Julian

by Gore Vidal

  Ausonius frowned. "We aren't very happy with him of course. Not at all. No, not at all."

  I murmured the ancient saw about the rarity of human happiness. Almost any quotation from Sophocles has a soothing effect.

  "Theodosius is most displeased about the body. Most unhappy. But she insisted."

  "What body? Who insisted?" I was at sea.

  "His. Julian's. It's been m-m-moved. From Tarsus to Constantinople. The Emperor Gratian ordered it, or to be p-p-precise, his w-w-wife?' P's, W's and M's are Ausonius's main obstacles. Having told you this, I shall no longer try to dramatize his speech. After much spluttering, I learned that your friend the Empress Postuma, last of the Flavians, suddenly realized that her blood was also Julian's and that the new dynasty's legitimacy rests upon that frail fact. So Postuma got her husband Gratian to move Julian's remains from Tarsus to the Church of the Holy Apostles at Constantinople. At this very moment Julian's body is lying beside Constantine's mother Helena. How each would have hated that proximity! Though Ausonius did not mention it, I suspect that both Postuma and Gratian are aware for the first time what a great man Julian was. They live in Gaul, and for the Gauls Julian is the only emperor since Augustus. I am told by everyone who comes from there that he is still spoken of with awe and affection, and that the common people believe that he is not really dead but sleeping beneath a mountain, guarded by the dragon of his house, and should the West ever be in danger, Julian will awaken and come to the defence of the Rhine. It will take some doing to destroy his legend in Europe.

  We spoke of you. Ausonius admires you. Who does not? He told me that Theodosius admired your "graceful" (!) essay "On Avenging Julian", but took it as a rhetorical exercise. I am sure that is not how you intended it, but I suggest you allow the imperial adjective to be your own.

  "What would be the feeling in court if I were to publish a book about Julian, covering, say, the Persian campaign?"

  Ausonius picked a word beginning with "m" and nearly choked to death. Finally, in bursts, he told me, "Never! Theodosius and Gratian both regard him as the devil. Only out of courtesy to Libanius, who is old, did Theodosius accept the essay. But nothing more. Ever! We don't mean to persecute pagans of course," (the

  "we" reminded me of Maximus; do all busy friends of princes use "we" in that awful way?) "but we shall make it as disagreeable as possible for them to worship in the old way. You've read the two edicts? There will be others. I can give no details of course. Premature."

  "But Libanius was able to write a defence of Julian."

  "Once. Only. We've also heard he's planning a book about Julian." (No, I did not tell him.) "Discourage him, as a friend. Also, there is a private matter he would like attended to. I'm not free to say what it is, but he has already sent us a request. Well, one hand washes the other, as they say. Do tell him." I suppose this refers to the matter of your natural son Cimon. Anyway, that is the gist of my talk with Ausonius. Perhaps you can do better yourself face to face with the Emperor.

  Here then is the journal. Some of it is cryptic. There are many lacunae. I have tried to provide as many missing pieces as possible. For weeks now I have been reliving that tragic time and I am amazed at how much I was able to recall when I set what is left of my mind to the task.

  My mouth is still ominously twisted but vision and speech are unimpaired, to the surprise of my doctor. I almost wrote "disappointment". Doctors like for one's decline to be orderly and irrevocable. How is your gout? Your eyesight? Hippia, whose exquisite penmanship you have been reading, sends you her respects (she has given me such a sweet smile!), as do I.

  XX

  The Journal of Julian Augustus

  Callinicum on the Euphrates, 27 March 363

  Waiting for the fleet. They should have been here when we arrived. Callinicum is a rich city, strongly fortified. Morale is good. Dictating this while riding in a carriage to the river. Today is the festival of the Mother of the Gods. There is a great ceremony at Rome. I hold a small one here. The sun is hot. People crowd about the carriage. I dictate to the secretary. I wave to the crowd. I am in ceremonial vestments. Maximus and Priscus are with me. The local priests are waiting at the river bank. The people who crowd around are dark-skinned with long thin arms that reach towards me like the tentacles of some twisting vine. They chatter, shrill as Egyptians.

