No More Learning

Innumerable have been the explanations which men have offered for
the apostasy of Julian. They have pointed to his Arian teachers, have
suggested that Christianity was hateful to him as the religion of
Constantius whom he regarded as his father's murderer, while rationalists
have paradoxically claimed that the Emperor's reason refused to accept
the miraculous origin and the subtle theologies of the faith. It would be
truer to say that Christianity was not miraculous enough—was too
rational for the mystic and enthusiast. The religion which had as its
central object of adoration the cult of a dead man was to him human,
all too human: his vague longings after some vast imaginative conception
of the universe felt themselves cabined and confined in the creeds of
Christianity. With a Roman's pride and a Roman's loyalty to the past
as he conceived it, the upstart faith of despised Galilaean peasants
aroused at one moment his scorn, at another his pity: a Greek by
education and literary sympathies, the Christian Bible was but a faint
and distorted reflex of the masterpieces which had comforted his
solitary youth: a mystic who felt the wonder of the expanse of the
heavens, with a strain in his nature to which the ritual excesses of the
Orient appealed with irresistible fascination, it was easy for him to adopt
the speculations of Neoplatonism and to fall a victim to the thaumaturgy
of Maximus. The causes of Julian's apostasy lie deep-rooted in the
apostate's inmost being.
His first acts declared his policy: he ordered the temples to be
opened and the public sacrifices to be revived; but the Christians were
to be free to worship, for Julian had learned the lesson of the failure of
previous persecutions, and by imperial order all the Catholic bishops
banished under Constantius were permitted to return. Those privileges,
however, which the State had granted to the churches were now to be
withdrawn : lands and temples which had belonged to the older religion
were to be surrendered to their owners, the Christian clergy were no longer
to claim exemption from the common liability to taxation or from duties
owed to the municipal senates. With Julian's accession Christianity
had ceased to be the favoured religion, and it was therefore contended
that reason demanded alike restitution and equality before the law.
Meanwhile a Court was sitting at Chalcedon to try the partisans of
Constantius. Its nominal president was Sallust (probably Julian's friend
when in Gaul), but the commission was in reality controlled by Arbitio,
an unprincipled creature of Constantius. Julian may perhaps have
intended to show impartiality by such a choice, but as a result justice
was travestied, and though public opinion approved of the deaths of
Paul the notary and of Apodemius, who were principally responsible for
the excesses committed in the treason trials of the late reign, and may
а


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362–363]
Julian at Antioch
79
have welcomed the fate of the all-powerful chamberlain Eusebius, men
were horror-struck at the execution of Ursulus, who as treasurer in Gaul
had loyally supported Julian when Caesar; his unpopularity with the
troops was indeed his only crime, and the Emperor did not mend his
error by raising the weak plea that he had been kept in ignorance of the
sentence. Julian's next step was the summary dismissal of the horde of
minor officials of the palace who had served to make the Court circle
under Constantius a very hot-bed of vice and corruption. The purge
was sudden and indiscriminate; it was the act of a young man in
a hurry. The feverish ardour of the Emperor's reforming energy swept
before it alike the innocent and the guilty. Such impatience appeared
unworthy of a philosopher, and so far from awaking gratitude in his
subjects served rather to arouse discontent and alarm.
But already Julian was burning to undertake his great expedition
against Persia, and refused to listen to counsellors who suggested the
folly of aggression now that Sapor was no longer pressing the attack.
The Emperor's preparations could best be made in Antioch and here he
arrived probably in late July 363. On the way he had made a détour
to visit Pessinus and Ancyra ; the lukewarm devotion of Galatia had
discouraged him, but in Antioch where lay the sanctuary of Daphne he
looked for earnest support in his crusade for the moral regeneration of
Paganism. The Crown of the East (as Ammianus styles his native city)
welcomed the Emperor with open arms, but the enthusiasm was short-
lived. The populace gay, factious, pleasure-loving, looked for spectacles
and the pomp of a Court; Julian's heart was set on a civil and religious
reformation. He longed for amendment in law and administration,
above all for a remodelling of the old cult and the winning of converts
to the cause of the gods. He himself was to be the head of the new
state church of Paganism ; the hierarchy of the Christians was to be
adopted—the country priests subordinated to the high priest of the
province, the high priest to be responsible to the Emperor, the pontifex
maximus. A new spirit was to inspire the Pagan clergy; the priest
himself was to be no longer a mere performer of public rites, let him
take up the work of preacher, expound the deeper sense which underlay
the old mythology and be at once shepherd of souls and an ensample to
his flock in holy living. What Maximin Daza had attempted to achieve
in ruder fashion by forged acts of Pilate, Julian's writings against the
Galilaeans should effect : as Maximin had bidden cities ask what they
would of his royal bounty, did they but petition that the Christians
might be removed from their midst, so Julian was ready to assist and
favour towns which were loyal to the old faith. Maximin had created
a new priesthood recruited from men who had won distinction in
public careers: his dream had been to fashion an organisation which
might successfully withstand the Christian clergy; here too Julian was
his disciple. When pest and famine had desolated the Roman East in
a
CH. 111.


