstrung." The sight was too much for the Celtic legions who raged like beasts of prey in their cages, and drew their swords on the gates which had been barred to keep them in1. They were afraid "lest the city should fall and they should be blotted out without a single brilliant exploit, or if it escaped it should be said that the Gauls did nothing worth while to shew their spirit. We were quite at a loss how to face them in their rage but at last decided (and got a reluctant consent to it from them)" that they should make a sortie on a dark night. The dark night came and
1 Cf. Silins, Pitnica viii. 17, on Hannibal's Gauls:
i iiniloqiium Celtae genus ac mutabile mftitix
tiii-i' domos: maerebant caede tine ttlla — innolititm tibi — bella geri, siccasque cruore hit, r tela titi Mavortit hebetcere dextrcu.
28 Life and Letters in the Fourth Century
with a prayer for heavenly protection the Gauls sallied out to the Persian camp, and but for some accident of a step heard or a dying man's groan caught they would have killed Sapor ; but Sapor had twenty years of mischief before him yet.
Towers and elephants in turn were brought against the city, but the "scorpions" were too much for both; and the siege dragged on so that Sapor created a precedent and rushed into the fray in person. At last banks were raised, and the counter work put up by the besieged came crashing down as if there had been an earthquake ; and the end had come. After a siege of seventy-three days the Persians had their way open, and now it was every man for himself, and all day long the streets were shambles.
" So at eventide, lurking with two others in an out-of-the-way part of the city under the cover of night's darkness, I escaped by a postern ; and, thanks to an acquaintance with the country, now all dark, and the speed of my companions, I at last reached the tenth mile-stone. Here we halted and rested a little ; and just as we were starting again, and I was giving out under the fatigue of walking, for as a noble I was unused to it, I saw a dreadful sight, but to me in my weary state it was to be a relief exceedingly timely." It was a runaway horse trailing its groom behind it, and as the dead body checked its speed, it was quickly caught, and Ammianus mounted. After a journey through the desert they reached che Euphrates to see Roman cavalry in flight with Persians in hot pursuit. "All hope of escape lay in speed, and through thickets and woods we made for the higher hills, and so we came to Melitina, a town of lesser Armenia, and there we found the general and his staff setting out for Antioch."
After these adventures Ammianus probably went West again with Ursicinus, who, as magister peditum, was kept near Constantius till slander prevailed and drove him into private life, and we hear no more of him, though his faithful follower tells us that a son of his was slain at Adrianople in 378 '.
Ammianus had by no means seen his last of war in the East. In some capacity he went with his hero, the Emperor Julian, on the fatal expedition against Sapor in 363. From point to point we can follow their Anabasis in the twenty-third and twenty-fourth books, and ever and again we find the verb in the first person, vidimus, venimus. It is, however, needless to trace their march, as
1 xxxi. 13, 18.
A minimum M<trtrflfnus 29
Ammianus records practically nothing done by himself, though we may well believe he was not the least interested of the men who gazed on the wall paintings of battle and the chase at Coche1. Wherever he went we seem to see him with eyes open, quietly taking note of men and things.
When Julian was brought wounded to his tent, is it hazarding too much to suppose that Ammianus was at his side, and heard the manly farewell he made to his officers ? Ammianus, unlike other Latin historians we have read, does not make speeches for his characters to deliver. With very few exceptions, if any, the speeches he reports are formal, set harangues delivered by emperors at coronations — the sort of utterance which is read from paper and preserved after delivery; and though he may very properly have condensed Julian's words, he is not the man to have invented them*. At all events he says nothing about Vicisti Galilaee, which is almost enough of itself to stamp that story a legend3.
Whether he had a share in the deliberations which led to ^n's" ete^on ^ emPeror ne does n°t 8*7 *• ^ he had ne was tainlv no Prou^ °f ^> ^or ne tacitly apologises for the choice " whet things were &t the last gasp5." He shared the t'ons ant ^ne 8name °^ the retreat, and a burning indignation , . itself ? ^e ca^m historian. Jovian accepted Sapor's terms Tsurrendered five prc^i,:- — Vl-"^ -r^fl all-important city of when ten times over the thing to do was - »
when he penned the words sine
as to forbid the inhabitants to stand up f
, „;,. 6. ». Coohe WM pr»««Uy . ."b-rb of C^iphon the
capital, lying »«">»« *e Tlgr'*;, ,. t,. .uibeutio, but wickedly su(tg»t« >!>•' < Oibbon believes the speed to I neracncy Vollert, K. Juliaa',
. ™ '' "' h.
nera , .
Julian mu,t l,a.e P™P '' "^S'kS not accept thi. .p««h.
xv. 7, 11.
30 Life and Letters in the Fourth Century
as they were quite capable of doing, independently of Roman support1, and looked on, Roman Emperor as he was, while a Persian noble "hung out from the citadel the standard of his people."
He tells us of his return to Antioch, and then we are left to conjecture where he went and what he did. He was writing history, and personal details would have been biography; and he more than once protests that history cannot mention everybody's name, nor record what everybody did. Minutiae ignobiles are outside its sphere. Where he has mentioned himself it has always been because he was an eye-witness2. At some time or other he visited Egypt, to which visit he twice alludes, once with a quiet vidimus*, once visa pleraque narrantes4. He also saw Sparta, and took note of the effects of an earthquake which had stranded a ship two miles inland8.
Though he does not say so himself, we know at once from a letter Libanius6 wrote him in 390 or 391, and from the vivid and satirical pictures he draws, that he lived in Rome, and wrote and read his history there. Seemingly he did not like Rffie a"nd\tr
has been suggested that Libanius' letter was meant „
• i
him. At any rate the great orator says that the onour Rome
does the historian, and the delight she takes in his v^ (JQ cre(jjt to Antioch and his fellow-citizens. 4
In 371 he had the ill luck to be ba^1'-*' ' «. h fi,-
^o Al ~. . _^ueu. ..After a. Toi"—£.,iv m Antioch at the time
,nJ8flvuiV anair of Theodorus was at its height. The story may be told quickly— he tells it us in full himself. Some men, speculating as to who was to be Emperor after Valens, tried a sort of plan- chette to find out, and learning that his name began with the four letters ©EGA, they leapt to the conclusion that it was their friend Theodorus, a man of high rank8. Theodorus heard it, and perhaps was half inclined to accept a manifest destiny — quo fata trahunt retra/iuntque sequamur — but the day planchette was tried was an evil day for him and for all concerned, and many more beside who were innocent. Attempts had been made on Valens' life before, and this time at least he left nothing undone to discourage them
1 They were quite eqnal to this as Sapor could testify, for they beat him off in 340, though he had got so far as to make a breach in their wall.
2 Gimazane (p. 54) is quite right in saying, "C'est un des rares ecrivains qui savent parler du moi sans le rendre ha'issable."
3 xvii. 4, 6. 4 xxii. 15, 1.
5 xxvi. 10, 19. A ship suffered this at Galveston, Texas, in Sept. 1900. 0 Kp. 983. 7 xxix. 1.
8 The man of fate was Theodosius, not Theodorus; so after all the prophecy came true. He was co-opted as Emperor by Gratian in 378.
Aluminium Mni-ri-lltHH* 31
for the future. A reign of terror followed. "We all at that time crept about as it were in Cimmerian darkness, as frightened as the iniests of Dionysius who saw the swords hanging each by a horse hair over their heads1." There was probably no man with so little taste for rebellion in the empire. Writing of treason trials under Constantius he says8: "No sensible person condemns a vigorous inquiry into these matters; for we do not deny that the safety of a legitimate Emperor, the champion and defender of good citizens, to which others are indebted for their safety, ought to be protected by the associated enthusiasm of all men. To uphold this the more strongly the Cornelian laws allow in treason cases no exemption of rank from torture even if it cost blood." This is loyal enough, "but unbridled exultation in suffering is not befitting." He knew, and few better, what it meant to the empire to have no Emperor. That lesson was learnt in the desert and at Nisibis ; and when after some months of tarnished glory Jovian died, the Roman soldiers were right when they forced Valentinian on his election at once to name a colleague.
While Ammianus lived in Rome he wrote his great history3. It consisted of thirty-one books, of which the first thirteen are lost. His work began with the reign of Nerva, 96 A.D., where Tacitus stopped; but in book xiv. we are in the year 353, and book xxxi. ends with the death of Valens at Adrianople in 378. It has been suggested4 that there was not room in thirteen books on this scale for 250 years, and that perhaps, like Tacitus, he wrote two historical works, and that the history, eighteen books of which we still have, was that of his own times, while another is lost. This is a large supposition, and, I think, not very necessary4. At the beginning of book xv. he announces that what follows will be done limatiua, which may refer as much to the matter as to the style, and would then imply greater detail. As I believe there is no external evidence of any kind, every one may freely form his
1 xxir. 2, 4.
2 xix. 12, 17.
3 An English version was brought out by Philemon Holland, of the Citie of Coventrie, in IGO'.I, in a flowing, if free, style. Pope sets Holland's trans- lations (many and mainly historical) in "the library of Dulness,'' but Abp Tr« nrh thinks very highly of them, and his is probably the more serious judgment.
* By Hugo Michael. Biidinger, p. 4, rejects the theory.
9 Zosimus, in his history of Rome's decline and fall, devotes one book, his tir.-t. to tin- lii-t three hundred years of the empire, and gradually gives more space to events as he approaches his subject proper.
32 Life and Letters in tlie Fourth Century
own opinion from that passage, and the little epilogue at the end of book xxxi. '
We do not know anything of his death. If his reference in book xxix to a young officer, Theodosius, princeps postea perspec- tissimus, implies that Theodosius' reign and life are done (as it may), then Ammianus died in 395 or later. The latest date to which an event he mentions can be assigned is Aurelius Victor's Praefecture of the City in 391. In speaking of the Serapeum he says nothing of its destruction in 391 by a mob, but he deals with the Serapeum in book xxii., and we have nine books on later history, so this gives us no further help. However it is quite unimportant when he died. He lived long enough to leave man- kind a legacy, for which we cannot be too grateful.
As all we know of him is gathered from his history, we may consider his work and himself together. Let us begin with his epilogue, as good an account of him as there is : — " All this from the principate of Nerva Caesar to the death of Valens, I, a soldier in my day and a Greek, have set forth according to the measure of my powers. Truth being the boast of my work, never, I think, when 1 knew it, have I dared to corrupt it by silence or falsehood. What follows, let better men write, in the flower of life and learning ; and when, if they so choose, they undertake it, I bid them sharpen their tongues for a higher style." Elsewhere too he promises truth to his readers — siqui erunt unquam, as he modestly says.
He was a man of very wide reading, as his constant references to literature shew. They are so many in fact that it has been surmised he did his learning late in life. He is evidently proud of it, and the value he put upon it may be read in his apology for Valens, ^ho had "a countrified intelligence, unpolished by any readings of antiquity2." Valens again shewed "a very unbridled exultation in various tortures (of supposed criminals), beimj unaware of that saying of Tully's, which teaches that they are unhappy men who think everything permitted them3." It is quite surprising how many Imperial and other crimes are sins of ignorance. Sometimes it is that the Emperor forgot or had not read his Aristotle, but we hear most of Tully. He is rarely at a loss for a historical parallel in the annals of Rome or Greece.
When he sums up the character of a good Emperor, he first of
1 It is also believed by some that one book is missing before book xxxi.
2 xxx. 4, 2 Subagreste ingenium nullis vetnutatis lectionibus expolitutn.
3 xxvi. 10, 12 Sententiae illius Tulliaituc iynurus.
Mni-i-i Iliitit* JW
all tells us his faults — and quite freely too — and then sets forth his U'Hxl points that they may leave the stronger impression, while with a had Emperor he reverses the process. Let us follow his r.xamplo ;iinl pay him the compliment implied by first giving an account of his foibles.
Critics almost without exception abuse his style, some even finding fault with him for trying to write in Latin at all1, and certainly his style is curious and peculiar to him. It reminds one somehow of Apuleius, though it is less successful2. His vocabulary is good in itself, but his composition and grouping have a very odd effect. Partly it may be, as is suggested, the disturbing influence of Greek. Partly it is because he aims a little too much at rhe- toric. The manner is more suited to the novel than to the history. In fact his style is rather more modern3 than classical, so modern as to be nearly journalistic at times. It abounds in metaphor — " The trumpets of internal disaster were sounding4" ; " the horrify- ing gang of furies lighted on the necks of all Asia8 " ; " he left the provinces waltzing6" ; " the destiny of the East blared on the dread shawms of peril, mingling her plans with the shades of Tartarus'." He does not, in describing the situation of a town, care to say North, South, East and West simply, but "facing the arctoan stare," ''whence the dawning sunbeam rises8." (Of course these phrases are more unnatural when translated.) Once or twice he
1 It is remarkable in view of the fact that the Greeks had always been studiously ignorant of Latin (e.g. Plutarch), and that a century later than this we find but few in the East who knew it at all, that the two great men of letters of this age, Ammianus and Claudian, a Greek-speaking Egyptian, should write in Latin. The Emperor Julian seems guiltless of the most rudi- mentary acquaintance with Latin literature. Latin was still, however, the official language. Libauius (Sievers, p. 13) needed an interpreter to read a Latin letter, and was indignant at young Antiochenes going to Italy to learn Latin (tb. p. 162). Trench (Plutarch, p. 10) cites one quotation of Horace in Plutarch against Gibbon's assertion that there is no allusion to Virgil or Horace in Greek literature from Dionysius of Halicarnassus to Libanius. la the statement or the exception more striking?
8 E. W. Watson, Studia Biblica, iii. 241, compares Ammianus' style with Cyprian's, finding them "closely akin in their literary aspect."
3 E.g. in the purely picturesque use of the adjective, xiv. 3, 4 Aboraequt muni* herbidas ripas, balancing nolitudines.
4 xxix. 1, 14 intfrn iruiii i-lmiiuin litui sonabant.