  Priscus: This is the first entry. Most of the journal is written in Julian's own hand. He usually wrote late at night, after he had finished dictating his memoir. I recall this particular day in Callinicum as one of the "good days". They were so few that each is relatively vivid in my mind.

  Several thousand people lined the Euphrates when we arrived for the ceremony. A few were pious, most were merely curious. The Euphrates is a broad muddy river set in rolling country, at this season green.

  Julian handled the ceremonies with his usual efficiency. This particular bit of nonsense involved the immersion and ritual washing of the carriage in which the image of the goddess is carried. Julian was thoroughly soaked but happy as he carried out his duties as Pantifex Maximus. Later he gave us dinner (if mashed beans, native bread and fresh tough venison can be called dinner) in the prefect's house. We were all in excellent spirits.

  As I wrote you in one of my letters (at least I think I wrote you: I often don't remember nowadays whether something I meant to say I did say or not), the generals were seldom a part of Julian's inner circle. For one thing, they don't stay up late; while Aristotle, as the beautiful Arintheus so often used to say, makes the military head ache. Nevertheless, these particular officers were superior men; and of course three of them became emperors.

  The generals fell in two categories. The Christian-Asiatics and the Hellenist-Europeans. The first group had been loyal to Constantius; the second to Julian.

  For the record, I give you my impression of the principal commanders.

  The Asiatics

  Count Victor: In appearance, a typical Sarmatian, short, bandylegged, with a large head, pale eyes slanted like a Hun's. He spoke both Greek and Latin with a barbarous accent. A devout Christian, he was profoundly contemptuous of Julian's philosopher friends. I always mistrusted him.

  Arintheus: Julian has described him. Once his beauty has been noted, there is not much else to say. He and Victor led the Christian party.

  Jovian: An extraordinarily tall man, even taller than I—or would have been had he ever stood up straight. He tended to eat and drink too much, though he never gained weight. He had the reputation for being stupid, and I see no reason for altering this common judgment. Jovian was well connected, which largely explains his later moment of glory. His father was the famous general Varronian, and his wife was the daughter of the egregious Count Lucillianus. I am told that Jovian had a monstrous childhood, living under "field conditions" until he was seventeen. Old Varronian was an insufferable martinet. Jovian commanded the household troops.

  The Europeans

  Nevitta: He was a large man, red-faced, blue-eyed, perhaps forty years old at the time. He was an illiterate boor but a fine soldier and completely loyal to Julian. Even so, we all hated him. To his credit he hated no one. We were beneath his contempt. Dagalaif: He was an amiable sort. Stocky and fair (are all good soldiers blond? shall we offer this as a topic of debate for our students?), Dagalaif spoke excellent Greek and Latin. He was a marvellous cavalryman and much of Julian's legendary swiftness was due to Dagalaif's ability to manceuvre men and horses. He used to ask me for reading lists. He longed to be civilized. Three years later, when he was made consul, he wrote me a panegyric, with surprisingly few mistakes.

  Salutius Secundus: A mild, elderly man. We got on famously, though he had almost no conversation. In that sea of youth our grey hairs and ageing muscles called out to one another, like to like. As praetorian prefect he spared Julian many tedious details. He was an excellent administrator who would have made an admirable emperor.

  Among others of the court, I should mention the chief marshal, Anatolius, a nice
fat little man who managed to create quite a lot of confusion in a position where one is supposed to make order. Also, the notary Phosphorius, whose family forced him to enter the civil service. Solely through merit and hard work he rose to a place on the Consistory; his career was unique. I have never known another like it. As for Julian's philosopher friends, you met them all at Antioch. The only new addition was the Etruscan high priest Mastara. He was exactly what you might think.

  On the march, we would usually make camp at sundown. As soon as Julian's tent was raised, we would dine with him, Maximus and I, and sometimes one or another of the commanders. At first Julian was in marvellous spirits. He had every reason to be. Sapor was demoralized at the speed of our attack. The weather was good. The countryside was rich in grain that soon would come to harvest. All things promised well, except the omens.