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80
Julian and the Christians
[363
Maximin's days, the helpfulness and liberality of Christians towards the
starving and the plague-stricken had forced men to confess that true
piety and religion had made their home with the persecuted heretics:
it was Julian's will that Paganism should boast its public charity and
that an all-embracing service of humanity should be reasserted as a
vital part of the ancient creed. If only the worshippers of the gods of
Hellas were once quickened with a spiritual enthusiasm, the lost ground
would be recovered. It was indeed to this call that Paganism could not
respond. There were men who clung to the old belief, but theirs
was no longer a victorious faith, for the fire had died upon the altar.
Resignation to Christian intolerance was bitter, but the passion which
inspires martyrs was nowhere to be found. Julian made converts—the
Christian writers mournfully testify to their numbers—but he made them
by imperial gold, by promises of advancement or fear of dismissal. They
were not the stuff of which missionaries could be fashioned. The citizens
were disappointed of their pageants, while the royal enthusiast found his
hopes to be illusions. Mutual embitterment was the natural result.
Julian was never a persecutor in the accepted meaning of that word:
it was the most constant complaint of the Christians that the Emperor
denied them the glory of martyrdom, but pagan mobs knew that the
Emperor would not be quick to punish violence inflicted on the
Galilaeans: when the Alexandrians brutally murdered their tyrannous
bishop, George of Cappadocia, they escaped with an admonition ; when
Julian wrote to his subjects of Bostra, it was to suggest that their bishop
might be hunted from the town. If Pessinus was to receive a boon from
the Emperor, his counsel was that all her inhabitants should become
worshippers of the Great Mother ; if Nisibis needed protection from
Persia, it would only be granted on condition that she changed her faith.
In the schools throughout the Empire Christians were expounding the
works of the great Greek masters; from their earliest years children were
taught to scorn the legends which to Julian were rich with spiritual
meaning. He that would teach the scriptures must believe in them,
and given the Emperor's zealous faith, it was but reasonable that he
should prohibit Christians from teaching the classic literature which
was his Bible. If Ammianus criticised the edict severely, it was because
he did not share the Emperor's belief; the historian was a tolerant
monotheist, Julian an ardent worshipper of the gods. The Emperor's
conservatism and love of sacrifice alike were stirred by the records of
the Jews. A people who in the midst of adversity had clung with
a passionate devotion to the adoration of the God of their fathers
deserved well at his hands. Christian renegades should see the glories
of a restored temple which might stand as an enduring monument of
his reign. The architect Alypius planned the work, but it was never
completed. The earth at this time was troubled by strange upheavals,
earthquakes and ocean waves, and by some such phenomenon Jerusalem


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11
363]
The Persian Expedition
81
would seem to have been visited'; perhaps during the excavations a well
of naphtha was ignited. We only know that Christians, who saw in
Julian's plan a defiance of prophecy, proclaimed a miracle, and that the
Emperor did not live to prove them mistaken.
Thus in Antioch the relations between the sovereign and his people
were growing woefully strained. Julian removed the bones of Saint
Babylas from the precinct of Daphne and soon after the temple was
burned to the ground. Suspicion fell upon the Christians and their
great church was closed. A scarcity of provisions made itself felt in the
city and Julian fixed a maximum price and brought corn from Hierapolis
and elsewhere, and sold it at reduced rates. It was bought up by the
merchants, and the efforts to coerce the senate failed. The populace
ridiculed an Emperor whose aims and character they did not understand.
The philosopher would not stoop to violence but the man in Julian
could not hold his peace. The Emperor descended from the awful
isolation which Diocletian had imposed on his successors; he challenged
the satirists to a duel of wits and published the Misopogon. It was to
sacrifice his vantage-ground. The chosen of Heaven had become the
jest of the mob, and Julian's pride could have drained no bitterer cup.
When he left the city for Persia, he had determined to fix his court, upon
his return, at Tarsus, and neither the entreaties of Libanius nor the tardy
repentance of Antioch availed to move him from his purpose.
.
Here but the briefest outline can be given of the oft-told tale of
Julian's Persian expedition. Before it criticism sinks powerless, for it is
a wonder-story and we cannot solve its riddle. The leader perished and
the rest is silence : with him was lost the secret of his hopes. Julian
left Antioch on 5 March 363 and on the 9th reached Hierapolis. Here
the army had been concentrated and four days later the Emperor
advanced at its head, crossed the Euphrates and passing through
Batnae halted at Charrae. The name must have awakened gloomy
memories and the Emperor's mind was troubled with premonitions of
disaster; men said that he had bidden his kinsman Procopius mount the
throne should he himself fall in the campaign. A troop of Persian
horse had just burst plundering across the frontier and returned laden
with booty; this event led Julian to disclose his plan of campaign.