* xxix. 2, 21 coetus furiurum horrifu-n.i...ct'rricibiu Atiae totius iruedit. This rather curious phraseology is not unlike Apuleius, e.g. Metam. v. 12 ted jam pestes illae taeterrimae furiae anhelantes vipereum vinu et fettinante* impia celeritate navigabant — the description of Psyche's two sisters.
6 xxviii. 3, 9 tripudiantes relinquent provincias. Others use this verb in the same way.
7 xviii. 4, 1 Orientis fortuna periculorum terribile* tubas inflabat...canrilia
• •ix inn ii i hut mitcen*.
8 xxvii. 4, 6 urctois obnoxiam ttellis. 7 unde eoumjubar exturgit.
G. 3
34 Life and Letters in the Fourth Centura
breaks out in a declamatory apostrophe, which comes oddly enough in a history. In fact we may borrow a phrase of his own, used of Phryriichus, to illustrate and describe his own style— cum cothnr- natius stilus procederet*. Cothurnus is strictly the buskin worn by the tragic actor to give dignity to his stature, and is commonly enough used in Latin as equivalent to Tragedy itself, just as soccus represents Comedy. Cothurnatus is "wearing the buskin" and may be employed of a man in a "tragic" humour. To turn this into an adverb, and use it to describe the march of a style, is a somewhat unusual manner of writing, but characteristic of Am- mianus. It also hits him off admirably, for there is very often " a hint of the buskin in the strut of his style." At the same time a good deal too much may be made of this, and has been made, for, as I hope the extract above translated will shew, he can write straight- forwardly and simply when he pleases2. When his diction and his rather obtrusive learning are forgiven, I think we have exhausted the list of his sins, which must be admitted not to be very great.
When we come to his virtues, we find that his severe truth- fulness and his dispassionate impartiality might set him in the very front rank of historians. But a man may be fair and truthful without having the other necessary qualities of a historian, and these Ammianus has in a strongly marked degree. He realizes the perspective of the picture he sees, and he selects and groups his matter with the eye of a master. A modern author has this advan- tage over an ancient, that he can by grace of the printing press pack his digressions into footnotes and appendices, while so long as manuscripts held the field, everything had to go into the text. But for this the light reader would have a higher opinion of Ammianus. Setting apart his geographical excursuses which really recall Herodotus3, and those on scientific subjects such as earth-
1 xxviii. 1, 4. So Mr Bury describes the style of Cassiodorus, "each epistle posing as it were in tragic cothurni and trailing a sweeping train." Later Roman Empire, ii. p. 187.
2 One must be careful of speaking of oneself after the Abbe's dictum, but I may be allowed to say I once read Ammianus steadily and almost exclusively for a fortnight and found him fascinating. Quot homines, of course.
3 Sievers, Libanius, p. 17, n. 2, says Geography was a Lieblingswissenschaft of the day. Claudian stops the course of an epic to tell about Sicily and its volcanoes in 36 lines (R. P. i. 142 — 178). While Peter (die gesch. Littcratur iiber die R. Kaiserzeit bis Theod. I. u. ihre Quellen) characterizes these excursions of Ammianus as Dilettantismus, Gimazane on the other hand (p. 207) says that after the French conquest of Algeria a French officer, Nau de Champlouis, took Ammianus' story of Theodosius' campaign in Africa, went over the ground and found the historian exact. I have referred to de Broglie, whom the Abb6 cites, but he is not quite so explicit.
quakes,^ he rainbow, comets, and so forth, which are generally horrowea, and naturally fall short of modern accuracy1 — all of which would to-day be relegated from the main body of the work — we may say that he knows the use of light and shade, and shifts his scene so skilfully that the various parts of his work set off and relieve one another. No part of the Roman world is left out, and he gives us a vivid panorama of that world, borrowing no doubt at times from earlier writers. Huns, Goths, Egyptians and Persians are all surveyed, and though we may be surprised at an omission or a slip here and there, such as his neglect to notice the change from the Arsacid to the Sassanid dynasty in Persia *, which from other sources we find meant much to Rome and her Eastern provinces, we really learn a great deal.
Then he has a keen eye for colour, and in a touch, a hint, an incidental phrase, lets us have glimpses that make the life of his time real and living to us to-day s. We are seeing his world for ourselves, almost with our own eyes. For instance, we learn thus that the Germans dyed their hair. Jovinus4 "hidden in a valley dark through the thickness of the trees" surprises them, "some washing, some of them staining their hair red after their custom, and drinking some of them." In the same way we mingle with the Roman soldiers (too many of them barbarians), and see the way they do things. They are anxious to fight, and they let their commander know it by banging their spears on their shields5. To wish him good luck they make a din with the shields on their knees6. Here is a man who cuts off his thumb
1 Gibbon, who had a high opinion of him, magnificently rebukes him on one occasion. "Ammianus, in a long, because unseasonable, digression, rashly supposes that he understands an astronomical question, of which his readers are ignorant." Nemesis overtakes him at once, for Dr Smith has remarked an error of a preposition in Gibbon's account of Ammianus' mistake.
9 The Arsacicls yielded place to Artaxerxes in 226 A.D., and the new dynasty which was supposed to derive from the Achaemenids (the family of Cyrus and Darius) lasted till 651 \.\>. They restored the religion of Zoroaster and the authority of the Magi, persecuting Christians and Manichaeans alike. The long wearisome wars between them and the Romans (to be read of in the vivid if very unadorned history of Joshua the Stylite) left both an easy prey to Islam. We hear now and then of the Saracens already in Ammianus.
8 Biidinger (per qui-m nun licet e»se negligentem), pp. 27 — 30, is very severe on some of Ammianus' picturesque touches — especially the scene where the Persians are crossing the bridge (xviii. 7, 1), asking, could he see so far and did Sapor really sacrifice at all ? A little lower (p. 31) he laments that Ammianus did not know "Eusebios Pampbilos' Sohn." Ramsay, Impreuiotu of Turkey, p. 193, mentions one or two odd little slips of Mr Hogarth into inaccuracy about small matters — a bolt on a door and a woman's petticoat — and asks what would be said of such blunders in St Luke.
* xxvii. 2, 2. • xvi. 12, 13. • xv. 8, 15.
3—2
36 Life and Letters in the Fourth C< nfnri/
to shirk service '. Julian makes a speech, and in delight tty / troops stand waving their shields in the air8, or in anger they' brandish their spears at him3. In the troops of Constantius4 are soldiers who lie on feather-beds and have a pretty taste in gems. Alas! for Julian's heathen revival ! his soldiers had too many Sacrificial feasts, too much to eat and too much to drink, and rode home through the streets of Antioch to their quarters, mounted : on the necks of passers-by*. Now they all but mutiny because Jnlian has only a donative for them of a hundred pieces of silver n man6. Again we find them marching into battle, while they raise the barritus7, "so called in their native tongue, a martial note that began low and swelled louder." Mr Keary8 very reasonably finds the origin of this in the German forests, where the wind sweeping over and through leagues of trees roared like the sea, and hence through barbarian recruits, of whom we hear a good deal, it came into the Roman army.
All these are small points, perhaps, but they add variety to the work; and though a history may be great without them, or dull with them, they are in their right place in Ammianus, and brighten his canvas without lessening the effect of the great outlines of his picture.
Ammianus was a soldier, but he saw that the army was not the State, and ever and again we find him intent on the provinces and the troubles of the tax-payer. He recognizes the merit of Constantius, whom he did not like, in keeping the army in its proper place9, "never exalting the horns of the military"; and he tells us with a proud satisfaction in his hero that Julian reduced the land tax in Gaul from twenty-five to seven aurei per caput10, and in his financial arrangements would not countenance one particular practice because it was merely a relief to the rich without helping the poor at all. It is not the picture of Julian we are generally shewn, and we must bear in mind that the man, whom the ecclesiastics abuse for "pillaging" them, was careful for finance and had the interests of the empire at heart. A burning question of the time was the shirking of "curial" duties by men who tried to
1 xv. 12, 3. 2 xxiii. 5, 24.
8 xxi. 13, 16. 4 xxii. 4, 6.
8 xxii. 12, 6. 6 xxiv. 3, 3.
7 xxxi. 7, 11. Cf. Tac. Germ. 3.
8 Vikings and Western Christendom, p. 43.
9 xxi. 16, 1.
10 xvi. 5, 14. Cf. Marquardt, Rom. Staatsverwaltung1, ii. p. 222.
37
evade paying their share of the heavy taxes exacted from the curia of each town as a body. It is clear that every evasion made the burden heavier for the rest of the body, but Julian is severely criticized by Ammianus for being too sharp with men whom the curiae accused of such dereliction1. The system was vicious, and in fact was one of the main elements in the decay of the empire*.
Another such element was officialdom. He tells us how when Julian was quartered at last in the palace of Constantinople, and sent for a barber, there entered a gorgeous official, who proved to be the court barber, and, as such, had a splendid income3. This roused Julian, who at once made a sweeping clearance of barbers and cooks and eunuchs, and till Valens became Emperor their regime was at an end. Other official nuisances were less easy to get rid of, and again and again we find Ammianus telling of tumult and war and disaster brought on by the cruelty and insolence of civil and mili- tary authorities. Valentinian, he complains, did nothing to check the irregularities of his officers, while he was very severe on the private soldiers. Finally, the terrible Gothic war, which culminated iu the defeat and death of Valens at Adrianople, was occasioned, if not caused, by the rapacity and cruelty of a magistrate charged with the transport of the Goths over the Danube.
Here it may be remarked that while Ammianus has no political or economical views to set forth, and accepts the fact of the empire as part of the world's fabric, as everybody else then did, without criticism, he does permit himself to criticize and complain of the administration. Though he laments that his contemporaries have not the recuperative power which "sober antiquity, unstained by the effeminacy of an ungirt life," possessed in its unanimity and
1 Hode, p. 68, refers this criticism to Julian's edict (Ep. 14) putting back Christian clergy into the curiae from which they had been released on ordi- nation. A nun. Marc. xxv. 4, 21; and xxi. 12, 23.
8 Priscus in his account of his interesting journey among the Huns in 448 A.D. (p. 59 B in the Bonn Corpus of Byzantine History, a translation of which is to be found in Mr Bury's Later Roman Empire, i. 213 — 223) tells us of a renegade Greek he met who had turned Hun and pled that he was better off; "for the condition of the subjects [of the empire] in time of peace is far more grievous than the evils of war, for the exaction of the taxes is very severe, and unprincipled men inflict injuries on others because the laws are practically not valid against all classes," and so forth. Priscus upheld the empire, and " my interlocutor shed tears and confessed that the laws and constitution of the Romans were fair, but deplored that the governors, not possessing the spirit of former generations, were ruining the State." It might be difficult to identify those "former generations," but the whole story is very significant.
» xxii. 4, 9.
38 Life and Letters in tJie Fourth Century
patriotism1, he has no regrets for the republic, no sorrow for the Senate of Rome in its glorious effacement, none of the narrow Roman feeling of the city-state days. Three hundred years had brought a good many changes, and all the world was Roman now together, apart from Germans, Goths, and Persians beyond the pale. The Greek of Antioch is as much a Roman as any one. The result is a striking difference of tone in the historian — a change for the better. We are rid of the jingoism of Livy, and the gloom of Tacitus2. Ammianus himself is tenderer and has larger sympathies than the historians of old. He can value human life even if it is not a Roman life, and pity the child though a Syrian who begins his experience by being taken captive. The Roman in Ammianus poses no more. He is far more frankly human. As a result we feel more with him. In fighting German3 and Persian he is battling for light and civilization, and Christianity itself ; and if in the last great fight in book xxxi. we incline to the Gothic side in some degree, it is the fault of a criminal official, and not because our historian alienates our sympathy by a narrow and offensive little patriotism. Things are more fairly and squarely judged on their merits now when the cramping caste distinction of civitas is gone. Even the line between Roman and barbarian was growing faint, when the Frank Nevitta was made consul by Julian, bitter as he was against Constantine for his barbarian consuls.
But I have said nothing so far of one great change that had come over the world in the triumph of the Church. We hear of it of course from Ammianus, but less than we might have expected. This is easily accounted for. One of our chief interests in the fourth century is the Arian controversy, and Ammianus was a heathen. A heathen of the latter-day type, that is, a rather confused, because so very open-minded a heathen. We hear little about the gods and a great deal about the vaguely-named caeleste numen, which shews its interest in mankind again and again.
In particular he digresses on the occasion of the downfall of Gallus, which he considered a well-deserved catastrophe, to give us his view of Nemesis or divine justice. The passage is characteristic in several ways. "Such things and many more like them are
5. 14.
2 Mr Bury (L. R. E., ii. 179) characterizes Tacitus very justly as " out of touch with his own age."
3 Biidinger (p. 21) discovers an "unusual bitterness against Germans" in Ammianus though he notices it less in the later books. If this is true it can hardly be surprising (compare Synesius), but it had uot occurred to me.
A in 111 'm n n. •< M<n-r<//inn.-< 39
often wrought (and would they were always!) by the avenger of evil acts and the rewarder of good, Adrastia, whom we also call by a second name Nemesis, a certain sublime Justice with divine power, set, if human minds may judge, above the orbit of the moon, or, as others hold, a guardian being, with universal sway over our several destinies, whom the theologians of old in their myth call the daughter of Justice, saying that from an unknown eternity she looks down on all earthly things. She, as queen of causes, arbiter and disposer of events, holds the urn of fate, varying the lot that befals us ; and by bringing what our free wills begin at times to a very different end from that intended, she utterly changes and involves the manifold actions of men. With the indissoluble clamp of necessity she fetters the empty pride of mortality, and disposing as she will of the hours of growth and decline, now she brings down the neck of pride and cuts its sinews, now she lifts the good from the depths into prosperity. Antiquity, in its love of myth, gave her wings, that men might realize with what flying speed she is everywhere present ; it gave her to hold the helm and set the wheel beneath her, that men might know she courses through all the elements and rules the universe" (xiv. 11, 25—26).