  Julian's tent was a plain affair, necessarily large 'but simply furnished, not half so comfortable as the tent of any of his generals. As I recall, there were two large folding tables, a number of folding chairs, stools, and several large chests containing state papers and the small library Julian always travelled with. There were several tripod lamps, although seldom was more than one lit at a time. Julian wondered if he was mean: yes, he was mean, but compared to the lavish waste of his predecessors this was a virtuous fault. In a corner, his black lion-skinned bed was screened by a woven Persian rug.

  Julian was invariably dictating when we presented ourselves. He would smile at us and indicate that we sit down without once breaking the flow of his thought. He did an amazing amount of work, nearly all of it necessary. He conducted a lot of business usually left to notaries or eunuchs. When he had completely exhausted one set of secretaries, he would send for another. All complained that he dictated too fast. And he did, as if he suspected there was hardly time to put on paper all the ideas he h.ad in his brain. We know his famous postscripts, No sooner was a letter sealed than he would have it opened again so that he could scribble some afterthought in his own hand, apologizing with his usual phrase, "I write fast, without taking breath." His fingers were always black with ink by the time we arrived for supper.

  Before we ate, Maximus or I would read him Homer and he would wash his hands in a plain earthen jug, listening all the time. The meal was always simple. But then you know his crotchets about food. I usually had another dinner later that night. I am sure Maximus ate before. Sometimes we would be joined by Salutius, an intelligent man for a general, or by Arintheus, whom I always thought a bore. Incidentally, Arintheus was in Athens several years ago. I was shocked to see him. He is now stout and bald, and though he was no favourite of mine, I nearly wept at what time had done. But tears were stopped by his conversation, which had undergone no change. When he saw me at the proconsul's reception, he gave a loud empty laugh and shouted across the room in a voice hoarse from battle and wine, "That Aristotle of yours still makes my head ache!" And that I'm afraid is all that passed between us after so many years and so much history.

  As I have said, the philosophers and warriors seldom mingled. That night in Callinicum was one of the few occasions when Julian's two worlds confronted one another.

  I sat in a corner and watched Julian play his various roles. Up to a point, we all tend to assume different masks with different people. But Julian changed completely with each person. With the Gallic soldiers, he became a harsh-voiced, loud-laughing Gaul. With the Asiatics, he was graceful but remote, another Constantius. Not until he turned to a philosopher friend was he himself. Himself? We shall never know which was the true Julian, the abrupt military genius or the charming philosophy-mad student. Obviously he was both. Yet it was disquieting to watch him become a stranger before one's eyes, and an antipathetic one at that. I was joined in my corner by Victor. He asked if he could sit down. I beamed fatuously. Why are we all so physically awed by soldiers? "By all means, Count," I dithered. He sat down heavily; he smelled of wine but he was not drunk.

  "You're a long way from the Academy at Athens." he said.

  I agreed. "But then Gaul was a long way, too, and the Battle of Strasbourg." Silently I cursed myself for having boasted of a military career. The ideal philosopher would have conducted the conversation entirely in his own terms; he would never compete in an alien field. But then I am not the ideal philosopher. Everyone says so.

  "Yes… Gaul," he said, as though that were enough. I could not divine his mood or attitude. We were both silent, watching Maximus as he held a number of the young officers spellbound with some nonsense or other. His flowing beard was exquisitely combed and he wore a robe of saffron-yellow silk, the gift of a magician in China, or so he said. He probably found it in the market at Antioch.

  "Can you make your gods appear?" asked Victor suddenly, "the way he does?" Because Victor would not dignify Maximus by giving him a name, my heart went out to him, briefly.

  "No," I said. "The gods rather leave me alone. But then I make no effort to talk to them."

  "Do you believe?" He spoke with such passionate urgency that I turned to look at him. I have never seen such cold eyes as those which stared at me beneath thick pale brows. It was like coming face to face with a lion.

  "Believe in what?"

  "Christ."

  "I believe that he existed." I was myself again. "But I don't think of him as a god."

  Victor was again the Roman commander. "It will be a long campaign," he said, as though speaking of the weather. "But we shall win it."

  Julian Augustus 3 April

  We are at Circesium, ninety-eight miles south of Callinicum. We have been here two days. All goes well.