Corn had been stored along the road towards the Tigris, in order to
create an impression that he had chosen that line for his advance; in
fact the Emperor had determined to follow the Euphrates and strike for
Ctesiphon. He would thus be supported by his fleet bearing supplies
and engines of war. Procopius and Sebastianus he entrusted with 30,000
troops--almost half his army-and directed them to march towards the
Tigris. They were for the present to act only on the defensive, shielding
the eastern provinces from invasion and guarding his own forces from
any Persian attack from the north. When he himself was once at grips
1 Cf. Vita Artemii Mart. AS. Boll. Tom. viii. p. 883, § 66.
6
C. MED. H. VOL. I. CH. III.


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82
Julian's march
[363
with Persia in the heart of the enemy's territory, Sapor would be forced
to concentrate his armies, and then, the presence of Julian's generals being
no longer necessary to protect Mesopotamia, should a favourable
opportunity offer, they were to act in concert with Arsaces, ravage
Chiliocomum, a fertile district of Media, and advance through Corduene
and Moxoene to join him in Assyria. That meeting never took place:
from whatever reason Procopius and Sebastianus never left Mesopotamia.
Julian reviewed the united forces—65,000 men—and then turned south
following the course of the Belias (Belecha) until he reached Callinicum
(Ar-Rakka) on 27 March.
Another day's march brought him to the Euphrates, and here he
met the fleet under the command of the tribune Constantianus and the
Count Lucillianus. Fifty warships, an equal number of boats designed
to form pontoon bridges, and a thousand transports-the Roman armada
seemed to an eyewitness fitly planned to match the magnificent stream
on which it floated. Another 98 miles brought the army to Diocletian's
bulwark fortress of Circesium (Karkisiya). Here the Aboras (Khabūr)
formed the frontier line; Julian harangued the troops, then crossed the
river by a bridge of boats and began his march through Persian territory.
In spite of omens and disregarding the gloomy auguries of the Etruscan
soothsayers, the Emperor set his face for Ctesiphon ; he would storm
high Heaven by violence and bend the gods to his will. From its
formation the invading army was made to appear a countless host, for
their marching column extended over some ten miles, while neither the
fleet nor the land forces were suffered to lose touch with each other.
Some of the enemy's forts capitulated, the inhabitants of Anatha being
transported to Chalcis in Syria, some were found deserted, while the
garrisons of others refusing to surrender professed themselves willing to
abide by the issue of the war. Julian was content to accept these terms
and continued his unresting advance. Historians have blamed this rash
confidence, whereby he endangered his own retreat. It is however to be
remembered that a siege in the fourth century might mean a delay of
many weeks, that the Emperor's project was clearly to dismay Persia
by the rapidity of his onset and that it would seem probable that his
plan of campaign had been from the first to return by the Tigris and
not by the Euphrates. The Persians had intended a year or two before
to leave walled cities untouched and strike for Syria, Julian in his turn
refused to waste precious time in investing the enemy's strongholds, but
would deal a blow against the capital itself. The march was attended
with many difficulties: a storm swept down upon the camp, the swollen
river burst its dams and many transports were sunk, the passage of the
Narraga was only forced by a successful attack on the Persian rear which
compelled them to evacuate their position in confusion, a mutinous and
discontented spirit was shown by the Roman troops and the Emperor
was forced to exert his personal influence and authority before discipline


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363]
Ctesiphon
83
was restored; finally the Persians raised all the sluices and, freeing the
waters, turned the country which lay before the army into a widespread
marsh. Difficulties however vanished before the resource and prompti-
tude of the Emperor, and the advance guard under Victor brought him
news that the country up to the walls of Ctesiphon was clear of the
enemy. On the fall of the strong fortress of Maiozamalcha, the fleet
followed the Naharmalcha (the great canal which united Euphrates and
Tigris), while the army kept pace with it on land. The Naharmalcha,
however, flows into the Tigris three miles below Ctesiphon, and thus the
Emperor would have been forced to propel his ships up stream in his
attack on the capital. The difficulty was overcome by clearing the dis-
used canal of Trajan, down which the fleet emerged into the Tigris
to the north of Ctesiphon. From the triangle thus formed by the
Naharmalcha, the Tigris and the canal of Trajan Julian undertook the
capture of the left bank of the river. Protected by a palisade, the
Persians offered a stubborn resistance to the Roman night attack. The
five ships first despatched were repulsed and set on fire; on the moment
“it is the signal that our men hold the bank ” cried the Emperor, and
the whole fleet dashed to their comrades' support. Julian's inspiration
won a field of battle for the Romans. Underneath a scorching sun the
armies fought until the Persians-elephants, cavalry and foot-were
fleeing pell-mell for the shelter of the city walls; their dead numbered
some 2500. Had the pursuit been pressed, Ctesiphon might perhaps
have been won that day, but plunder and booty held the victors fast.
Should the capital be besieged or the march against Sapor begun? It
would almost seem that Julian himself wavered irresolute, while precious
days were lost. Secret proposals of peace led him to underestimate the
enemy's strength, while men, playing the part of deserters, offered to lead
him through fertile districts against the main Persian army. Should
he weary his forces and damp the spirit of his men by an arduous siege,
he might not only be cut off from the reinforcements under Procopius
and Sebastianus, but might find himself caught between two fires-Sapor's
advance and the resistance of the garrison. To conclude a peace were
unworthy of one who took Alexander for his model-better with his
victorious troops to strike a final and conclusive blow, and possibly
before the encounter effect a junction with the northern army. Crews
numerous enough to propel his fleet against the stream he could not
spare, and if he were to meet Sapor, he might be drawn too far from
the river to act in concert with his ships: they must not fall into the
enemy's hands, and therefore they must be burned. The resolution was
taken and regretted too late; twelve small boats alone were rescued
from the flames. Julian's plans miscarried, for the army of the north
remained inactive, perhaps through the mutual jealousy of its com-
manders, and Arsaces withheld his support from the foe of Sapor.