Here, while aiming at expressing his view in the style he loves, he gives us the conclusion of a man of affairs. Men propose this and that; powers above them "shape their ends," and the world presents a great appearance of confusion. Yet his experience and observation lead him to believe that in general it is possible to recognize some higher power (to-day we might say law or principle) which is acting towards justice. We do not always see justice entirely triumphant, but we often do, so often as to be justified in believing that above the play of "changeful and inconstant fortune" is a divine justice, however we may define it. He is not a philo- sopher, but he leans on the whole to Neo-Platonic theology, from which he derived " the orbit of the moon," the lowest of the seven heavenly planes.
Auguries and auspices are still to the fore, not that the mere birds can tell the future, but a kindly numen1 guides their flight to allow us by it to see what is coming. Omens are very real
1 xxi. 1, 9. Amat fiiiin ln'iii</nitnx ininiiiiix, s?n quod merentur hominti, ten (/<(..(/ ttnnjitiir ?»rum adjfi'tioiie, hit quoque urtibu* prodere quae inpcndunt. Surely there is something pathetic in this, if only in the quoque. This too is Neo-Platonic; see footnote 2 on p. 187.
40 Life aiid Letters in the Fourth Century
things — an idea mankind still cherishes in a confused and half ashamed way. Prodigies still occur, but "nobody heeds them now." Ammianus has great respect for the philosophers and the theologi of old, though he draws a curious picture, of Julian's camp with its Etruscan soothsayers and Greek philosophers1. Some sort of portent occurred on Julian's march into Persia, and the sooth- sayers declared that it meant disaster if the advance were con- tinued. But they were slighted by the philosophers, "who had much respect just then, though they do make mistakes sometimes, and are stubborn enough in things they know nothing about." This time the event justified the soothsayers, we know.
But a historian of the fourth century, whatever his creed, has to deal with Christians. Ammianus is quite free from bias; Chris- tian or heathen is much the same to him — Tros Tyriusque mihi nullo discrimine agetur. He has no animus whatever, and is so far unique among his contemporaries. He finds grave fault with Julian for forbidding Christian professors to teach ancient literature, stig- matizing the decree as one obruendum perenni silentio3, "to be overwhelmed in eternal silence " — strong words to use of a man he loved and honoured, and speaking volumes for the fairness of the writer. As an outsider, however, who will have other outsiders among his readers, he will often half apologize for a technical term — "a deacon as it is called," "synods as they call them." A bishop is Christianas legis antistes, though he slips into episcopus now and then. A church is Christiani ritus sacrarium, or Christian i ritus conventiculum, or frankly ecclesia. These roundabout phrases are largely due to his environment ; for the traditions of literature and good society ignored the new religion8.
1 xxiii. 5, 8 — 11. He was disgusted with the quacks and pretenders who swarmed round Julian. Augury and so forth were degraded when practised in irregular ways and by the inexpert. Cf. xxii. 12, 7, and Socrates, iii. 1, 55.
2 xxii. 10, 7.
3 This might of itself, I think, dispose of Gutschmid's ingenious attempt to correct a defective passage in xxii. 16, 22. Ammianus is enumerating the great men whose teaching has been influenced by Egypt (Pythagoras, Anaxagoras and Solon) and his last name is lost. Ex his fontibm per tublimia gradient serinonum atnplitudine Jovis aemulus non visa Aegypto militavit sapientia gloriosa. Gutschmid wants to read, after his, ihs, i.e. Jesus ; Valesius would prefer correcting non into Platon. When one remembers that even Christians of the type of Augustine and Jerome found the style of the Bible bad and unreadable at first ; that heathen writers habitually ignore the Church, its doctrines and usages as far as possible; that the use of the name ,/<•.«•;/.-.• alone is unusual, coming on one with a surprise in Jerome, while Tacitus says Christus and Suetonius Chrestus and dismiss the matter; that Ammianus, who was an admirer of Julian and generally in literary matters wishful to be correct, would have been a revolutionary among educated pagans if he had
AlHIHtUlHtX MiiriT//i,iH* 41
But Ammianus was no pedant, and can speak in terms of admiration of the men1 "who, to hold their faith inviolate, faced a glorious death and are now called martyrs." In another passage, speaking of the sufferings inflicted on the followers of the pre- tender Procopius — which were very much those undergone by the martyrs of Palestine according to Eusebius — he says* he had rather die in battle ten times over than face them.
Side by side with this stand his startling words on the warring of the sects. Julian, on the principle of Divide ut imperea, recalled the Nicene exiles with a view to fresh theological quarrels8; " for he knew that there are no wild beasts so hostile to mankind as most of the Christians are to one another." It was only two centuries since Tertullian heard the heathen remarking ut sese invicem diligunt. He records the terrible fight in a church at Rome*"* between the followers of Damasus and Ureinus, the rival candi- dates for the See, when one hundred and thirty-seven dead bodies were found on the victory of Damasus. Here is his comment — " I do not deny, when I consider the ostentation of Roman society, that those who are ambitious for this thing (the See) ought to spare no effort in the fray to secure what they want, for, if they get it, they will be sure of being enriched by the offerings of matrons, of riding about in carriages, dressed in clothes the cynosure of every eye, and of giving banquets so profuse, that their entertainments shall surpass the tables of kings8. They might be happy indeed, if they could despise the magnificence of Rome, which they count a set-oft' to the crimes involved, and live in imitation of certain bishops of the provinces, whom their sparing diet, the cheapness of their clothes, and their eyes fixed upon the ground, commend as pure and holy men, to the eternal deity and his true worshippers."
Once he seems to express a preference, when he complains of Constantius "confounding the pure and simple Christian religion with old-wife superstition8." Probably unf/in xitperstitw is his
found "sublime eloquence" or "glorious wisdom" in Christianity; and finally that be nowhere shews any acquaintance with any Christian literature what- ever, and fails to realize what Arian and Nicene were disputing about around hint ; the brilliance of Gutschmid becomes more and more impossible.
1 xxii. 11, 10. * xxvi. 10, 13.
3 xxii. .->, 1. < xxvii. 3, 12.
8 Cf. Augustine's early judgment on Ambrose, Conf. vi. 3, 3.
8 xxi. 1C, 18. ChrintitinaiH rfl'njionem abnolutam t-t timplicem nnili *up?r- stitiuiif. ct»tfu>i<li-ii!< in tfini ncrntiiiula perplexiu* Attain componenda ymfiug t:rcitiirit <li*,-iili<i plurinia, qua? progretta fiuiu* aluit concertatiuiie verborum,
42 Life and Letters in tJie Fourth
summary criticism of all theological speculation. Constantino took the same view and wrote to Arius and Alexander remonstrating about their quarrel which he called "childish folly" — they were "too precise" (aKjoi/SoAoyeTo-fo, exactly Ammianus' in qua scrutanda, perplexius) about these " entirely trifling questions." Constantine complained that these clergy caused disorder and discord ; and Ammianus says the same of Constantius (quam componenda gra- vius)1. In any case, in view of his treatment of Athanasius and the curt dismissal of the Athanasian question2, it is hardly clear that he censures Arianism, which in fact was less likely to seem anilis superstitio to a heathen than Nicene Christianity. At all events Constantius was too "curious about the Christian religion," and ruined the State's arrangements for the quick travelling of genuine officials by giving free passes to swarms of bishops who did little but go from one synod to another.
I think we may surmise Ammianus' own feelings from his remark about Valentinian3. Valentinian was rather a savage ruler on Ammianus' own shewing, but "this reign was glorious for the moderation with which he stood among the different religions and troubled no T>ne, nor gave orders that this should be worshipped or that ; nor did he try by threatening rescripts to bend the neck of his subjects to what he worshipped himself, but he left the parties untouched as he found them." Surveying all his references to Christianity, I am afraid we must admit that he did not realize what it meant, nor understand how vital was the issue between Arian and Nicene. How should he, when there were hundreds in the church who did neither ? We must also always remember that, beside being a man who kept himself in the background, he was writing for a society which avowedly had no interest at all in Christian affairs4.
Ammianus did not lack for dry humour ; witness the soldiers who would have won a certain battle " if only they had displayed the vigour in standing which they shewed in running away"; and "Epigonus, a philosopher so far as clothes went"; or Mercurius "who was like a savage dog that wags his tail the more sub-
ut catervis antistitum jumentis publicis ultroque citroque discurrentibus per synodos quas appellant dum ritum omnem ad suum trahere conantur urbitriuin, rei vehiculariae succideret nervos.
1 See Constantino's letter apud Euseb. V. C. ii. 69 — 71 and Socr. i. 7.
2 xv. 7, 6—10. 3 xxx. 9, 5.
4 The Abb6 Gimazane is very anxious to make Ammianus a Christian, at least so far as to have been baptized, though he admits that his supposed faith is lukewarm. I see neither the gain nor the grounds.
Ammianus Mur^li'tnn* 43
missively for being a brute inside"; or the would-be Emperor Procopius, " about whom the wonder was that his life through he shed no man's blood " ; or that governor of Africa " who was in a hurry to outstrip the enemy in plundering his province"; or finally, those lawyers of Antioch who, if you mentioned in their presence the name of some worthy of old, took it to be some foreign term for a fish or other eatable'. But what would have been in Tacitus one of the bitterest of epigrams, is in Ammianus no epigram at all. Imperialis verecundia, the chastity of an emperor, was the great phenomenon of the fourth and fifth cen- turies, whose emperors, whatever else they may have been, were in thi- matter above scandal.
There is a beautiful picture of the triumphal entry of Con- stantius into Rome2. He was a little man, long in the body and short and rather bandy in the legs, but
He nothing common did nor mean Upon that memorable scene.
He rode in a golden chariot, and for all the noise and applause never flinched, but stood immovable; but "on passing through lofty gateways he would bow his little person ; and as if his neck were fortified, he kept his gaze straight in front of him, and looked neither right nor left, as if he had been a dummy ; the shaking of the wheels did not make him nod, and he was not seen to spit, or wipe his mouth or his nose, or move his hand throughout."
A grim humour hangs about the coronation of Procopius3, who, after months in hiding, blossomed out as an Emperor. He appeared before the soldiers without a cloak, and so emaciated as to look as if he liad risen from the dead, and all the purple he could muster was his boots and a rag he waved in his left hand: — "you would have thought him some figure on the stage, or some ridiculous burlesque that had popped through the curtain." His procession was hardly a success ; for the soldiers were afraid of being assailed with tiles from the roofs, and marched along holding their shields over their heads.
Of Ammianus' residence in Rome we have many reminders, some of very great interest, some very amusing. His description of the city on the occasion of Constantius' visit shews the hold Rome still
1 The same doubt has arisen in our own day as to whether Botticelli ia a cheese or a wine, if we may trust Mr Punch.
- xvi. 10. 3 xxvi. 6, 16.
44 Life and Letters in the Fourth Century
had on the world's imagination. "Whatever he saw first he thought supreme above all." There was the temple of Tarpeian Jove, the baths as big as provinces, the solid mass of the amphi- theatre built of Tiburtine stone, to whose top the human eye could hardly reach, and so forth. "But when he came to Trajan's forum — a structure, I suppose, unique under heaven, which even the gods -would agree with us in admiring — he stood in amazement '." Rome was the oue thing in the world about which exaggeration was impossible. The Emperor was so much impressed that he determined to add his item to the ornaments of the Eternal City, and sent an obelisk from Egypt. Of this and the inscription it bore, and its journey and arrival, Ammianus gives us a most interesting account8.
But more entertaining are his digressions on Roman manners, which abound in sketches as good as Juvenal's3. The snobbery and extravagance of the great men of Rome may not have been more excessive than such things are elsewhere; but the giandee who with the greatest dignity (though no one has asked) extols to the skies his patrimony and the income it yields, how fertile it is, how far it reaches ; the noble gentleman who welcomes you, though an utter stranger, as if he had been yearning for you, asks you endless questions till you have to lie, and makes you regret that you did not settle in Rome ten years earlier, but next day has no idea who or what or whence you are ; the fashionable people, who loathed sensible and well-educated men like the plague, and learning like poison — all these impressed Ammianus so much that he has left them gibbeted for ever in his pages. The troops of slaves and eunuchs (his particular abhorrence), the luxury of the banquets, the Roman preference for the musician rather than the philosopher, the organs and lyres as big as waggons, the libraries closed like the tomb, the absurd fear of infection that has the slave washed after he has been to inquire about a sick friend before he is allowed into the house again, the gambling and horse racing, the effeminacy and the slang4 of Rome, waken disgust in this old soldier, as well they might. The rabble that will fight for Damasus or Ursinus, and
1 xvi. 10, 15. Cf. Symmachus, Eel. 3, 7, on Constantius' toleration of the temples.
2 xviii. 4.
3 xiv. 6; xxviii. 4. Boissier, F. P. ii. 187, says: "Dans ces passages qui ne ressemblent pas tout a fait au reste il est plus satirique et rheteur qu'historien."
4 E.g. Per te ille discat. Cf. Jerome, Ep. 55, 5, When they see a Christian, statim illud de trivia 6 ypatK6s, 6 e7
!."»
riot if the corn ships are late or wine is not forthcoming, are no better than the nobles. The most absurd figure of all, perhaps, is Lampadius, who was at one time prefect — " a man who would be indignant if he should so much as spit without being complimented on being adept at it above the rest of mankind." But even in Rome there were good men and true, such as Symmachus " who is to be named among the most illustrious examples of learning and decorum."
