Julian, by Gore Vidal

by Unknown

  "Tomorrow you are to deliver the guilty ones to the praetorian prefect. They will be given a fair trial. The see of Antioch will of course pay for the rebuilding of the temple. Meanwhile, since you Galileans have made it impossible for us to worship in our temple, we shall make it impossible for you to worship in yours. From this moment, your cathedral is shut. No services may be held. What treasures you have, we confiscate to defray the costs of restoring what you have burned."

  I rose. "Bishop, I did not want this war between us. I have said it and I have meant it: all forms of worship will be tolerated by me. We ask for nothing but what was ours. We take nothing that is lawfully yours. But remember, priest, when you strike at me, you strike not only at earthly power -which is terrible enoughbut at the true gods. And even if you think them not the true, even if you are bitterly atheist, by your behaviour you disobey the teachings of your own Nazarene, whom you pretend to follow. You are hypocrites! You are cruel! You are ravenous! You are beasts!"

  I had not meant to say so much, as usual. But I was not displeased that I had spoken out. Trembling and speechless, the Bishop departed. I dare say he will one day publish a long vitriolic sermon, claiming that he had spoken it to my face. Galileans take pride in acts of defiance, especially if the enemy is an emperor. But their reckless denunciations are almost always the work of a later date and often as not composed by another hand.

  I sent for Salutius and ordered him to shut down the Golden House. He already had theories about the burning and was confident that in a few days he would be able to arrest the ringleaders. He thought that Meletius was ignorant of the whole affair. I was not so certain; we shall probably never know.

  A week later, there were a number of arrests. The man responsible for the burning was a young zealot named Theodore, who had been a presbyter in the charnel house at Daphne. While he was tortured, he sang that same hymn the Galileans sang to me on the road to Antioch. Though he did not confess, he was clearly guilty. Salutius then held a board of inquiry, and to everyone's astonishment the so-called priest of Apollo (the one who had brought me the goose for sacrifice) swore by all the gods that the fire was indeed an accident and that the Galileans were not responsible. As watchman of the temple he has always been in their pay, but because he was known to Antioch as "priest of Apollo", his testimony managed to obscure the issue.

  So far I have not had the heart to go back to Daphne. After all I was one of the last to see that beautiful temple as it was. I don't think I could bear the sight of burned walls and scorched columns, roofed only by sky. Meanwhile the Golden House in Antioch will remain closed until our temple is rebuilt. There is much complaint. Good.

  XIX

  Priscus: I arrived not long after the fire. My season of teaching ended with the old year, and I travelled from Constantinople to Antioch in eight days, which is excellent time. Julian so completely reformed the state transportation system that travel was a pleasure. Not a bishop in sight, though there were several newly appointed high priests in the carriages and I confess I began to wonder if they were any improvement over the Christians. I suspect that had Julian lived, matters would have been just as they were under Constantius, only instead of being bored by quarrels about the nature of the trinity we would have had to listen to disputes about the nature of Zeus's sex life… rather an improvement, come to think of it, but essentially the same thing.

  I found Julian much changed. You of course were seeing a great deal of him then, but since you had not known him before, you could not have realized how nervous and ill-humoured he had become. The burning of the temple was not only a sacrilege in his eyes, it was a direct affront to his sovereignty. He always did have trouble keeping in balance his two roles of philosopher and king. The one might forgive and mitigate, but the other must be served, if necessary with blood.

  My first day in Antioch, Julian insisted I go with him to the theatre. "At least we can talk if the play is too foolish." Now it happens that I very much like comedy, particularly low farces. No joke is so old that it cannot delight me, if only by its dear familiarity. The comedy that night was The Frogs by Aristophanes. Julian hated it, even the rather good jokes about literary style which ought to have amused him. Julian was not without humour. He had a lively response to bores; some gift of mimicry; and he enjoyed laughing. But he was also conscious every moment of his sacred mission, and this tended to put him on guard against any form of wit which might turn against himself; heroes cannot survive mockery and Julian was a true hero, perhaps the last our race shall put forth.

  I was delighted to be in Antioch that day. I enjoy the languorous weather, the perfumed crowds, the wide streets… As you can gather, I like the luxurious and "depraved" ways of your city. If I had the money, I would be living there right now. How I envy you! I was in a fine mood when we arrived at the theatre. We all were. Even Julian was like his old self, talking rapidly, waving with good humour to the crowds that cheered him. But then from the cheaper seats came the ominous cry, "Augustus! Augustus!"

  And a chant began, "Everything plentiful, everything dear!" This kept on for half an hour, the voices growing louder until it seemed as if everyone in the theatre was bellowing those words. At last Julian motioned to the commander of the household troops, and a hundred guards appeared so swiftly that they gave the impression of being part of the programme as they gathered about the Emperor with drawn swords. The chanting promptly ceased, and the play, rather dismally, began. The next day the food riots started, but then you, as quaestor, know far more about all this than I.