The Persians burned their fields before his advance, and the rich country-
CH, DI.
6-2


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84
Death of Julian
(363
his rear.
a
side which traitorous guides had promised became a wilderness of ash
and smoke. Orders were given for a retreat to Corduene; amidst
sweltering heat, with dwindling stores, the Romans beheld to their
dismay the cloud of dust upon the horizon which heralded Sapor's
approach. At dawn the heavy-armed troops of Persia were close at
hand and only after many engagements were beaten off with loss.
After a halt of two days at Hucumbra, where a supply of provisions
was discovered, the army advanced over country which had been de-
vastated by fire, while the troops were constantly harassed by sudden
onsets. At Maranga the Persians were once more reinforced ; two of
the king's sons arrived at the head of an elephant column and squadrons
of mailed cavalry. Julian drew up his forces in semicircular forma-
tion to meet the new danger; a rapid charge disconcerted the Persian
archers, and in the hand-to-hand struggle which followed the enemy
suffered severely. Lack of provisions, however, tortured the Roman army
during the three days' truce which ensued. When the march was resumed,
Julian learned of an attack
upon
Unarmed he galloped to the
threatened point, but was recalled to the defence of the van-guard. At
the same time the elephants and cavalry had burst upon the centre, but
were already in fight when a horseman's spear grazed the Emperor's arm
and pierced his ribs. None knew whence the weapon came, though rumour
ran that a Christian fanatic had assassinated his general, while others said
that a tribesman of the Taieni had dealt the fatal blow. In vain Julian
essayed to return to the field of battle; his soldiers magnificently avenged
their Emperor, but he could not share their victory. Within his tent he
calmly reviewed the past and uncomplaining yielded his life into the keep-
ing of the eternal Godhead. “In medio cursu florentium gloriarum hunc
merui clarum e mundo digressum. " Death in mercy claimed Julian. The
impatient reformer and champion of a creed outworn might have become
the embittered persecutor. Rightly or wrongly after generations would
know him as the great apostate, but he was spared the shame of being
numbered among the tyrants. He was born out of due time and therein
lay the tragedy of his troubled existence; for long years he dared not
discover the passionate desires which lay nearest his heart, and when at
length he could give them expression, there were few or none fully to
understand or sympathize. His work died with him and soon, like a
little cloud blown by the wind, left not a trace behind.
The next day at early dawn the heads of the army and the principal
officers assembled to choose an Emperor. Partisans of Julian struggled
with followers of Constantius, the armies of the West schemed against
the nominee of the legions of the East, Christianity and Paganism each
sought its own champion. All were however prepared to sink their
differences in favour of Sallust, but when he pleaded ill-health and
advanced age, a small but tumultuous faction carried the election of
Jovian, the captain of the imperial guard. Down the long line of troops


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363]
The Shameful Peace
85
of peace.
ran the Emperor's name, and some thought from the sound half-heard
that Julian was restored to them. They were undeceived at the sight
of the meagre purple robe which hardly served to cover the vast height
and bent shoulders of their new ruler. Chosen as a whole-hearted
adherent of Christianity, Jovian was by nature genial and jocular, a
gourmand and lover of wine and women-a man of kindly disposition
and very moderate education. The army by its choice had foredoomed
itself to dishonour; its excuse, pleads Ammianus, lay in the extreme urgency
of the crisis. The Persians, learning of Julian's death and of the
incapacity of his successor, pressed hard upon the retreating Romans ;
charges of the enemy's elephants broke the ranks of the legionaries while
on the march, and when the army halted their entrenched camp was
constantly attacked. Saracen horsemen took their revenge for Julian's
refusal to give them their customary pay by joining in these unceasing
assaults. By way of Sumere, Charcha and Dara the army retired, and
then for four whole days the enemy harassed the rear-guard, always
declining an engagement when the Romans turned at bay. The troops
clamoured to be allowed to cross the Tigris : on the further bank they
would find provisions and fewer foes, but the generals feared the dangers
of the swollen stream. Another two days passed-days of gnawing
hunger and scorching heat. At last Sapor sent Surenas with proposals
The king knew that Roman forces still remained in
Mesopotamia and that new regiments could easily be raised in the
Eastern provinces: desperate men will sell their lives dearly and diplomacy
might win a less costly victory than the sword. Four days the
negotiations continued, and then when suspense had become intolerable
the Thirty Years' Peace was signed. All but one of the five satrapies
which Rome under Diocletian had wrested from Persia were to be
restored, Nisibis and Singara were to be surrendered, while the Romans
were no longer to interfere in the internal affairs of Armenia. “We
ought to have fought ten times over” cries the soldier Ammian “rather
than to have granted such terms as these ! ” But Jovian desired (by what
means it mattered not) to retain a force which should secure him
against rivals—Was not Procopius who, men said, had been marked out
by Julian as his successor, at the head of an army in Mesopotamia ?