If this is comedy there is tragedy enough in book xiv. Gallus Caesar is in the midst of a career of tyranny and bloodshed in the East', when he is summoned to Italy. To disarm his suspicion he is bidden to bring his wife Constantina" — a helpmeet indeed for him, "a death-dealing Megaera, the constant inflamer of his rage, as greedy of human blood as her spouse" — a lady who listens from behind a curtain to keep him from weakening. She did not feel easy about the invitation, yet thought she would risk it, but she died of fever in Bithynia on her journey, and Gallus felt more nervous than ever, for he knew Constantius and "his particular tendency to destroy his kin." He knew his own staff hated him, and were afraid of Constantius, for wherever civil strife was in- volved the " luck " of Constantius was proverbial. A tribune was sent to lure him to his ruin ; " and as the senses of men are dulled and blunted when Destiny lays a hand on them, with quickened hopes he left Antioch, under the guidance of an unpropitious power, to jump as they say from the frying pan into the fire." On his journey he gave horse races at Constantinople, and the Emperor's rage was more than human. A guard of honour (and espionage) accompanied him. From Adrianople he was hurried on with fewer attendants, and now he saw how he stood and " cursed his rashness with tears." The ghosts of his victims haunted his dreams. At Petobio he was made a prisoner, and at Histria he was beheaded, and all of him that reached Constantius was his boots, which a i-reature of the Court hauled off to post away to the Emperor with this glorious spoil
What is the general impression left on the mind by the history of Ammianus ? One cannot read him through without a growing conviction of his absolute truthfulness and a growing admiration of
1 Even his brother Julian admits " fierce and savage " elements in his character. Ep. ad Athen. 271 D.
a Honoured since the 13th century as S. Constanza. Gregorovius, Rome, i. 106.
46 Life and Letters in tlic Fourth Century
his power, and the two together present the Roman Empire to the mind exactly as it was. He makes no predictions, he expresses no regrets, and apart from observations on the characters he draws, he leaves the reader to form his own opinions on the Empire. Nobody foresaw that in twenty years after his death Rome would have fallen to the Goth, that the Empire as an effective power in the West was nearing its end, but yet, wise after the event, we can see in his pages that it is all coming. There were, we learn, strong men and honest men to stave it off and delay it, who, if they could not save Rome, did save Europe in virtue of those ideals of law and order which the younger peoples of the North found in the majestic fabric of Roman administration. Ammianus lets us see ( the exhaustion of the Roman world, the ruin of the middle classes under an oppressive system, and often still more oppressive agents, of taxation, the weakness all along the frontier, Rhine, Danube, Euphrates, and African desert, caused by bad principles of govern- ment within as much as by attacks from without, and the crying need of men which led to the army being filled with barbarians, who did not quite lose all their barbarism and brutality at once, and were often as terrible to those they protected as to the enemy they were supposed to keep off ; and at the same time we read in him the grandeur and the glory of Rome, who had welded the world into one and made the nations members one of another, had humanized and civilized them with law and culture in her train wherever she went, and was even now training in her armies the men who should overthrow her, and then, as it were in horror at their own work, should set her on high once more, and keep her in her place as the world's Queen for a thousand years. ")
CHAPTER III
JULIAN
Perfidit* Me Deo, quamn's non perfidut orbi.
PRUDENTIUS Apot/i. 454
ONE of the amiable traits in man's nature is to love what is old for its own sake. Our affection for progress is not always utterly disinterested, but the love of the past is the purest of passions. And we are so made, or many of us are, that we love the old the more because it is the lost cause. It may be a weakness, but it is a gentle weakness. Yet it is apt to mislead us, and we sometimes allow age and defeat to obscure in our lost cause or our fallen hero features that would repel us in a triumph. Thus in some measure has it come about that there is a kindly feeling for Julian beyond what his worth really merits, and it is reinforced by the malignity and hatred with which ecclesiastical writers have, or are supposed to have, pursued his memory. The tradition grew that he was a champion of reason and enlightenment against the crudity and darkness of Christianity, and indeed these words are practically Julian's own. But the reason and enlightenment of which he thought and wrote would have seemed to many, who have admired him for their sake, as crude and foolish as the dogmas of the Church against which he protested. After all he owes something to the spiteful nickname he bears.
The Julian of sentimental atheism is really as far from the truth as the Julian drawn by over-zealous ecclesiastics. The real Julian is more interesting than either, because a more compli- cated character. He found fault with Old and New Testaments very much in the style of Voltaire, but he was not a sceptic. He was hated as a persecutor, though again and again he declares his
48 Life and Letters in tfte Fourth Century
wish and his intention to maintain religious freedom. Many rulers have upheld religion, very few have felt so deeply conscious of divine guidance or so utterly dependent upon it as he. For most men the religion of Christ seems to supply the closest, the most vital and the most absorptive communion with the 'divine ; to some it has seemed to draw too much upon faith. But Julian decided it was a cold sectarianism that cut a man away from heaven and left him godless in a godless world. For some it has been a divine alchemy "transmuting everything it touched to gold. For Julian it did the reverse, and for the gold of Homer and Plato offered the lead of Matthew and Luke. It was a blight upon the Greek spirit which had given life to the world for a thousand years. We can now see that this Greek spirit had died long since a natural death, but the Greeks of Julian's day fondly hoped it was living in them still, and Julian voices the horror with which they began to feel the chill of death and the natural, if rather irrational, hatred they felt for what they supposed to be its cause'.
"Draw me as you have seen me," wrote Julian to a painter. In one way this is easy to do, for few men have ever let mankind see into their inmost feelings as he did ; but it is difficult, too, for the atmosphere in which he lived was not ours, and many things look strange to-day which were not felt to be unnatural then. Zeus and Athena are not now, and we can only with difficulty conceive them ever to have been for thinking men, even with all the generous allowances philosophers might make, a possible alternative to Christ. Yet are they stranger than Krishnu and Kali ? Is it not possible to-day for a man to halt between two opinions in India, and find in the philosophy or theosophy of thirty centuries of Hinduism an attraction which may outweigh Christianity? When we think of the age of Julian we must not forget that the Brahmo-Somaj exists to-day. Even Christians of his day believed his gods to be real beings, of course demons.
1 Perhaps the best thing is to quote a Latin view to supplement this. Rutilius (i. 383 — 396) attacks the Jews and involves Christians with them.
atque utinam nunquam Judaea subacta fuisset
Pompeii bellis imperiisque Titi ; latins excisae pestis contagia serpunt
victoresque suos natio victa premit.
Further on he assails the monks, and concludes
wore, rogo, deterior Circaeis secta venenis ? tune mutabantur corpora, nunc animi.
.Jiil i> i it 49
The fourth century saw the last great persecution of the Church end in failure, and the new religion recognized and honoured by Constantino With him a new spirit came into the Roman Empire. Hitherto so long as a man did a loyal citizen's duty, the State did not intervene to regulate his belief. But now Constantine, weary of the civil disorder the Arian quarrel made at Alexandria and then communicated to other places as the infection spread, called a council of the Church and invited the bishops to decide what the Christian faith was, and he would then see to it himself that there should be no more quarrelling about it. He was, however, dis- appointed, for the quarrels went on, and when he died in 337 they were still unsettled. Whatever might have been Constantino's own religious position, his son's was clear. Constantius carried to the i inevitable halting-place the theory that a man's belief is the State's concern. He did not aim at reconciling the factions for the sake of concord, but at converting them all to his belief. His aim was that of Justinian or Henry VIII. — to dictate to his realm what it was to believe. This affected Christians at once, and signs were not lacking that the heathen ere long must in their turn be Arian, Semi-Arian or Nicene, as the ruler might require.
Constantine left behind three sons and a number of nephews and other relatives, but, whether the deed was the army's, done to secure " the seed of Constantine " — a phrase a man might conjure with at this time — or whether it was the work of Constantius, this great family was thinned down, and the sons of Constantine were left to rule the world alone1. Two of their cousins survived, the sons of their father's half-brother, Gallus and Julian. Gallus was thought to be so ill as to render murder unnecessary, and Julian was so small — six years old — as to be overlooked. It was a dark beginning for a life, like "the unspeakable tale from some tragedy" rather than the record of a Christian house, and Julian lays the guilt on Constantius, "the kindest of men." (Ep. Ath. 270 c.) In later days Constantius, who, too, had a conscience, looked upon his childlessness as Heaven's criticism of his deed. Had he lived a month or two longer, to see his daughter, he might have had to
1 Licinius had thirty years before set the precedent by clearing away as far as he could all persons who by marriage or descent were connected with any previous Emperor. This was to exclude the possibility of a pretender. Such as it is, this is the justification of Constantius — "the sixth command men t," says Seeck, writing of Constantine killing the younger Liciuius, " must yield to the safety of the empire."
G. 4
60 Life and Letters in the Fourth Century
f\
revise this opinion. The heathen world, if Libanius1 voices a general feeling, saw in the extinction of the whole of Constantine's family the vengeance of the injured gods.
Julian was left to the care of his kinsman, the great Semi-Arian Bishop of Constantinople, Eusebius of Nicomedeia2, and of a faithful eunuch Mardonius, who had been his mother's tutor. Some have tried to lay the blame of Julian's apostasy on the theology of Eusebius and his party. It would be nearer the truth to lay it on their unsecured morals as exhibited in the court of Constantius. Eusebius himself we may acquit of direct influence on Julian. Great ecclesiastical statesmen have rarely, perhaps, the leisure to teach little boys, and whatever leisure and inclination Eusebius may have had to teach Julian, he died when his charge was still a child. Mardonius had been reared by Julian's grandfather and was a faithful servant who watched well over the boy. He had a passion for Homer and Greek literature3, and when the lad would ask leave to go to races or anything of the kind, the old man would refer him to the 23rd of the Iliad and bid him find his races there. Two things resulted from this training. Julian's moral character was thoroughly sound throughout life. He never entered the theatre till his beard was grown, and as a man he hated the races (Misop. 351, and 340 A). On the other hand Mardonius does not seem to have spent much time with his pupil on the Christian scriptures, and Julian's earliest and happiest associations were with Homer, whose poetry he always loved.
1 See Sievers, Das Leben des Libanius, p. 192.
2 Amm. Marc. xxii. 9, 4. A pedigree of the maternal connexions of Julian may be found in Seeck's great edition of Symmachus, p. clxxv. It is not quite complete, as the bishop is omitted.
3 For Mardonius see Misopogon, 352 A. He was a Hellenized Scythian, and perhaps it was in some measure due to him that Julian was so entirely out of touch with Latin literature, but the Greek sophists with whom he consorted were of one mind in neglecting Latin. E.g. Libanius (Sievers, op. cit. p. 13) needed an interpreter for a Latin letter. See Rohde, der griechische Roman, p. 298, on this preference felt by the later Greeks for them- selves— a preference which Julian shared but which did not gain him support in the Latin world. If Epistle 55 be written from Gaul or the West, as I think, we have Julian's views on the tongue half his Empire used — playful no doubt : — T<i de ^id, ei Kal <f>0cyyol/JLi)v 'EkXyvurrl, 0avn<i£eiv &£iov otfrws eer/te? ^K/3e/3op- jSapw/x^ot did. T& xuP^°- Elsewhere (O?-. ii. 72 A) he speaks of what they (the Latins) do with the letter V. Eutropius (x. 16, 3) remarks his one-sided education — liberalibus disciplinis adprime eruditus, Graecis doctior atque adeo ut Latina eruditio nequaquam cum Graeca scientia conveniret. Constantine, on the other hand, addressed the Nicene Council (mainly Eastern and Greek- speaking Bishops) in Latin, but when presiding over the debates he intervened in Greek. (Euseb. Vita Constantini, iii. 13.)
51
A sudden edict from Constantius removed his two cousins to a rather remote place in Cappadocia. Macellum has been described as a castle or a palace. Very probably it was both. Julian, when he is attacking Constantius' memory, asserts that there he and his brother were shut off from schools, companions and training suitable to their age and rank (Ep. Ath. 271), but from another source we learn it was a place with a magnificent palace, baths, gardens and perpetual springs, where he enjoyed the attention and dignity his rank deserved, and had the literary and gymnastic training usual for youths of his age. (Sozomen v. 2, 9.) His teachers, it is suggested, were Christian clergy, who probably had the less influence for seeming to be the creatures of Constantius1. Consequently their instructions had not the charm of Mardonius', and it may be to them that he owes his repugnance for the Bible. It was not admired as a rule by the educated of the day — a terrible reflexion on the system that left them incapable of appre- ciating it. Longinus (ix. 9), it is true, quotes the passage "Let there be light : and there was light " as an instance of the sublime, and Porphyry occasionally cites the Old Testament in a friendly spirit, but they are exceptions. Wherever he may first have read the Scriptures, Julian never understood them. He had a good superficial knowledge of them, but no idea of their spirit and significance. The anthropomorphisms of the old Hebrew stories he found less wise and more crude than those of Greek legend ; while, for the New Testament, little is to be expected of a critic who can pronounce that Paul "outdid all the quacks and cheats that ever existed anywhere*."
Of course he would have no noble companions save his brother, but this was inevitable. Constantius seems to have meant to- keep them in reserve, out of his way and safe from plotters who might make tools of them, but still available and properly trained in case of his needing them himself. Later on it was easy to repre- sent these years at Macellum as bleak exile.
As to Gallus, Julian says that " if there were anything savage and rough that afterwards appeared in his character" (and it seems generally agreed that there was a good deal) " it developed from this long residence in the mountains." Whether Gallus would have done better in Constantinople is very doubtful. Nero, Domitian and Commodus do not seem to have derived much benefit
1 So Bode, p. 27, and Vollert, p. 15.
* See Neumann's reconstruction of his book against the Christians, p. 176.
4-2
52 Life and Letters in the Fourth Century
from the atmosphere of Rome. For himself, "the gods kept him pure by means of philosophy." Some of this "philosophy" was no doubt previously learnt, but some, it is possible, was acquired from the books " many philosophical and many rhetorical " which George (afterwards bishop of Alexandria) "gave him to copy when in Cappa- docia1." There is nothing very original about any of his philo- sophical ideas.
From Macellum Gallus was summoned to be made Caesar by Constantius, to govern Syria in true tyrant fashion, to rouse the Emperor's ill-will, to be recalled and put to death. Julian later on tried to make political capital out of his being put to death untried, but from the pages of Ammianus Marcellinus we learn that whether tried or not (and those were not days when political offenders were over-nicely tried), Gallus richly deserved his fate.