  Libanius: One curious aspect of human society is that preventive measures are seldom taken to avert disaster, even when the exact nature of the approaching calamity is perfectly plain. In March when the rains did not fall, everyone knew that there would be a small harvest; by May, it was obvious that there would be a food shortage; by June, famine. But though we often discussed this in the senate—and the people in the markets talked of little else but the uncommon dryness of the season—no plans were made to buy grain from other countries. All of us knew what was going to happen, and no one did anything. There is a grim constant in this matter which might be worth a philosopher's while to investigate. It was Julian's bad luck to come to Antioch just when the shortages began. But though he could in no way be blamed for either the dry weather or the city fathers' lack of foresight, the Antiochenes (whose emblem ought to be the scapegoat) immediately attributed the famine to him.

  They claimed that the quartering and provisioning of his considerable army had driven up prices and made food scarce. This was true in a few commodities but not in grain, the essential food: corn for the army was imported directly from Egypt. Yet the people of the city were eager to abuse Julian. Why? Bishop Meletius had declared that Julian's fate was decided when he removed the bones of St Babylas from Daphne. That strikes me as a rather special point of view. Meletius also maintains that the people of the city turned against him the day he shut down the cathedral. I doubt this. Some were shocked of course, but the Antiochenes are not devout Christians; they are not devout anything, except voluptuaries. Not wanting to blame themselves for the famine, they blamed Julian, who had made himself ridiculous in their eyes by his continual sacrifices and grandiose revivals of archaic ceremonies.

  I confess that even at the time I felt Julian was overdoing it. On one day at Daphne, he sacrificed a thousand white birds, at heaven knows what expense! Then a hundred bulls were sacrificed to Zeus. Later, four hundred cows to Cybele. That was a particularly scandalous occasion. In recent years the rites of Cybele have been private affairs, involving as they do many ceremonies which are outrageous to ordinary morality. Julian decided to make the ceremonial public. Everyone was shocked at the ritual scourging of a hundred youths by the priestesses. To make matters worse, the youths had agreed to take part in the ceremony not out of faith but simply to curry fayour with the Emperor, while the priestesses were almost all of them recent initiates. The result was unhappy. Several young men were se
riously hurt and a number of priestesses fainted at the sight of so much blood. The ultimate rites were a confused obscenity.

  But Julian grimly persisted, on the ground that no matter how alarming some of these rites may appear to us, each is a part of our race's constant attempt to placate the gods. Every ancient ceremony has its own inner logic, and efficacy. The only fault I find with Julian is that he was in too great a hurry. He wanted everything restored at once. We were to return to the age of Augustus in a matter of months. Given years, I am sure he could have reestablished the old religions. The people hunger for them. The Christians do not offer enough, though I must say they are outrageously bold in the way they adapt our most sacred rituals and festivals to their own ends. A clear sign that their religion is a false one, improvised by man in time, rather than born naturally of eternity.

  From the beginning, the Christians tried to allay man's fear of death. Yet they have still not found a way to release that element in each of us which demands communion with the One. Our mysteries accomplish this, which is why they are the envy of the Christians and the enduring object of their spite. Now I am perfectly willing to grant that the Christian way is one way to knowing. But it is not the only way, as they declare. If it were, why would they be so eager to borrow from us? What most disturbs me is their curious hopelessness about this life, and the undue emphasis they put on the next. Of course eternity is larger than the brief span of a man's life, but to live entirely within the idea of eternity is limiting to the spirit and makes man wretched in his day-to-day existence, since his eye must always be fixed not on this lovely world but on that dark door through which he must one day pass. The Christians are almost as death-minded as the original Egyptians, and I have yet to meet one, even my old pupil and beloved friend Basil, who has ever got from his faith that sense of joy and release, of oneness with creation and delight in what has been created, that a man receives when he has gone through those days and nights at Eleusis. It is the meagreness of Christian feeling that disconcerts me, their rejection of this world in fayour of a next which is—to be tactful—not entirely certain. Finally, one must oppose them because of their intellectual arrogance, which seems to me often like madness. We are told that there is only one way, one revelation: theirs. Nowhere in their tirades and warnings can one find the modesty or wisdom of a Plato, or that pristine world of flesh and spirit Homer sang of. From the beginning, curses and complaints have been the Christian style, inherited from the Jews, whose human and intellectual discipline is as admirable as their continuining bitterness is limiting and blighting. I see nothing good ever coming of this religious system no matter how much it absorbs our ancient customs and puts to use for its own ends Hellenic wit and logic. Yet I have no doubt now that the Christians will prevail. Julian was our last hope, and he went too soon. Something large and harmful has now come into the life of this old world. One recalls, stoically, the injunction of Sophocles:

  "And ever shall this law hold good, nothing that is vast enters into the life of mortals without a curse."

  It is also significant that this death cult should take hold just as the barbarians are gathering on our borders. It is fitting that if our world is to fall—and I am certain that it will—the heirs of those who had originally created this beautiful civilization and made great art should at the end be art-less and worship a dead man and disdain this life for an unknown eternity behind the dark door. But I have given way to my worst fault! Prolixity! I have delivered myself of a small oration when I should have kept to the task at hand, Julian in Antioch.