Thus the shameful bargain was struck, and the miserable retreat
continued. To the horrible privations of the march were added Persian
treachery and the bitter hostility of the Saracen tribesmen. At
Thilsaphata the troops under Sebastianus and Procopius joined the army,
and at length Nisibis was reached, the fortress which had been Rome's
bulwark in the East since the days of Mithridates. The citizens prayed
with tears that they might be allowed single-handed to defend the
walls against the might of Persia ; but Jovian was too good a Christian
to break his faith with Sapor, and Bineses, a Persian noble, occupied the
city in the name of his master. Procopius, who had been content to
CH. III.


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86
Jovian's Edict of Toleration
[ 364
.
acknowledge Jovian, now bore the corpse of Julian to Tarsus for burial,
and then, his mission accomplished, prudently disappeared. The army
in Gaul accepted the choice of their eastern comrades, but Jovian's
success was short-lived. In the depth of winter he hurried from Antioch
towards Constantinople and with his infant son, Varronianus, assumed the
consulship at Ancyra. At Dadastana he was found dead in his bedroom
(16 Feb. 364), suffocated some said by the fumes of a charcoal stove.
Many versions of his death were current, but apparently no contemporary
suspected other than natural causes. On his accession the Pagan party
had looked for persecution, the Christians for the hour of their
retaliation. But though the Christian faith was restored as the religion
of the Empire, Jovian's wisdom or good nature triumphed and he
issued an edict of toleration : he had thereby anticipated the policy
of his successor.


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87
CHAPTER IV.
THE TRIUMPH OF CHRISTIANITY.
The old or official religions of Greece and of Rome had lost most of
their power long before Constantine first declared that Christianity was
henceforth to be recognised as a religio licita and then proceeded to
bestow the Imperial favour on the faith which his predecessors had
persecuted. Hellenism had destroyed their influence over the cultivated
classes, and other religions, coming from the East, had captivated the
masses of the people. If temples, dedicated to the gods of Olympus,
were still standing open; if the time-honoured rites were still duly and
continuously celebrated; if the official priesthood, recognised and largely
supported by the State, still performed its appointed functions; these
things no longer compelled the devotion of the crowd. The Imperial
cult of the Divi and Divae, once so popular, had also lost its power
to attract and to charm; the routine of ceremonial worship was still
performed; the well-organised priesthood spreading all over the Empire !
maintained its privileged position ; but crowds no longer thronged the
temples, and the rites were neglected by the great mass of the population.
Yet this did not mean, as has often been supposed, the universal
triumph of Christianity. It may almost be said that Paganism was never
so active, so assertive, so combative, as in the third century. But this
paganism, for long the successful rival of Christianity and its real
opponent, was almost as new to Europe as Christianity itself. Something
must be known about it and its environment ere the reaction under
Julian and the final triumph of Christianity can be sympathetically
understood.
During the earlier centuries of the Roman Empire the process of
disintegration was completed which had begun with the conquests of
Alexander the Great. Instead of a system of self-contained societies,
solidly united internally and fenced off from all external social, political
and religious influences, which characterised ancient civilisation, this
age saw a mixing of peoples and a cosmopolitan society hitherto un
known.
If fighting went on continuously somewhere or other on the extended
frontiers of the great Empire, peace reigned within its vast domains. A
CH, P.


## p. 88 (#118) #############################################

88
Cosmopolitan Society
system of magnificent roads, for the most part passable all the year
round, united the capitals with the extremities, from Britain and Spain
on the west to the Euphrates on the east. The Mediterranean had
been cleared of pirates, and lines of vessels united the great cities on its
shores. Travelling, whether for business, health or pleasure, was possible
under the Empire with a certainty and a safety unknown in after
centuries until the introduction of steam.
It was facilitated by a common
language, a coinage universally valid, and the protection of the same
laws. Men could start from the Euphrates and travel onwards to Spain
using one lingua-franca everywhere understood. Greek could be heard
in the streets of every commercial town-in Rome, Marseilles, Cadiz
and Bordeaux, on the banks of the Nile, of the Orontes and of the
Tigris.
With all these things to favour it, the movements of peoples within
the Empire had become incalculably great, and all the larger cities were
cosmopolitan. Families from all lands, of differing religions and social
habits, dwelt within the same walls. National, social, intellectual and
religious differences faded insensibly. Thinking became eclectic as it had
never been before.
This growing community in habit of thought and even of religious
belief was fed by something peculiar to the times. The soldier of many
lands, the travelled trader, the tourist in search of pleasure, and the
invalid wandering in quest of health were common then as now.
But a special characteristic of the end of the third and the beginning
of the fourth century was the widely wandering student, the teacher
far from the land of his birth, and the itinerant preacher of new
religions.
The Empire was well provided with what we should now call
universities. Rome, Milan and Cremona were seats of higher learning
for Italy; Marseilles, Bordeaux and Autun for Gaul; Carthage for North
Africa; Athens and Apollonia for Greece; Tarsus for Cilicia ; Smyrna for
Asia; Beyrout and Antioch for Syria ; and Alexandria for Egypt. The
number of foreign students to be found at each was remarkable. Young
Romans enrolled themselves at Marseilles and Bordeaux. Greeks crossed
the seas to attend lectures at Antioch, and found as their neighbours men
from Assyria, Phoenicia and Egypt. At Alexandria the number of
students from distant parts of the Empire exceeded largely those from
the neighbourhood. At Athens, whose schools were the most famous in
the beginning of the fourth century, the crowds of Barbarians (for so
the citizens called those foreign students) were so great that it was said
that their presence threatened to spoil the purity of the language.