The suspicions of Constantius extended to Julian, and for some time he was kept at court under his cousin's eye or within reach. But the Empress Eusebia was his friend, reconciled her husband to him, and obtained leave for him to live in Athens. For this Julian was always grateful to her memory2.
Julian had spent six years at Macellum, and since then had attended at Constantinople and Nicomedeia the lectures of some of the great teachers of the day. He was made to promise he would not hear Libanius, and he kept his promise but obtained written reports of the lectures3. He was still nominally a Christian and a "reader," though really at heart a heathen already, when he went to Athens in 355, to meet there men whose acquaintance he counted among the best gifts of his life 4.
We have a picture of him drawn by his fellow-student, Gregory
1 Ep. Ath. 272 A and Ep. 9 (on the rescue of George's books). I owe this suggestion to Vollert, p. 15, and Rode, p. 26.
2 Oration iii. p. 118 D.
3 Sievers, op. cit. p. 54 and Bode, p. 29.
4 An interesting study of students and professors in the Athens of Julian's day will be found in Mr Capes' University Life in Ancient Athens (Longmans). He brings out the connexion between the city government and the "University," which explains Julian's addressing his manifesto in 360 " to the Council and People of the Athenians." It was a little pedantic in any case to send it to Athens at all, but the act is characteristic of Julian.
See also Sievers, op. cit. ch. iii. on universities, rhetoricians and scholars, and ch. iv. on Athens; and Wachsmuth, Die Stadt Athcn im AltTthum, pp. 709 — 711, who emphasizes that Athens was purely a university town now and quotes Eunapius (v. Prohaeregii, p. 492) for Constantins' endowment of the university with some inlands OVK 6\lyas oudt fUKpds. The two letters of Synesius, 54 and 136, quoted on p. 337, are of great interest in this connexion though of a later date.
Julinn 53
of Xazianzus1, which has been described as "a coarse caricature," but which, nevertheless, seems to me not unlikely to be fairly true if a man's nature does reveal itself in look and gesture. Julian's own writings give us the impression of a fidgety, nervous tem- perament, and his admirer, Ammianus, tells us a number of stories which betray a want of repose. Gregory in Athens remarked (or says he remarked) a certain changeableness and excitability in him, beside a rather loose-hung neck, twitching shoulders, a rolling eye, a laugh uncontrollable and spasmodic, a spluttering speech, and an inability to stand or sit without fidgeting with his feet*. All these signs seem to point one way, and if we realize that his temperament was restless, and that his training had not been of a kind to correct his natural tendency to be nervous and emotional, we may find less difficulty in explaining the variety of his religious opinions.
He enjoyed the student's life, but he was to be called away from it. The exigencies of the Empire had compelled Constantius to associate Gallus with himself as Caesar, and the fact that Callus had been a failure did not alter the situation. Julian was the only available person to fill his place, and Constantius, with some constitutional hesitation and reluctance, made him Caesar and sent him to Gaul to free the country from German invaders. It was an honour Julian could have done without, and as he drove back to the palace in his purple robe he kept muttering to himself the line of Homer (//. v. 83):
(\\aftt irop<j>vp(os ddvaros KOI fjioipa Kparaiff. Him purple death laid hold on and stern fate.
The story is told by Ammianus (xv. 8), and it sums up the situation. The scholar is dragged from his study to be invested with the purple, which had been his brother's ruin and may be his own as easily, if a eunuch whisper it at the right moment to the suspicious Constantius ; and he cannot draw back, for stern fate wills it so, and all that the purple means is that he will die with less leisure for the development of his inner life3.
So "torn from the shades of academic calm," Julian was plunged "into the dust of Mars4" in Gaul, at first with but little direct
1 Cited by Socrates, K. II. iii. '23, 18.
2 Sir William Fraser tells us Disraeli's one mark of nervousness as he sat in Parliament was a restless crossing, uncrossing and re-crossing of bis legs.
8 AIUIU. Marc. xv. 8, 20: niltil se plut adsecutum quam ut occupatior inttriret. * Aram. Marc. xvi. 1, 5.
64 Life and Letters in the Fourth Century
responsibility. For this he was very angry with Constantius, though at the time he could say nothing, and he believed (or it was said so) that it was a matter of indifference to the Emperor whether he slew the Germans or the Germans slew him, for in either case the Empire would be freed from menace1. But, as Sozomen points out, if Constantius had merely wanted to kill Julian, he could have done it without marrying his own sister2 to him and putting him in so conspicuous a position. Constantius indeed loved to keep things in such a way as to be able to have both of two mutually exclusive alternatives, but it was surely not strange or outrageous of him to entrust only a little power to begin with to an untried man. As Julian proved himself worthy of more power, and his colleagues shewed themselves unfit for it, Constantius gave him more, till he had supreme command in Gaul. After his wont, however, he surrounded Julian with creatures of his own and withdrew from him almost his only friend in the provinces, the trusty Sallust
It was not to be expected that Julian would be successful as a soldier, but he was. Indeed a modern critic has said that it was only as a soldier that he was great3. He was popular with the soldiers, for he would share their privations and he led them to victory. He won the regard of the Gauls by ridding them of the Germans, and by reducing the land tax about 70 per cent., and he had the respect of the Germans4, for he could beat them in battle and keep his word with them when his victory was secure. His ambition was to be like the Emperor Marcus Aurelius5, and though a different man, and a weaker, he may be said to have resembled him at least in honourable devotion to duty and the cultivation of the higher life.
1 Zosimus (iii. 1) puts this very amiable suggestion into Eusebia's mouth!
2 It is curious that Julian only twice refers to her in his extant remains — Or. ii. 123 D, Ep. Ath. 284 B.
3 Boissier, La Fin du Paganisme, i. 138. I do not know enough of military matters to be able to criticize this statement or to give any account of his campaigns that could have an independent value. The reader may be referred to J. F. A. Miicke (Flavins Claudius Julianus, part i. Julian's Kriegsthaten, Gotha 1867) who is however criticized as generally too friendly to Julian, and to W. Koch (Kaiser Julian, Leipzig 1899). Miicke, op. cit. p. 50, calls the German wars "ein grosses Werk, werth der Uusterblichkeit."
4 He seems to have respected the Germans, remarking their charac- teristics— rb <j>i\f\fuOep6v re Kal avw6ra.KTov Ycp/navu>v (Neumann, p. 184). He did not so much admire their beer, disliking its smell, if we may judge from his epigram on it.
8 Amm. Marc. xxii. 5, 4. Amm. Marc. xvi. 1, 4 rectae perfectaeque rutioiiis indagine congruens Marco ad cujus nemulationem actus suos ejfingebat et mores. Eutropius x. 1C .17. Antunino noit tibximili.-i erat qu?m etitim ni'inulari studebat. This ambition was avowed likewise by Diocletian (Hist. Aug. M. Antonin. 19).
Julian '>'>
He was too successful in Gaul to retain the good-will of Constantius, and the wits of the court amused themselves with jokes about the "goat" (in allusion to his beard), the "purpled monkey," and the "Greek professor1," and with darker insinuations that must ultimately mean death for him. Constantius grew nervous, and, as war with Persia was imminent, he sent to Julian to demand a considerable number of Gallic troops. Whether they were really wanted for the war, or the order was sent merely to weaken Julian, it was a blunder. He could reply that Gaul could not safely be left without them in view of the Germans, and the troops could say, and did say, that the terms of their enlistment exempted them from service so far from home*. Julian wrote and the troops mutinied, and exactly what Constantius was trying to prevent occurred. The soldiers hailed Julian Emperor. He was reluctant, but without avail. They raised him aloft on a shield, and crown him they must and would3. It is interesting to note that, a crown not unnaturally not being forthcoming, Julian rejected the first two substitutes proposed, a woman's gold chain and some part of a horse's trappings, but submitted to be crowned with a soldier's bracelet (360 A.D.)4.
The fatal step was taken, but it is characteristic of the Roman Empire, though neither of the men was strictly Roman, that though civil war was inevitable, each should go on with the work he had in hand for the State5. Sulla had not returned to deal with his enemies in Italy till he had crushed Mithradates. Negotiations, if such they can be called, went on for a while, till in 361 the two Emperors marched against each other. They never met. Happily for every- body, Constautius died on his march, and all Julian had to do was to have him buried.
Julian was now sole Emperor, and could at last freely avow the faith he had held in secret for some ten years and openly proceed
1 Amm. Marc. xvii. 11, 1 Capella non homo — loquax talpa — purpurata simiii — litterio Graecus. xx. 4, 1 Coiutantium urebant Jttliani virtutet. Juliaii himself (Ep. 68) says bis relations with Constautius might be summed up as \iM-o0i\ia.
» Amm. Marc. xx. 4, 4.
3 Cf. Sulpicius Severus Dial. ii. ( = i.) 6, 2 magnum imperium nee sine periculo mini nee nine urmix potnit retineri.
* Amm. Marc. xx. 4, 17 primis auspiciis non congruere aptari mulitbri in undo. The whole affair shews a German rather than a Roman tone prevalent in the army. We may compare Julian's sneer at the usurper Silvanus and his purple robe is rijt yvrauKuvlTiSos (Oration ii. 98 D — a work written some years earlier tlmn this).
5 Mr I'.iiiy. l.nti-r Jiiinnin /vy/iyn'r.', i. 127, n. 4, remarks that Julian, though Greek in sympathies, was in many ways more Roman than Greek.
56 Life and Letters in the Fourth Century
^~
with the religious reformation he intended to effect1. He could plead the precedents of Constantino and Constantius for his attempts to remould the belief of his subjects, and his first step was to recall the Nicene bishops his predecessor had banished ,and to proclaim toleration for all religions.
v Before following out the steps of his reformation, it will be well to study his own mind and learn if possible how he came to change his faith, and what he found in Jlellenism that Christianity could not offer*.
The first thing we have to realize clearly is that Julian was essentially a weak man, by nature inclined to a sentimentalism and a conceit which an evil environment developed. He was not an original thinker at all, but a born disciple, readily amenable to the mysterious and to flattery.
When the Antiochenes made a watchword of the letters "Chi and Kappa" — the initials of Christ and Constantius3, it was not a random shot, but a deliberate combination of two names, which were already connected in Julian's mind. Constantius was above all things a Christian Emperor, and a Christian who could not content himself with the popular view of his religion, but kept restlessly intruding into the discussion of theological subtleties, better left to bishops, till he excited the disgust of honest, practical men like Ammianus4. And this man, the nervous student of creeds, ever on the alert for a diphthong too many or too few, was also the murderer, who had executed the "tragic curse5" on his family, as ready to add Julian to his list of victims as to take part in a battle of bishops. A Christian and a murderer, he was for years the baleful figure in the background of Julian's thoughts. His friends and satellites were no better than he — men as unscrupulous in currying favour at court as in maintaining their faith at a council.
1 He writes to Maximus in triumph (Ep. 38) (fxtvepCn pov6vTov/j.ei>. There is a pervert's excess of devotion about him. Ammianus, a pagan born and bred, felt this, and called him superstitiosus magis quam sacrorum legitimus observator (xxv. 4, 17).
2 On this Wilhelm Vollert's Kaiser Julian's religiose und philosophische Ueberzeugung (Gutersloh 1899) will be found most useful and suggestive.
Socrates, E. H. iii. 1, has a long chapter devoted to Julian, and a large part of the book (iii.) concerns him. Similarly Sozomen's book v. comprises the story of Julian, and though not perhaps equal to Socrates, contains some important original matter. Thtodoret (iii. 28) is a lighter weight.
In what follows I have generally of set purpose avoided the testimony of the more hostile authorities, not that it is necessarily unreliable.
8 Misopogon 357 A.
4 Amm. Marc. xxi. 16, 18. See p. 41.
5 Or. vii. 228 B ^ rpayiic)) Kardpa.
57
On the other side stood the gentle and loyal eunuch Mardonius, as sympathetic a companion for his old master's grandson as he was an interpreter of Homer. Homer was their common study and inspiration, their daily reading, and from him they passed to Plato and perhaps Aristotle. Thus all that was horrible in the life of this sensitive, lonely orphan boy was Christian ; while all that was helpful and delightful was drawn from Greek literature. When this period ended and the boy was sent to Macellum, the Christian clergy and the Christian Scriptures must have been equally repugnant to him, but he was alone (for Gallus could hardly be very congenial) and he allowed himself to be led along Christian paths and to make professions which he did not feel. It was here that he became a " reader."
Released from Macellum, he began to frequent the company of philosophers and rhetoricians ; and though he was prevented from hearing Libanius1, the prohibition did not save him from the influence of this man, the greatest pagan teacher of the day, and perhaps even inclined him to be so influenced. These men were dangerous companions for him, as vain as peacocks (to adapt Synesius' description of Dio) and, as far as men so entirely self- centred could be religious, utterly pagan.
They read the young prince quickly, they praised him and they encouraged him in his classical studies, they made themselves agreeable to him and they shewed him the beauty and the breadth of Neo-Platonism. Here was a faith, whose scriptures were the beautiful books from which he had learnt his earliest lessons with Mardonius ; a faith which had no persecuting bishops but was quietly upheld by suffering scholars, men of rare genius, the successors of Plato himself; a faith with a range and sweep far beyond the Church's, embracing all the truth and charm of the ancient poetry and philosophy of Hellas and all the passion and revelation of the religions of the East. It was a wider faith than Christianity, including all that was true in Judaism, of which Christianity was after all only a perversion and a misunderstanding. They would not be slow to shew him the absurdities and contra- dictions of the Old Testament, the difference between the New Testament and Nicene Christianity, and the sublime morality of a Plato and a Plotinus as contrasted with Constantius and his bishops. Surely the truth could not be with the barbarous, dull and incon-
1 Sievers, Libanitu, p. 54. Bode, Gesch. der Reaction Kaiser Julian*, p. 29.
58 Life and Letters in the Fourth Century
sistent authors of the Christian books rather than with Homer and Plato.