  On 28 March while I was still at Callinicum, four tribes of Saracens appeared at the city's gate. Their princes wished to speak to me. Now the Saracens are among the most savage and unreliable of this world's races. They live in tents in the desert. They never build so much as a hut nor till an acre of ground. Restlessly, they roam through the deserts of Assyria, Egypt, Morocco. They live on game, wild birds, whatever grows of itself. Few have tasted grain or wine. They love warfare, but on their own terms. They are good at striking swiftly (their ponies and camels are especially bred for fleetness), but since they fight only for plunder, they are useless in a formal engagement. They are best at scouting and harassing an enemy.

  Salutius did not want me to see them. "They will offer to help you. Then they will make the same offer to Sapor—if they haven't already—and betray you both."

  "So we shall be on our guard." I was not in the least disturbed. I received the Saracen princes. They are small, sinewy, dark from the sun. They wear full cloaks to their knees. Beneath their cloaks, they wear only leather drawers. Of the dozen princes, only one could speak Greek.

  "We come, Lord, to pay homage to the ruler of the world." The Saracen then motioned to one of his fellows, who gave him an object wrapped in silk. The prince removed the silk to reveal a heavy gold crown. Hermes knows what king lost it to them. I took the crown and made them a little speech, to which the prince replied, "Lord, we wish to fight beside you in your war against Sapor. Our courage is known to all the desert. Our loyalty to our ruler is so far beyond that of the merely human that it partakes of the divine…" Salutius cleared his throat but I did not dare look at him. "Therefore, Lord, with us beside you in the desert, you need never fear…"

  At that moment Nevitta broke into the meeting, to the horror of Anatolius. "Caesar, the fleet is here!" I'm afraid we all behaved like excited children. I turned the Saracens over to Salutius. Then, followed by the entire Consistory, I made my way to the docks where, as far as the eye could see, the river was filled with ships. 50 W.S., 64 P.B., 1403 C.S., Ct. Luc.

  Priscus: This entry breaks off here. The abbreviations mean that there were 50 ships of war, 64 pontoon boats used for making bridges, 1403 cargo ships containing food, weapons, foundries, siege engines; Count Lucillianus was in charge of the fleet. As you will recall, he was the commander at Sirmium whom Dagalaif captured in the middle of the night. Though
he was a ridiculous creature, Julian used him because he was an important strand in that web of men and families which governs the world. Despite the vastness of the empire, the actual rulers are a small, close-knit family. Every general knows or has heard of every other general, and they talk of nothing else except, "How is old Marcellus? still with the same wife? got a different post?"

  Lucillianus was waiting at the fiver bank when Julian and the Consistory arrived. He greeted Julian with meticulous ceremony and formally turned the fleet over to him. Suddenly Dagalaif said, "Lucillianus, where's your nightshirt?" Everyone laughed except Julian, who muttered, "Shut up, Dagalaif." I noticed that Lucillianus's son-in-law Jovian scowled. He was less than amused.

  Julian Augustus 4 April

  I have been working for three hours on my memoir. It is nearly dawn. My voice is hoarse. The secretaries have just gone. I scribble these random notes. We are still at Circeslum. It is a large city, well fortified by Diocletian. The city occupies a promontory between the Euphrates River and the place where the Abora River empties into the Euphrates. The Abora is the traditional border between Rome and Persia. Circesium is our last important outpost. From now on we shall be in enemy country.

  All night the troops have been crossing the river. The engineers are complaining because the river is swollen with spring rains. But engineers always complain. So far their pontoon bridge is holding. Scouts report no sign of the Persian army. The Saracens tell me that Sapor is astonished at the suddenness of our attack. Apparently, he did not expect us until May. That means he has not yet assembled his army. All of this is marvellous for us. Yet I am not so energetic and hopeful as I ought to be. For one thing, I have just received a long letter from Sallust at Paris. He is unimpressed by the good omens. He begs me not to cross into Persia. Like Libanius, he wishes I would remain at Constantinople and execute the reforms I have proposed. As usual he puts his case superbly, and I am thoroughly depressed.