Everywhere, in that age of wandering, the student seemed to prefer
to study far from home and to Ait from one place of learning to
another.
Nor were the professors much different. They commonly taught far


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Oriental Religions
89
.
from their native land. Even at Athens it became increasingly rare to
find a teacher who belonged by birth to Greece. They too travelled from ,
one university seat to another. Lucian, Philostratus, Apuleius, all who
portray the age and the class, describe their wanderings.
Missionaries of new cults went about in the same way.
Bands of
itinerant devotees, the prophets and priests of Syrian, Persian, possibly
of Hindu cults, passed along the great Roman roads. Solitary preachers
of Oriental faiths, with all the fire of missionary enthusiasm, tramped,
from town to town, drawn by an irresistible impulse to Rome, the centre
of power, the protectress of the religions of her myriad subjects, the
tribune from which, if a speaker could only ascend it, he might address
the world. (The end of the third and the beginning of the fourth
century was an age of religious excitements, of curiosity about strange
faiths, when all who had something new to teach about the secrets of
the soul and of the universe, hawked their theories as traders their
merchandise.
This mixture of peoples, this new cosmopolitanism, this hurrying to
and fro of religious teachers, brought it about that Oriental faiths, at first
only the religions of groups of families who had brought their cults with
them into the West, made numerous converts and spread themselves
over the Roman Empire. These Oriental religions prospered the more
because from the middle of the third century onwards Rome was looking
to the East for many things. From it came the deftest artizans and
mechanics who gave to life most of its material comforts. It largely con-
tributed to feed Rome with its grain. Its philosophy (for most of
the greatest stoical thinkers were not Greeks but Orientals) gave the
substructure to Roman Law; and the most famous Law School in the
third, fourth and fifth centuries was not in Rome but at Beyrout.
Ulpian came from Tyre and Papinian from Syria. The greatest non-
Christian thinkers of these centuries were neither Greeks nor Romans
but Orientals. Plotinus was an Egyptian; Iamblichus, Porphyry and
Libanius were Syrians; Galen was an Asiatic. Oriental ideas were
slowly changing Rome's political institutions themselves, and the
Princeps of a Republic, as was Octavius, became, in the persons of
Diocletian and Constantine, an Oriental monarch. Rome, by the
discipline of its legions, by the mingled severity and generosity of its
rule, by the justice of its legislation, had conquered the East. Eastern
thought, wedded to Hellenism, was in its turn subjugating the Empire.
Its religions had their share in the conquest.
Among those Oriental faiths which spread themselves over civilised
Europe some were much more popular than others. All entered the
Empire at an early date and won their way very slowly at first. Most
of them seem to have made some alliance with the survivals of such
Greek mysteries as those of Eleusis and of Dionysos. All of them, save
that of Mithras, had been affected and to some extent changed by
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90
Oriental Religions
Hellenism before they entered into the full light of history in the beginning
of the third century.
From Asia Minor came the worship of Cybele with its hymns and
dances, its mysterious ideas of a deity dying to live again, its frenzies and
trances, its soothsayings, and its blood-baths of purification and sanctifica-
tion. From Syria came the cult of the Dea Syra, described by Lucian the
sceptic, with its sacred prostitutions, its more than hints of human
sacrifices, its mystics and its pillar saints. Persia sent forth the worship
of Mithras, with its initiations, its sacraments, its mysteries and the
stern discipline which made it a favourite religion among the Roman
legionaries. Egypt gave
Egypt gave birth to many a cult.
cult. Chief among them was •
the worship of Isis. Before the end of the second century it had far
outstripped Christianity and could boast of its thousands where the
religion of the Cross could only number hundreds. It had penetrated
everywhere, even to far-off Britain. A ring bearing the figure of the
goddess' constant companion, the dog-headed Anubis, has been discovered
in a grave in the Isle of Man. Votaries of Isis could be found from
the Roman Wall to Land's End.
The worship of Isis may be taken as a type of those Oriental faiths
before whose presence the official gods of Olympus were receding into the
background. The cult had a body of clergy, highly organised, a book
of prayers, a code of liturgical actions, a tonsure, vestments, and an
elaborate impressive ceremonial. The inner circle of its devotees were
called “the religious," like the monks of the Middle Ages; those who
were altogether outside the faith were termed “pagans"; the service of
the goddess was a “holy war," and her worshippers of all grades were
banded together in a “militia. " Apuleius, himself converted to the faith,
has, in his Metamorphoses, described its ceremonies of worship and
enabled us to see how desires after a better life drew men like himself to
reverence the deity and enrol himself among her followers. He has
described, with a vividness that makes us see them, the stately processions
which moved with deliberate pace through the crowded narrow streets of
oriental towns, and drew after them to the temple many a hitherto
unattached inquirer. We can enter the temple with him and listen to
the solemn exhortation of the high-priest; hear him dwell upon the past
sins and follies of the neophyte and the unfailing goodness and mercy of
the goddess whose eyes had followed him through them all and who now
waited to receive him if he truly desired to become her disciple and
worshipper. The initiation was a secret rite and Apuleius is careful not
to profane it by description; but we learn that there was a baptism, a
fast of ten days, a course of priestly instruction, sponsors given to the
neophyte, and, in the evening, a reception of the new brother by the
congregation, when every one greeted him kindly and presented him with
some small gift. We can penetrate with him into the secret chamber
reserved for the higher initiation where he was taught that he would
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Oriental Religions
91
endure a voluntary death which he was to look upon as the gateway into
a higher and better life. We can dimly see him excited with wild
anticipations, dizzy with protracted fasting, almost suffocated by surging
vapours, blinded by sudden and unexpected flashes of light, undergo his
hypnotic trance during which he saw unutterable things. “I trod the
confines of death and the threshold of Proserpine; I was swept round all
the elements and back again; I saw the sun shining at midnight in purest
radiance; gods of heaven and gods of hell I saw face to face and adored
in presence. " We can understand how such an hypnotic trance marked
a man for life.