We can see in his later writings the general trend of the arguments which influenced him against Christianity and the Scriptures and brought him nearer Neo-Platonism. But there
^was more. He was young and sentimental, and the sufferings of the old religion and its adherents, which, as we can read in
. Hermes Trismegistus, were keenly felt, would be emphasized and the hope held out that on some future day he might himself be the restorer of the faith, to which Constantine and Constantius had done such injury. He might indeed be himself the chosen messenger of heaven, for it was a Neo-Platonic doctrine that the ,gods stoop to give mankind a saviour and a regenerator whenever the divine impulse in the world is in danger of being exhausted '. It might be that his name would be thus added to those of Dionysus and Herakles. This thought, whoever may have inspired it, was never lost by Julian, and its fatal consequences may be seen in the ever-increasing arrogance and self-conceit which mark his career.
To crown all, Julian came under the influence of "a certain Maximus, who at that time wore the outward look of a philosopher but was a magician and boasted he could foretell the future8." In these words of a Christian historian we have a true description of the man who did most to ruin Julian's character. Neo-Platonism made communion with the Supreme one of its cardinal doctrines, but while Plotinus and his followers pronounced this communion to be dependent on contemplation and a matter of consecrated intelli- gence, another school took the easier and more imposing route of theurgy. By theurgy, which Augustine says is merely a more splendid name for magic, by charm and ritual, by fast and offering, heaven could be stormed. The gods could be " compelled " (avay- K.a.&iv) to speak, and more, to appear in bodily form before their worshipper. The theurgist held secrets which enabled him to command the attention and the presence of the gods at will, and of this school Maximus was at this time the most eminent. The mind of Julian was prepared for him. They met, and, though
1 Synesius, de Prov. i. 10, 11.
2 Theodoret iii. 28, 2. Hellenism did not produce many martyrs, and an attempt has been made to beatify Maximus to fill the gap, but the true charge on which he was put to death, on which Christians also were often enough put to death, was magic. Magic may seem to us a harmless thing if foolish, but to the Roman government it generally connoted political disaffection, as it does in modern China. The context of Amm. Marc. xxix. 1, 42 implies that this was a political case. Vollert pp. 18 — 23 is excellent on Maximus.
69
i-ircumstances for a while parted them, Julian never shook off the influence of this quack, but to the end of his days had for him a deep affection and respect, almost awe1.
But for some ten years, however much he might fancy himself a new Dionysus, and whatever delight he might draw from intercourse with the gods2, he had to practise deceit, to hide his powers of commanding heaven, to cloak his own godhead. It was not a good training — a conscious godhead, the control of gods and constant hypocrisy. It weakened Julian and accentuated his natural de- ficiencies. The marvel is that he suffered so little, and the reason perhaps lay in the steadying fear of Constantius, for when that was removed Julian rapidly lost in sense and self-control.
It will hardly be necessary to attempt a systematic exposition of his theology, which is neither original nor clear, but it may be of interest to see what Neo-Platonism as a religion offered him for the daily affairs of life. He had gone to Athens already a heathen in heart, and thence he was summoned to Milan, to be made Caesar eventually, though this was not quite clear at first. " What floods of tears and what wailings I poured forth," he writes to the Athenians, "how I lifted up iny hands to your Acropolis, when this summons came to me, and besought Athena3 to save her suppliant and not forsake me, many of you saw and can testify ; and above all the goddess herself, how I asked that I might die there in Athens rather than face that journey. That the goddess did not betray nor forsake her suppliant, she shewed by what she did. For she led the way for me everywhere and set around me on every side angels (or messengers) from the Sun and Moon to guard me. And it befel thus. I went to Milan and lived in a suburb. Thither Eusebia used often to send to me in a kindly spirit and bid me boldly write for whatever I would. I wrote her a letter, or rather a supplication, with language of this nature, 'So may you
1 His public attentions to Maximus annoyed Ammianus, who sums them up as ostentntio intempestiva. xxii. 7, 3. The historian was perhaps more genuinely Roman than his hero.
3 Or. v. 180 B fvdaifj.oi'ia.i' ^j rt> KKpdXaior 77 TUV dtCiv yvwrlt ten.
* The hymn of Proclus to Athena is an interesting parallel. He prays Athena of the Athenian Acropolis for mental light, forgiveness of sin, freedom from disease, a fair gale on the voyage of life, children, wife and wealth, oratory and eminence (irpo(5pfii)t> 8' M Xaott). Proclus, it may be added, was the philosopher of the fifth century A. P., who won the proud title of 6 SidSoxot the succettor, i.e. of Plato! The prayers of Synesius, both as a Neo-Platonist and as a Christian, were mainly for freedom from anxieties, from attacks of demons and from the influence of matter. He also prays that he may be enabled to act worthily of Sparta and Cyrene.
60 Life and Letters in the Fourth Century
have lieirs, so may God give you such and such, send me home as soon as possible' ; but then I thought it might not be safe to send such a letter to the palace to the Emperor's wife. So I besought the gods by night to shew me whether I ought to send the document to the Empress. And they threatened me with a shameful death if I sent it. And that this is true I call all the gods to witness. So I refrained from sending the letter. From that night a reflexion came to me which it is, perhaps, worth while you should hear. Now, said I, I am thinking of resisting the gods, and I have thought I could better plan for myself than they who know all things. Yet human reason looking only at what is present is lucky if it can just
avoid error for a little but the thought of the gods looks afar,
nay, surveys all, and gives the right bidding and does what is better ; for as they are authors of what is, so are they of what will be. They must then have knowledge to deal with the present. For the while, my change of mind seemed wiser on that score, but when I looked at the justice of the matter I said, So you are angry, are you ? if one of your animals rob you of your use of itself, or run away when called — a horse, perhaps, or a sheep or a cow — and yet you yourself who would be a man, and not one of the many or the baser sort either, rob the gods of yourself and do not let them use you for what they would. Look to it that, in addition to being very foolish, you are not also sinning against the gods. And your courage, where is it ? Absurd ! You are ready to toady and cringe for fear of death, though you might cast all aside and trust the gods to do as they will and divide with them the care for yourself, as Socrates bade, and do what concerns you as best you can and leave the whole to them, hold nothing, catch at nothing, but accept what they offer in peace. This I considered not merely a safe but a fitting line of conduct for a wise man... and I obeyed and was made Caesar1." (Ep. Ath. 275 — 7.)
Ever thereafter he walks by faith, trusting the gods to look after him2. While in Gaul he wrote two panegyrics on Constantius,
1 We may add his expression of acceptance of the Divine Will — Or. vii. 232 D xpriffOt /xot irpds 8 TI /3ot/\e<r0e. Similar views will be found in other Neo-Platonists, e.g. Hermes Trism. (Bipoutine edition of Apuleius, vol. ii. p. 313) Justo liomini in Dei religions et in siimma pietate praesidium eat. Dens eniin ttde« ab omnibus tutatur mali» ; and Porphyry to Marcella, esp. c. 16 Kal Tipr/ircis f*tv apiffra rbv dcbv 8rav r$ $eif rrjv aavrris didvoiav iftotArgi...ti 5^ XalpfL rip dpxofJ^vtfi rb af>xot> Ka^ ^e^s <ro<f>ov tc/iderai Kal irpovoeT. xal did. TOUTO /ua/cclptos 6 <r60os OTI tiriTftoTTfijeTai virk deov.
2 See his myth in Or. vii. 233 D ^ets ydp aoi (the gods say) i
Julian 61
which does not seem an entirely honest performance. But perhaps, as Vollert (p. 86) suggests, he is ironical, and he is certainly not exuberant, though a reader, who did not well know their relations, might feel more kindly to Constantius from what he says of him. But I refer to them because, beside doing his duty as a citizen by his ruler, he yields to his besetting temptation which clung to him through life, and preaches. In the second panegyric he says, " The man, and still more the ruler, all whose hopes of happiness depend on God and are not blown about by other men, he has made the best disposal of his life1." (Or. ii. 118D.) In a very undisguised homily he wrote in Gaul on the Mother of the Gods, he gives thanks that, whereas he was once in Christian darkness, he is not now*. When Constantius recalled Sallust, Julian consoled himself with another homily : "Perhaps the god," he says, "will devise something good ; for it is not likely that a man, who has entrusted himself to the higher power, will be altogether neglected or left utterly alone." (Or. viii. 249.) (We do not always allow enough for the awful loneliness of a monarch or of one in Julian's position, yet it must be considered in estimating them.) " It is not right," he goes on, "to praise the great men of old without imitating them, nor to suppose that God eagerly (irpodvp.^ helped them but will disregard those who to-day lay hold on virtue, for whose sake God rejoiced in them3."
_JIe feels that in a very special sense he is the chosen vessel of 'neaven. In his myth4 in his seventh oration the conclusion of a very easily-read riddle is that he, the least and last of his house, is directly chosen by the gods to restore the old faith, and to this end is particularly entrusted by Zeus to the care of Helios — the Sun. In his letter to Themistius he accepts the rdle of a Herakles or a Dionysus, king and prophet at once ; he feels the burden more than man can bear, but neither desire to avoid toil, nor quest of pleasure, nor love of ease, shall turn him away from the life of duty. He fears he may fail in his great task, but he counts on aid from the philosophers and above all commits everything to the gods5.
In the moment, perhaps the supreme moment of his life, when the soldiers sought him to hail him Emperor, he tells us he was in
1 Cf. Dio Chrys. de Regrto, Or. i. 16.
2 Or. v. 174 H; BO also Or. iv. 131 A. 3 Compare also Or. vii. 212 B.
4 " Dans toute cette alllgorie Julien ne fait que se repeter & lui-mome, Tu
•'</.•< •;•/«." Chassang, Hist, du Roman, p. 194.
5 Notice in the concluding prayer to Cybele in Or. v. an entreaty that she will aid r$ 'PufMtwv ST)/*^ /IdXiora tfv drorptyaatfeu rrjt dOebTTjToi Ktj\i5a.
62 Life and Letters in the Fourth Century
his chamber — "and thence I prayed to Zeus. And as the noise grew louder and louder, and all was in confusion in the palace, I besought the god to send a token, and forthwith he sent a token [he quotes a word or two from the Odyssey] ' and bade obey and not resist the will of the army. Yet, though these signs were given me, I did not readily yield, but held out as long as I could, and would accept neither the title nor the crown. But as one man I could not prevail over so many, and the gods, who willed this to be, urged them on and worked upon my will. So about the third hour, some soldier tendering his bracelet, I put it on with reluctance and went into the palace, groaning from my heart within as the gods know. And yet I ought, I suppose, to have been of good courage and trusted to the god who gave the token, but I was terribly ashamed and wanted to escape, in case I should seem not to have been faithful to Constantius2." (Ep. Ath. 284 c.)
Elsewhere, in the Misopogon (352 D), which is not, like the letter just quoted, a manifesto of the date of his revolt, he uses the same language. "This office the gods gave me, using great violence, believe me, both with the giver (Constantius presumably) and the receiver. For neither of us seemed to wish it, neither he who gave me the honour or favour, or whatever you like to call it — and he who received it, as all the gods know, refused it in all sincerity." Again, writing to his uncle Julian (Ep. 13) he says, "Why did I march (against Constantius) ? Because the gods expressly bade me, pro- mising me safety if 1 obeyed, but if I stayed — what I would have no
god do So I marched, trusting all to fortune and the gods, and
content to abide by whatever pleased their goodness." Before he started he " referred all to the gods who see and hear all things, "and then sacrificed, and the omens were favourable." (Ep. Ath. 286 D.) In this feeling of dependence on heaven and the constant reference of everything to the divine he is very like Constantine, his uncle.
The preceding Emperors had left him precedents for the imperial control of religion, and when Julian found himself at last sole
1 But he does not say what the token was — the line of Homer (Od. iii. 173) merely illustrates his request and its gratification. It was believed at the time that the philosophers by the aid of magic andtheurgic rites had not un frequently such manifestations.
2 The same kind of plea, however, was made twenty years later by the tyrant Maximus to St Martin. (Sulp. Sev., vita Mart., 20.) se non sponte sumpsisse imperium sed impositam sibi a militibus divino nutii rcgni necessi- tatem defendisse et non alienam ab eo Dei voluntatem videri, penes quern tarn incredibili eventu victoria fuisset. \
63
Emperor, with power to carry out in act the restoration which he had long felt was laid upon him by Heaven, he had to consider practical measures for the maintenance and propagation of his religion. He saw at once its weakness. The old faith, which he re-christened Hellenism, fell short of the new both in creed and conduct. Three centuries of Christian experience and thought had built up a body of doctrine, point by point tried and proved, and the Christian could rest on the rock of the Church. The heathen had no dogma, no certainty. This philosopher said one thing, and that another, and every man could choose for himself and be uncertain, solitary, a lonely speculator, when he had chosen'. Hence the Church was stronger than her adversaries. To meet this difficulty Julian revived Maximin Daja's great idea of the Holy Catholic Church of Hellenism*. All the great philosophers conspired to witness to the truth ; all said, if rightly understood, one thing8. By dint of a little confusion, a little judicious blind- ness, one might believe this. Thus the teachings of the Neo- Platonists were not mere "hypotheses" but genuine "dogmata," and rested on a solid basis (Or. iv. 148). As substitutes for the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost he set the usual group of Neo-Platonic conceptions, to which he linked the gods, proceeding from the great original TO oV, oXos or o\rj e£ oAou. The Sun played a great part in all these speculations, " for whom and by whom are all things4." The Jews were built into the wondrous fabric, for they, too, worshipped the great Supreme, though clannish narrow- ness made them exclude the other gods8. What were the relative places of these other gods, whether separate beings or merely different names for one being, it is a little difficult severally to
1 Cf. Lucian's Hermotimus, a great part of which may be read in Mr Pater's English in Mnrius the Epicurean. A good criticism of this piece of Lucian's is given by Chassang, Hist, du Roman, pp. 191 — 2.
