western lands followed him into the midst of Persia. He may be said to have quelled a military tumult by the threat of retiring into private life. The lighter qualities of his character present him in rather a disagreeable aspect. He was loquacious and inconsistent in small things and in great. He was extremely superstitious, and even fanatical in his observance of religious rites, to a degree that made him appear trifling and undignified even to his friends. His manner was obviously irritating, and such as could not inspire respect in his subjects; and, on the other hand, he was too eager to gain popular applause. No one can doubt his cleverness and ability as a writer, but the greater number of his writings do not shew method, and they are often singularly deficient in judgment. An exception, perhaps, may be made in respect to the first oration to Constantius, the letter to the Athenians, and the Caesars. The latter, however, was a strange performance for one who was himself an emperor.
In person he was rather short, and awkwardly though very strongly built. His features were fine and well-marked, and his eyes very brilliant; his mouth was rather over-large and his lower lip inclined to droop. As a young man he grew a beard, but was required to cut it off when he became Caesar, and seems only to have grown it again after taking possession of Constantinople. At Antioch it was allowed to grow to a great size. His neck was thick, and his head hung forward, and was set on broad and thick shoulders. His walk was ungraceful; and he had an unsteady motion of the limbs. There is a fine life-size statue of Julian, of good and artistic workmanship, in the ruined hall of his palace in the garden of the Hôtel Clugny at Paris. It is figured as the frontispiece to E. Talbot's translation of his works.
Theory of Religion.—Julian's theory was too superficial and occasional to leave much mark upon the history of thought. His book against Christianity became indeed a favourite weapon with infidels, but he never founded a school of positive belief. He was, in fact, an enthusiastic amateur, who employed some of the nights of a laborious career of public business in writing brilliant essays in the neo-Platonic manner. He tells us that the oration in praise of the Sun took him three nights; that on the Mother of the Gods was composed, "without taking breath, in the short space of one night." Such work may astonish us even now, but it is not surprising that it should be incomplete, rambling, and obscure.
There are, however, certain constantly recurring thoughts which may be regarded as established principles with Julian. Julian forms one of that long line of remarkable men in the first four centuries after Christ who endeavoured to give a rational form to the religion and morality of the heathen world in opposition to the growing power of Christianity—men whose ill-success is one of the strongest proofs of the deadness of their own cause, and the vitality of that against which they strove. Seneca, Plutarch, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Celsus, Plotinus, Porphyry, Iamblichus, and Hierocles were in this sense precursors of Julian. We may define the objects of their efforts on behalf of paganism as:
(1) To unite popular beliefs in many gods with some conception of the unity of the divine being, and to give some consistent, if not rational, account of the origin of the world and of the course of human history.
(2) To defend the myths and legends of heathenism, and generally to establish heathen morals on a higher basis than mere custom.
(3) To satisfy the yearnings of the soul for the knowledge of God, while rejecting the exclusive claims of the Jewish and Christian revelation.
(1) Doctrine as to the Nature of God.—The birth of Christ took place in the fulness of time, i.e. when mankind had been prepared for it, by many influences bearing them towards the acceptance of a revelation. One of the most important of these preparations was the movement towards monotheism. The old simple belief in many gods living together in a sort of upper world was gone, and thinking men would accept no system which did not assume the supremacy of one divine principle, and in some degree "justify" the action of Providence in dealing with mankind as a whole. But the worship of many gods had too deep a hold upon the fancy and affections, as well as the mind, of the people to be surrendered without a long struggle, and various methods were advanced to shelter and protect the current belief. The systems thus formed were naturally all more or less pantheistic, finding unity in an informal abstraction from the phenomena of nature. But, as we should expect to be the case on European soil, they were neither logically pantheistic in the abstract way of the Hindu philosophical sects nor sharply dualistic like the speculations of the Gnostics and Manicheans. The more practical minds of the Graeco-Roman world were satisfied to give an account of things as they appeared without overpowering and paralyzing themselves by the insoluble question as to the existence and potencies of matter; and thus they were at once more inconsistent and less absurd than some of their contemporaries. While looking upon matter as something degrading, and upon contact with it as a thing to be avoided, they nevertheless did not define matter to be non-existent, or merely phenomenal, nor did they regard it as absolutely evil. In the same way, while they lost all true hold upon the personality of God, and believed in the eternity of the world (e.g. Jul. Or. iv. p.132 C), they used the terms creation and providence, and spoke of communion with and likeness to God. Into an eclectic system of this kind it was not difficult to incorporate the gods of the heathen world, and to make them subserve a sort of philosophy of history. With Julian they take a double position: (a) as intermediate beings employed in creation who protect the Supreme Being from too intimate contact with the world; (b) as accounting for the difference between nations, and so enabling men to uphold traditional usages without ceasing to hold to one ideal law and one truth (Jul.Or. vi. p. 184 C, ὥσπερ γὰρ ἀλὴθεια μία, οὕτω δὲ καί φιλοσοφία μία).
The chief source of information on this part