Isis worship, humanised by Hellenism, extracted from the crude wild
legends of Egypt the thought of a suffering and all-merciful Mother-
Goddess who yearned to ease the woes of mankind. It raised the
beast-gods of the Nile and the tales about them into emblems and
parables. It captured the common man by its thaumaturgy. For the
more cultured intelligences it had a more sublime theology which appealed
to the philosophy of the day. In all this it was a type, perhaps the
best, of those Oriental cults which were permeating the Empire.
All those religions, whatever their special form of teaching or variety
of cult, brought with them thoughts foreign to the old official worships
of Greece and Rome; though not altogether strange to the Mysteries
which had for long been the real people's religion in Greece nor to the
cult of Dionysos which in various forms had preserved its vitality.
They taught (or perhaps it would be more correct to say that the
action of the subtle Greek intellect, playing upon the crude ideas which
these Oriental religions presented to it, evolved from them) a series of
religious conceptions foreign to the old paganism, and these became
| common parts of the newer non-Christian intelligence which was powerful
in the third and fourth centuries.
A sharp distinction, much more definite than anything previous, was
drawn between the soul and the body. The soul belonged to a different
sphere and was more estimable than the body. The former was the
inhabitant of a higher and better world and was therefore immortal.
The thoughts of individuality and personality became much clearer.
In the same way the thoughts of Godhead as a whole and of the
world as a whole-conceptions scarcely separate before—were distin-
guished more or less clearly. Godhead became what the world was not,
and yet Something good and great Which was the primal basis of all
things.
The earlier philosophical depreciation of the world of matter became
more emphatic, and raised the question whether the creation of the
he?
whole material world and of the body which belonged to it was not after
all a mistake; whether the body was not a prison or at least a house of
correction in which the soul was grievously detained; whether the soul
could
become what it really was until it had undergone a deliverance
a
ever
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92
The New Paganism
from the body. Such deliverance was called salvation, and much
practical thinking was expended on the proper means of effecting it.
Might not knowledge and the means it suggested of living purely or
with as little bodily contamination as possible while this life lasted, be
the beginnings of entrance into the real and eternal life of the soul ?
Was it not most likely that souls had been gradually confined in bodies,
and must not the process of delivery be gradual also ? The gradual
Way of Return to God became a feature in almost all those Eastern cults,
by whatever means they sought to accomplish it.
Perhaps however the most novel thought was the conviction that
something more than knowledge, beyond any means of living purely
which human wisdom could suggest, something outside man and belong-
ling to the sphere of divinity, was needed to start the soul on this gradual
Way of Return and sustain his faltering footsteps along the difficult
path. Contact with the Godhead was needed to save and redeem.
Such contact was to be found in a consecration (mysterium, sacramentum,
initiation) wherein the soul, in some hypnotic trance, was possessed by
the deity who overpowered it and for ever afterwards led it step by step
along the path of salvation or Way of Return. Perhaps something more
than any such consecration was needed ; might not some surer way be
found if only diligently sought for? It might be in one of the older
cults whose inner meaning had never been rightly understood; or in some
mystery not yet completely accessible; or in a divinely commissioned man
who had not yet appeared. It might even be found within the soul
itself, if men could only discover and use the true powers of the human
soul (Higher Thought). At all events it was held that true religion
really implied a detachment from the world, and included a strict
discipline of soul and body while life lasted.
Such a paganism was very different from the polytheism with its
furred, feathered and scaly deities which first confronted Christianity and
was attacked by the early Christian apologists. The later ones recognised
its power. Firmicus Maternus, writing in the time of Constantine, dismisses
with good-humoured scorn the deities of Olympus and their myths, but
criticises with thorough earnestness the Oriental religions. It had, in
spite of its external multiformity, a natural cohesion in virtue of the
circle of common thoughts above described. It hardly deserves the name
of polytheism; for its idea of one abstract divinity, separate from the
world of matter, made it monotheism of a kind; and evidence shews that
its votaries regarded Isis, Cybele and the rest more as the representa-
tives and impersonations of the one godhead than as individual deities.