2 Eusebius, E. H., ix. 4, and Lactantius, 31. P. 36.
8 Or. vi. 185 A roits trp<arev<ra.vra.t W iv ItdiTT-Q TUV alptfftw ffKoirtlru KO.I
trdvTO. fVpjfffl ffVfJ.<fHl>Va.
4 For the adoration of the Sun compare the hymn of Proclus (412 — 485 A.D.), e.g. 1. 34 :
tlnuv ira-yyevtrao Oeov, if/vx&v dvayuytv,
xticXvOi Kai fjit KdOypov d/jMprddot ale* dirdffrjs, rre.
5 Julian seems always to have been very friendly toward the Jews, and endeavoured at one time to rebuild the Temple for them, but the design fell through, baffled by the accident or miracle of fire and earthquake. See Ep. 25, a striking letter, and /•./-. 63.
Elsewhere (Neumann, op. cit., p. 185) he says the Jewish god is in charge of the Jewish race just as there is «a0' tKturrov fffyot ttivdpxv Ttl "«** '» (?• TpoffJKCi rbv rdv ' Eppalwv Otbv ov\l &*! *-«*i"d» K&T/XOV "ffvtffiovpy&v vtrdpxtu' KO.I K
64 Life and Letters in the Fourth Centura
determine, but his system of Divinity had but a very few years to grow in and must not be inspected too closely, as at best it was but patchwork. His homilies were generally "knocked off" in two or perhaps three nights, "as the Muses can testify'." They ramble and digress and leave us confused. But the great thing was that Hellenism had a system of Divinity and that all the philosophers bore witness to it. If it were a little abstract, it was not after all for the common people*. This was a fatal weakness, but it could hardly be helped.
In the second place there was no doubt in Julian's mind that his new Catholic Church suffered from disorder, and from the careless lives of its adherents. He tried to organize his priesthood and to improve their morals. He is most emphatic on their sacred character, which he means to make others respect, and which the priests would do well to respect themselves. He writes them charges like a bishop3, lecturing them on their social deportment and on their sacred duties. They must not frequent theatres or wine-shops, nor read erotic novels4 or infidel books like the works of Epicurus8 ("most of which the gods, I am glad to say, have allowed to perish ") ; they must speak and think no unseemly thing. Their families must be orderly and go regularly to the temples6. Their sacred robes are for temple use, for the honour of the gods, not to flaunt in the streets. Decencies must be observed in temple service7. The magistrate or officer within temple walls is as any other man. He is annoyed when men applaud him in a temple8; there they must adore the gods and not the Emperor. Again, the Galilaeans (for so he calls the Christians) beside influencing people by their
1 Cf. Or. vi. 203 c.
2 Or. vi. 196 D, TOI>S ft^v otv iroXXofo ovdlv KuMet rats Kwvots ?Te<r0ai 5d£a« — a common feeling of Neo-Platonists.
3 E.g. Ep. 49 from which I have taken some of what follows. Harnack (History of Dogma, tr. vol. i. p. 336) remarks that "the ethical temper which Neo-Platonism sought to beget and confirm was the highest and purest which the culture of the ancient world produced."
4 Rohde, der gr. Roman, p. 349, calls attention to this prohibition as a striking proof of the wide and general popularity of such novels in Julian's day.
8 Epicurus and his school were hated by all the adherents of the pagan revival from the days of Lucian. Cf. Macrobius, Comm. i. 2, 3. Lucian's sham prophet Alexander had coupled them with the Christians, A lex. 38.
8 He was highly annoyed to find that the wives and families of some of his priests preferred the churches. Sozomen v. 16.
7 In Ep. 56 he directs that attention be paid to sacred music in Alexandria, TTJS lepas ttrine\T]6r)va.i novffiKJjs, and that choir boys of good birth (e5 yeyovbres) be chosen for their voices — (K <j>wvijs KaraXeyfoffuffav, trained and maintained at the public charges.
8 Ep. 64.
Julian 65
sober lives gain great influence by their hospitality to the poor and the wayfarer, and to counteract this Julian ordains great guest- houses and provision for their maintenance, that Hellenism, too, may win men by its charities. Above all things he preaches holiness. All service done in holiness to the gods is alike acceptable1.
One thing was wanting. When this life is done, the Christian Church offers a sure and certain hope of a joyful resurrection. What had the Catholic Church of Hellenism to bid against this ? Neo-Platonism, as we can see in Macrobius, in Hermes and else- where, inclined to a belief in reward and punishment beyond the grave. Even Plotinus holds that a man's position in the next life is determined by what he has reached in this. Julian no doubt went with his teachers here as elsewhere, but he does not speak so clearly of the other life as we might have expected of him. In one place (Fragm. Epist. 300) he writes hopefully: "Consider the goodness of God, who says he rejoices as much in the mind of the godly as in purest Olympus. Surely we may expect that he (iravrws yiuv OVTOS) will bring up from darkness and Tartarus the souls of us who draw near to him in godliness ? For he knows them also who are shut up in Tartarus, for even that is not outside the realm of the gods, but he promises to the godly Olympus instead of Tartarus." In another place (Or. iv. 136 A, B) he says that the souls of those who have lived well and righteously will go upward to Serapis — not the dread Serapis of the myths, but the kind and gentle god who sets the souls utterly free from becoming or birth and does not, when once they are free, nail them down to other bodies by way of punishment, bnt bears them upward and brings them into the intelligible world — the region next to Absolute Being, according to the Neo-Platonists.
There is however another passage, where one feels it odd that he says nothing of all this. In Letter 37 he writes to a friend to say he wept to hear of the death of the friend's wife, but here is nepenthes for him as good as Helen's. Democritus of Abdera told King Darius, who was sorrowing for his queen, that he could raise her from the dead, if he would write on her grave the names of three that never were in mourning. " But if you cannot, why weep as if you alone know such a sorrow ? " The same story, or one very like it, is told of Buddha, but its comfort is a little cold.
1 Some of bis ideas are curious : e.g. funerals by day dishonour the Sun (Ep. 77) e/t 6t> TrdvTa. *cal t£ ov JTO^TO.
O. 5
66 Life and Letters in the Fourth Century
Julian's relations with the Christian Church remain to be discussed1. To an erring priest he wrote (Ep. 62) that he would not curse him, as he does not think it right, for he remarks that the gods never do it. It was only consistent with such a temper not to persecute, and he sedulously maintained that he did not and would not. But, says Ammianus2, on the bench he sometimes asked litigants their religion, though it never affected his decisions. While all creeds were lawful, he felt it only right to give higher honour to the true faith and its adherents. Any other course would be dishonouring to the gods3. But, of course, this was not persecution. "When he recalled the exiled bishops, when he made the Catholic restore Novatian churches, when he coquetted with Donatists, he was only carrying out a liberal measure of toleration. No doubt, but English Nonconformists have never felt specially indebted to James II. Heathen men said Julian recalled the exiles to kindle anew the flames of discord in the Churches4. But it was bad policy. Nicene and Arian were at least unanimous in opposing a heathen. Moreover when the two parties were thus left on an equal footing, and the Nicenes had their leaders again, the Nicene party gained ground steadily, and they after all were the more serious opponents5. When he forced bishops to rebuild heathen temples they had destroyed, they called out on persecution ; they, too, had consciences and might destroy but could not build up heathenism. So far, perhaps, no one could say Julian was strictly unjust. But when the mob of Alexandria rose and slew George the bishop, all he did was to write a letter of gentle rebuke — they ought not to have broken the law ; they should have trusted to him and justice ; but for Serapis' sake and his uncle Julian's he would forgive them (Ep. 10). Indeed he seems to have been less anxious that no more bishops should be killed than that none of George's books should be lost (Epp. 9, 36). When bishop Titus of Bostra6 wrote to inform him of his efforts and his clergy's to preserve the peace, he wrote to the people of Bostra and put an unpleasant
1 In addition to the books dealing specifically with this (to which I have already referred) Sievers, Leben des Libanius, c. xi., may be consulted.
2 Amm. Marc. xxii. 10, 2.
8 Ep. 7 irpoTi/jidff8a.i, fdvroi roiit 0eo<re/3eZj Kal vdvv <f>r)/jd Seiv.
4 Amm. Marc. xxii. 5, 4 is very explicit about this.
5 See Gwatkin's Studies in Arianism, ch. vi. p. 201 (first edition). I am afraid I do not take so high a view of Julian as my former teacher does, though I once inclined to take a higher.
6 Famous otherwise as the author of three books against Mani — extant partly in Greek and partly or wholly in Syriac.
67
construction on the bishop's letter, and invited them to rid them- selves of him. (Ep. 52, August 362.) The Emesenes burnt the tombs of the Christians, and were held up in consequence as an example to easy-going Antioch (Misopogon, 357 c). But of all men Julian hated Athauasius most, the man who seemed, as Vollert says, to unite in himself all the force of Christendom. The bishop in virtue of the decree of recall hail returned to his see of Alexandria. Julian wrote to the Alexandrians in March, 362, to say he had never meant to recall the bishops to their sees ; it was enough for them not to be in exile ; Athanasius, who has been banished by so many decrees of so many Emperors, might have liad the decency to wait for one restoring him to his so-called episcopal throne before boldly claiming it to the annoyance of pious Alexandrians ; he must now depart (Ep. 26). When, instead of going into exile, Athanasius dared to baptize some Greek ladies, Julian wrote in October of the same year peremptorily ordering his removal (Ep. 6). A month or so later he had to write again, for he had miscalculated Athanasius' influence in Alexandria. He is surprised and shocked at the Alexandrians, but they may trust him, for he knows all about Christianity after twenty years of it, and now he has been following the gods twelve years. Still, if they will not be converted, there are other possible bishops beside Athanasius, whom he banishes from the whole of Egypt (Ep. 51)'. The great bishop was not concerned. "It is but a little cloud and will pass," he said2, and went into hiding in Alexandria itself, and in less than a year the little cloud had passed away and he was free again.
Gregory of Nazianzus said Julian veiled his persecution under a show of reasonableness3, and it may be held that nothing very terrible has been mentioned as yet. Perhaps it was not going too ) far when he cancelled all the immunities and exemptions granted to the clergy by Constantino and Constantius, though if he did (as alleged4) compel widows and virgins to refund grants made to them in past years, he would seem to have been a little too exacting.^ But a zealot, whose principle is the equality of all sects and the preference of one, stands in slippery places. The Syrian historian is highly indignant about this robbing of the Churches. Western indignation was greater on another score, as we shall see. The
1 He concludes with a flout at Athanasius' person — M^W dyr)/), d\Xf drtpw- TrlffKot ei/reXTjj— which, if a little unnecessary, still reveals one side of his own character.
2 Sozomen, v. 15, 3.
» x. p. 166 : ap. Sievers, op. eft., p. 118. 4 Sozomen, v. 5.
5—2
68 Life and Letters in the Fourth Century
great old centre of Christianity in Syria was Edessa, and the Arian Church there, by its attack on the Valentinians, gave Julian an opportunity which he gladly seized. He confiscated the Church property by an edict, assigning as one of his grounds " Blessed are ye poor, for yours is the kingdom of heaven1." This may have been rough and ready justice, but the next step to which I refer was oppression of a most irritating kind.
It is a strange thing, perhaps, in view of the general carelessness about education, that a government has only to incur suspicion of playing with it in the interests of one or another religion to arouse ill-will. Of all acts passed to worry the English Nonconformists, few angered and alarmed them so much as that of Queen Anne's reign, which checked their educational freedom. In the same way Julian roused the Church to fury through the western world by a rescript forbidding to Christians the teaching of ancient literature. It was in more ways than one an unhappy thing for his new Catholic Church that the real Catholic Church was devoted to the old literature. In the east Christians read Homer and Plato, and in the west they steeped themselves in Virgil and Cicero, and in both east and west they were a match for the heathen in all things pertaining to a liberal education, more than a match, for there is a marked difference in general between heathen and Christian writing of the day. This was unfortunate for Julian, for it disproved one of his theories — that the Galilaeans were illiterate and barbarous and divorced from that ancient world which meant so much to all educated people. If his theory had been right, his policy was absurd and unnecessary; but he bore witness against himself, that Christians were not without a share in the old culture. He realized in fact that they valued it so highly that they would not give it up. Accordingly he enacted2 in June 362 that whereas a man cannot teach aright what he believes to be wrong, and whereas it is highly desirable that those who teach the young should be honest men, and it is incompatible with honesty for a Christian to expound the poets, orators and historians of old, who held themselves (Thucydides3
1 Ep. 43 tv' efj TVJV ftaffiXtlav TUV ovpavuv tvodurepov
2 See Ep. 42. Without citing Christian testimony, it is enough to quote the opinion of an honourable heathen, Ammianus, who pronounces this decree obruendum perenni silentio (xxii. 10, 7). Comparetti, Vergil in the Middle Ages (tr.), p. 80, gives a good account of this decree, its meaning and results.
3 On the other hand, Dean Stanley (Eastern Church, Lect. i. p. 123) says, "Along the porticos of Eastern Churches are to be seen portrayed on the
Julio ii 69
amoug them, it seems) sacred to the gods, while he himself believes in no gods, henceforth it is forbidden to Christians to teach ancient literature, unless they first prove in deed their honesty and piety by sacrificing to the gods. This edict was to produce one or both of two results, either young Christians must grow up without classical education, which was not likely to be their choice, or they must go to the schools of heathen, who would if they did their duty give them a bias toward Hellenism. Probably Julian was thinking of his own youthful studies, but heathen teachers were not all alike and were not in general propagandists.