  Not only did the people regard Julian's continual round of sacrifice as wasteful and ridiculous; they were alarmed by the Gallic troops who used to attend every sacrifice, pretending to do honour to the gods but really waiting for the banquet of smoking meat which followed. The moment Julian left the temple, the soldiers would devour the sacrificed animals and guzzle wine until they became unconscious. Whenever a drunken legionnaire was carried like a corpse through the streets, the people would say, "The Emperor has been praying again." This did Hellenism little good in the eyes of the Antiochenes, who are so adept at vice that they never get drunk, and have the greatest contempt for those who do. The trials of those supposedly responsible for the burning of the temple of Apollo also turned the city against Julian. As quaestor, I looked into the matter perhaps more closely than anyone. Now Julian honestly thought that the Christians had set the fire, but for once they were (probably) innocent. I talked many years later to the so-called priest of Apollo and he told me what he had not told the Board of Inquiry.

  On 22 October, shortly after Julian left the temple precinct, the philosopher Asclepiades arrived, hoping to see the Emperor. Finding him gone, Asclepiades went inside and placed as an offering a small silver statue of the goddess Caelestis at the feet of Apollo, just inside the wood railing. He also lit a number of tapers and arranged them about the statue. Then he left. That was at sundown. Just before midnight, sparks from the expiring candles set fire to the railing. The season was dry; the night windy; the cedar wood ancient. The temple burned. Now if this fool had only told Julian the truth before the arrests, nothing would have happened, but he was almost as afraid of the Hellenic Emperor as he was of the Christians.

  The whole episode was sad. Fortunately, no lives were lost. The Christians suffered nothing more serious than the shutting down of the cathedral. Later a number of bishops came to Julian to complain that he was causing them great hardship, to which he replied with some humour, "But it is your duty to bear these 'persecutions' patiently. You must turn the other cheek, for that is the command of your God."

  Julian Augustus

  Late in the autumn a large crowd appealed to me in a public place by chanting that though everything was plentiful, prices were far too high. This was a clear indictment of the wealthy class of Antioch, who will do anything to make money, even at the risk of starving their own people. Just seven years ago they had taken advantage of the same sort of situation, and the people had rebelled. Lives were lost, property destroyed. One would have thought that the burghers might have learned something from such recent history; but they had not.

  The day after the demonstration, I sent for the leading men of the city. Before the meeting, I was briefed at length by Count Felix. We sat in the empty council chamber, a pile of papers on a table between us. A bronze statue of Diocletian looked disdainfully down at us. This was very much the sort of problem he used to enioy wrestling with. I don't.

  "These figures, Augustus, show a century of corn prices as they fluctuate not only from year to year but month to month." The count beamed with pleasure. He got from lists of numbers that same rapture others obtain from Plato or Homer. "I have evenas you will notice—made allowances for currency fluctuations. They are listed here." He tapped one of the parchments, and looked at me sharply to make sure that I was paying attention. I always felt with Count Felix that I was again a child and he Mardonius. But Felix was an excellent guide to the mysterious underworld of money. He believed, as did Diocletian, in the fixing of prices. He had all sorts of proof from past experiments that such a system would increase the general prosperity. When I was with him, he always convinced me that he was right. But then in matters of money anyone can, momentarily at least, convince me of anything. After a brilliant, yet to me largely unintelligible, discourse, Felix advised me to set the price of corn at one silver piece for ten measures, a fair price in Antioch. We would then rigorously hold the price at this level, preventing the merchants from taking advantage of the seasoh's scarcity.

  In principle I agreed with Felix. "But," I asked, "shouldn't we allow the senate to set the price themselves? to restrain their own people?"

  Count Felix gave me the sort of pitying look Mardonius used to when I had made some particularly fatuous observation. "You cannot ask a wolf not to eat an unprotected sheep. It is his nature. Well, it is their nature to make as much profit as they can." I thought not. As it turned out, Felix was right.


  At the appointed hour some three hundred of the leading burghers of Antioch were admitted to the council chamber. I kept Felix close beside me, as well as Salutius. As Count of the East my uncle Julian should have presided, but he was ill. The Antiochenes were a handsome, ceremonious, rather effeminate crew who smelled-though the day was hot-like three hundred gardens of Daphne; in that close room, their scent made my head ache.

  I came straight to the point. I quoted that morning's price for corn. "You ask the people to pay three times what the corn is worth. Now food is scarce but not so scarce as that, unless what I've been told is true, that certain speculators are keeping their corn off the market until the people are hungry and desperate and will pay anything." Much clearing of throats at this, uneasy glances exchanged. "Naturally, I don't believe these stories. Why would the leaders of any city wish to exploit their own people? Foreigners, yes. Even the imperial court." Dead silence at this.

  "But not your own kind. For you are men, not beasts who devour their weaker fellows."

  After thus soothing them, I carefully outlined Count Felix's plan. While I spoke, his lips moved, repeating silently along with me the exact arguments I had learned from him a few minutes before. The burghers were distraught. Not until I had thoroughly alarmed them, did I say, "But I know that I can trust you to do what is right." There was a long exhalation of breath at this. They were all relieved.

  I was then answered by the city prefect. "You may depend on us, Lord, in all things. We shall—and I know I speak for every man here—hold the price of grain at its usual level, though it must be taken into account that there is a shortage…"