The immediate result of the decree was that some of the most famous teachers of the day threw up their profession. Then came a strange phenomenon1. A father and son, both called Apollinaris, set to work and made a new Homer out of the Pentateuch, and a Plato out of the Gospels. It has been suggested that the Christian people admired these works, but from the synchronism of their disappearance with the death of Julian it seems that Socrates, the most admirable of Church historians, is representing the common view when he applauds them rather as products of enthusiasm than as literature. If the Apollinares failed of fame as authors, the younger, the Gospel Platonist, made his mark in Church History as an independent thinker, though the Church did not finally accept his views. Another result of this decree was that Valentinian and Valens two years later began anti-pagan legislation with an edict forbidding the performance by night of heathen rites and sacrifices. Julian had made the declaration of war and Christian Emperors accepted it. In yet another way the decree bad a great effect, for it emphasized the distinction between Christianity and pagan philosophy, and while, as Prof. Gwatkin2 says, this told heavily against Arianism at once, it was not in the long run a good thing for the Church to doubt the value of ancient wisdom and poetry. "In the triumph of Christianity," writes a recent biographer of Julian8, "he foresaw the Dark Ages." This is a most extravagant state- walls the figures of Homer, Solon, Tbucydides, Pythagoras and Plato, as pioneers preparing the way for Christianity. " We may wonder which character would have most surprised Thucydides.
1 Socrates, iii. 16, 1.
8 Studies in Ariiininin, p. 199.
1 See Julian the Philosopher (p. 174), in the Herpes of the Nations Series, a careful work but marred by the writer's admiration for Julian and a mis understanding of his opponents. It would perhaps hardly be going too far to call the book an apology for Julian.
70 Life and Letters in tlw Fourth Century
ment, but, if Christianity and the "Dark Ages" are connected at all, it is in some measure the result of this prescient pagan's decree. Christianity is really no more responsible for the "Dark Ages" than is Neo-Platonism.
Such, then, was Julian's religious policy, but what was its success ? Was society with him ? It might be expected that the hour for a reaction had come, and there were certainly a good many heathen left. The philosophers, whose spirit he had caught, and the nobility of the city of Rome, with whom he had no relations, were ready to welcome a return to the old ways. But Julian was at heart a Greek, leaning eastwards, and had not much support in Italy, while the philosophers, after all, were out of touch with the world at large. It must be confessed that the reaction was not very spontaneous ; it was an attempt to galvanize a revival by the fiat of a ruler, and though there was an appearance of life about it, it was not living. Julian has to admit (Ep. 49) that Hellenism does not yet thrive as he would wish, but the fault does not lie with the gods, but with their worshippers. The heathen were past revival. They might resent being forced into the background by the Christians, but they only wished to live in quiet as they pleased. They had no mind for martyrdom, and almost as little for Julian's violent revivalism. They would not be regular in attendance at temples, they did not care to sacrifice very much, and in short they would make no efforts for their religion. The women, as Julian himself complained, were against him (Misop. 363 A). The mob enjoyed breaking Christian heads', and creatures of the court affected conversion and a quickened life, but Julian was hardly pleased with either. He had practically no converts from among the Christians — none of any weight. Hecebolius, a rhetorician, came over, to return to the Church promptly on Julian's death. A bishop, Pegasius, who seems to have been a pagan at heart under his episcopal robes, now avowed his faith or untaith2.
Julian had a measure of support in the army, which had a large non-Roman element, which was not Christian3, but such officers as Jovian and Valentinian were probably not alone in being loyal to the Christian faith. In fact, from whatever point of view,
1 Theodoret (iii. 6) gives a lively picture of heathen processions — "Cory- banting" through the streets (\vTT&i>Tes Kal KopvpavnCivres) and abusing the saints. He adds the information that they got as good as they gave, without much advantage to public order.
2 See Ep. 78, a very interesting letter, for this curious person.
3 Sievers, Libanius, ch. xi. p. 109.
Julian 71
tin- revival was a failure from the beginning, and the final proof of this was given by its complete collapse on Julian's death.
Julian's reign was short (361-363), and the most interesting part of its history is the period he spent at Antioch1. He reached there in 362, and personally conducted his pagan campaign. There was a considerable number of pagans in the city, but, though he was well received and made bids for their good-will, the pleasure- In ving populace was no more to be influenced by Julian's exhorta- tions to a godly, righteous and sober life than by Chrysostom's twenty years later. His attempt to transform Daphne from a pleasure resort to a shrine again was a ludicrous miscarriage. A martyr, Babylas, had been buried there by none other than the Emperor's own brother, Gallus2, and before a martyr Apollo was mute. Julian ordered the "dead body8" to be removed, and it was removed by a great procession singing, "Confounded be all they that serve graven images4." One of the singers was arrested and tortured, so angry was Julian, but only one ; for his constancy shewed what might be expected from others, and Julian resolved to "grudge the honour of martyrdom5."
His failure as a revivalist was supplemented in Antioch by his blunders as an economist8. He was massing forces there and prices rose in consequence. The mob however did not understand how prices were so high, and greeted the Emperor with the cry, " Every- thing plentiful, everything dear." Anxious to win applause, for his admirer Ammianus says he ran too much after cheap glory7, he summoned the leading citizens and gave them three months to find a remedy. When none was forthcoming, he lowered the price of grain by an edict, which had the surprising effect of driving it out
1 See Amm. Marc. xxi. 9, 4. Videre properan* Antiochiam orientis apieem pulcrum (here speaks the Antiochene)...tn speciem alicujug numinis votit excipitur publicig, mirattu voces multitudinis magnae, salutare sidus illuxisse eoit partibus adclamantis. But was it a good omen that he should arrive just when the women were wailing for Adonis? Claudian on the Antiochenes, In Rufin. ii. 34, adtuetumque choria et laeta plebe canorum...inibeUem...Orontem.
8 Sozomcn, v. 19.
8 Mitopogon, 361 B.
4 Theodo'ret, iii. 10.
8 Eutropiua (a heathen) says Julian was religionit Chrittianae nimius intectator perinde lumen ut cruore abstinent (x. 16, 3). This is a considerable admission for a writer who never elsewhere mentions Christianity, not even in writing of Constantino. Whether by Julian's orders or not, blood seems to have been shed none the less.
6 For this story see Misopogon, 368 c ; Amm. Marc. xxii. 14, 1 ; Socr. iii. 17, 2 ; Soz. v. 19, 1.
7 Amm. Marc. xxii. 14, 1 popularitatit amore ; xxii. 7, 1 tiintiun captator inaiti* till"
72 Life and Letters in the Fourth Century
of the market. Then he fetched grain himself from the Imperial granaries and sold it at his own price, and the dealers reappeared as buyers. Altogether he effected nothing but the irritation of every class, and jokes about making ropes of his beard were bandied round the city1. He had made himself ridiculous at once with his corn laws, his sacrifices, his mob of court philosophers (instead of Constantius' court bishops), his homilies and his pietism. He was not always very tactful2, he lacked ballast, and his virtues won him as much ill-will as his foibles. With the best intentions, the purest motives, and the highest character, he had made Antioch thoroughly hostile, and, the world over, his reformation was producing disorder and ill-will. He now wrote a " satire " on Antioch, which he called The Beard-Hater (Misopogori), perhaps as undignified a production as was ever penned by a monarch3. Under cover of shewing up his own faults, he lets out all his spleen at the Antio- chenes, till one is really sorry to see the man giving way to such littleness. The final jest of Antioch was superb. Felix, an officer of high rank, and Julian, the Emperor's uncle, had recently died, and the populace went about shouting Felix Julianus Augustus* — a double entendre, which must have been doubly exasperating for being strictly loyal. Julian finally left the city, vowing he would never see them again — a vow which was grimly fulfilled — and taking a cruel revenge on his enemies by setting over them a governor well known to be oppressive5.
Julian was now once more in the camp, where his earliest successes had been won, and where he was less likely to be brought into humiliating conflicts. He meant to end the long-standing Persian quarrel which Constantius had left unsettled. That the expedition had any close connexion with his pagan reformation,
1 Amm. Marc. xxii. 14, 2, gives some other jokes — none very brilliant. Julian, it seems, was a " monkey-face," with a goat's beard and the walk of Otus and Ephialtes.
2 He confesses to being XaXfo-Tepos. Ep. 68.
3 Socrates, iii. 58, complains not unjustly rb 5£ Siaatiptiv rj VKuirTtiv OVK^TI <j>i\o<r6<j>ov dXXA /*V ovdt /3ci(riX^ws. Ammianus, an Antiochene, is not at all pleased with this production of his hero. (xxii. 14, 2.) A keen, almost acrid, humour ran in the family, Constantino being noted for his ei/juvda., etc. (Socr. i. 9.) The best instance of Constantino's humour is his retort to the Novatian bishop that, if he was so exclusive, he had better take a ladder and go to heaven by himself.
4 Amm. Marc, xxiii. 1, 4.
5 Ammianus (xxiii. 2, 3) actually says Julian remarked noii ilium meruisse sed Antiochensibus avarin et contumeliosis hujun modi judicein convenire. On any other authority the story might seem doubtful. Libanius had a great deal to do to keep this man's energies for paganism within moderately decent bounds. See Sievers, Libanius, pp. 118 — 121.
Jut i<i it 73
as has been suggested1, is, I think, not at all certain. His paganism seems to have been a hindrance to him here, in shaking the loyalty of the Christian Armenians*.
Julian set out on a punitive expedition. One or two letters written by the way survive — one telling of a little address on Hellenism he gave at Beroea to the city council, convincing, he regretfully adds, but very few, and they were converted already (Ep. 27). If the expedition was not very richly blessed with triumphs for Hellenism, it was in other ways more of a success*. The Persians were thoroughly cowed and their land laid waste, till an unfortunate act of rashness altered the look of things. When he had gone as far as he meant and was outside Ctesiphon, the capital, Julian was induced to believe that the fleet of vessels which had escorted him down the Euphrates was of no further use, and, to avoid its falling into Persian hands, he gave the fatal order to burn the ships, only to realize at once, but too late to save them, that it was a blunder. Even so the retreat might have been free from disaster but for an accident. The Persian cavalry harassed the army on its march, and in one of the frequent skirmishes Julian was fatally wounded. He was carried to his tent, and there he died after some final words to the friends about him'. He surveyed the principles that had guided him in life, care for his subjects' good and trust in the wisdom of Providence. He had sought peace, but when duty called to war he had gone to war, though he had long well known he was "to die by iron." His life had been innocent, his conscience was at rest, he had only thanks to the eternal divinity for the manner of his departure. So he died, and the Empire had immediate cause to regret his death in the shameful surrender of Jovian to the Persians. For himself his early death was probably a good thing, for had he returned victorious, he must inevitably have been carried into a war without truce against Christianity, and have stained his name with tyranny and perse- cution.
As I have already quoted passages at length from his writings, a word or two will suffice for them in conclusion. They reflect his personality in a striking way. His style is very fairly good. The
1 Vollert, op. cit., p. 90.
8 See Gwatkin, Stmlie* in Arianism, pp. 209, 210, on the Persian War — an interesting account of it.
* Hodgkin, Iiuly and her Invaders, vol. ii. p. 538. 4 Amm. Marc. xxv. 3, 15.
74 Life and Letters in the Fourth Century
effect is marred, however, by a tendency to digression and after- thought, and an unnecessary concern for side issues'. It was not to be expected that he could help being didactic ; he had a mission, and in season, and sometimes out of season, he ,is pleading and exhorting. His three panegyrics, two on Constantius, the third on Eusebia, roam off into discussions on education, true kingliness, books and so forth. His other five so-called orations are really treatises. Two are theological, dealing with the Sun and the Mother of the Gods, but far from clear. Of the other three, which are concerned with morals, two deal with the Cynics and are a little wearisome in their fault-finding. The eighth is addressed to himself — a series of reflections to console him for the loss of Sallust.
His letters fall into two classes, those of the elaborate polite type consisting of a quotation, a compliment, and perhaps an invitation, many of them addressed to philosophers, and those of a practical character, some of them edicts, some letters on religious thought and life, some friendly and intimate. Three long letters stand apart, those to Themistius and the Athenians, and one which is fragmentary, and these shew him at his best and most serious. They give the clearest picture of his manliness, his purity and piety — of the intense earnestness and dutifulness of his nature.
His elaborate work against Christianity has been pieced together by Neumann so far as possible from the citations of Cyril, who wrote a book to refute it, as he found it did harm. Like the Manichaeans he emphasized the readily assailable parts of the Old Testament — in what language did the serpent speak with Eve ? If all the earth had been made into bricks, could the tower of Babel have been a success ? Why did Jehovah, if the Universal God, choose the Jews and neglect the Greeks ? What is good in Moses' law is common to all peoples. Jehovah's character as " a jealous God" and "an angry God" is really unworthy. The effect of the Christian books is not (like that of Greek literature) to make meu better — it makes them no better than slaves. Old Testament monotheism cannot be reconciled with the Christian account of Christ. John first called Jesus God, when he found a mass of converts in Greek and Italian cities worshipping the tombs of Peter and Paul. Since then " many fresh corpses have been added to the old one," and so forth. The difficulties he raised were after
1 Cyril (Neumann, p. 195) complains of his irXari) a very fair criticism.
Jufitnt 75
all obvious, and were felt already. The Church however explained many of them by the allegorical method, which it seems was legiti- mate enough for Porphyry. This was no doubt an unscientific and unsatisfactory treatment of Scripture, but it had this merit that it enabled the Church to reach a deeper truth and one more vital than the literal meaning gave ; to escape an obvious interpre- tation involving an outgrown position ; and to gain for Scripture a higher value in a spiritual significance, which, if it did not strictly answer to the view of the original writers, at least corresponded with Christian experience. Thus Julian's polemic was really beside the mark. Though he says he knew Christianity, he really did not know it, and the Christians were right in their allegation that he did not understand.
Two other books remain, the Misopogon and The Caesars. Of the former I have spoken. The latter is humorous with an underlying seriousness. There is a banquet of the gods at which the Caesars are in turn* subjected to criticism, and a select few are bidden set forth their ideals. While Julius and Constantine / might, perhaps, complain of their treatment (the latter particularly,