Inscriptions from tombstones reveal that worshippers did not attach
themselves to one cult exclusively. The varying forms of initiation
were all separate methods of attaining to union with the one divinity,
the different ceremonies of purification were all ways of reaching the
same end, and, as one might succeed where another failed, they could be
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The New Paganism
93
all tried impartially. Just as we find men and women in the beginning of
the sixteenth century enrolling themselves in several religious associations
of different kinds (witness Dr Pfeffinger, a member of thirty-two religious
confraternities), so in the third and fourth centuries members of both
sexes were initiated into several cults and performed the lustrations
prescribed by very different worships, in order to miss no chance of union
with divinity and to leave no means of purification and sanctification
untried. The tombstone of Vettius Agorius Praetextatus, the friend of
Symmachus, who took part in the Saturnalia of Macrobius, records that
he had been initiated into several cults and that he had performed the
taurobolium. His wife, Aconia Paulina, was more indefatigable still.
This lady, a member of the exclusive circle of the old pagan nobility of
Rome, went to Eleusis and was initiated with baptism, fasting, vigil,
hymn-singing into the several mysteries of Dionysos, of Ceres and Koré.
Not content with these, she went on to Lerna and sought communion with
the same three deities in different rites of initiation. She travelled to
Aegina, was again initiated, slept or waked in the porches of the small
temples there in the hope that the divinities of the place in dream or
waking vision might communicate to her their way of salvation. She
became a hierophant of Hecate with still different and more dreaded
rites of consecration. Finally, like her husband, she submitted herself to
the dreadful, and to us disgusting, purification won in the taurobolium.
A great pit was dug into which the neophyte descended naked; it was
covered with stout planks placed about an inch apart; a young bull was led
or forced upon the planks; it was stabbed by the officiating priest in such
a way that the thrust was mortal and that the blood might flow as freely
as possible. As the blood poured down on the planks and dripped into
the pit the neophyte moved backwards and forwards to receive as much as-
possible of the red warm shower and remained until every drop had
ceased to drip. Inscription after inscription records the fact that the
deceased had been a tauroboliatus or a tauroboliata, had gone through this
blood-bath in search of sanctification. Evidence from inscriptions seems
to shew that in the declining days of paganism, the energy of its votaries
drove them in greater numbers to accumulate initiations and to undergo
the more severe rites of purification.
This multiform and yet homogeneous paganism had the further
support of a system of philosophy expounded and enforced by the
greatest non-Christian thinkers of the age. Neoplatonism, the last
birth of Hellenic thought, not without traces of Oriental parentage, has
the look of a philosophy of hesitation and expectancy. It had lost the
firm tread of Plato and Aristotle, and feared that the human intelligence
unaided could not penetrate and explain all things. The intellectual
faculty of man was reduced to something intermediate between mere
sense perception and some vague intuition of the supernatural, and the
whole energy of the movement was concentrated on discovering the
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94
Neoplatonism and Christianity
means to follow out this intuition and to attain by it not only com-
munion but union with what was completely and externally divine.
Its great thinker was Plotinus (d. 269). His disciples Porphyry
(233–304) and lamblichus (d. circa 330) made it the basis and buttress of
paganism when it was fighting for its life against a conquering Christianity.
If the Universe of things seen and unseen be an emanation from
Absolute Being, the Primal Cause of all things, the fountain from which
all existence flows and the haven to which everything that has reality in
it will return when its cycle is complete, then every heathen deity has its
place in this flow of existence. Its cult, however crude, is an obscure
witness to the presence of the intuition of the supernatural. The legends
which have gathered round its name, if only rightly understood, are
mystic revelations of the divine which permeates all things. Its initia-
tions and rites of purification are all meant to help the soul on the same
path of return by which it completes its cycle of wanderings. The new
paganism can be represented to be the collected flower and fruit of all
the older faiths presented and ready to satisfy the deeper desires of the
spirit of man. Neoplatonism could present itself as a naturalistic,
rational polytheism, retaining all the old structures of tradition, of thought
and of social organisation. The “common man” was not asked to forsake
the deities he was wont to reverence. The Roman was not required to
despise the gods who, as his forefathers believed, had led them to the
conquest of the world. The cultured Hellenist was taught to overstep,
without disturbing, creeds which for him were worn out and to seek and
find communion with the Divine which lies behind all gods. The very
conjuror was encouraged to cultivate his magic. Pantheism, that
wonder-child of thought and of the phantasy, included all within the
wide sweep of its sheltering arms and made them feel the claim of a
common kinship. Jesus Himself, had His followers allowed, might have
had a place between Dionysos and Isis ; but Christianity, which according
to Porphyry had departed widely from the simple teaching of the mystic
of Galilee, was sternly excluded from the Neoplatonist brotherhood of
religions. Its idea of a creation in time seemed irreligious to Porphyry;
its doctrine of the Incarnation introduced a false conception of the
union between God and the world; its teaching about the end of all
things he thought both irreverent and irreligious; above all things its
claim to be the one religion, its exclusiveness, was hateful to him. He
was too noble a man (philosophus nobilis, says Augustine) not to
sympathise with much in Christianity, and seems to have appreciated
it more and more in his later writings. Still his opinion remained
unchanged: “The gods have declared Christ to have been most pious ;
he has become immortal, and by them his memory is cherished.
Whereas the Christians are a polluted set, contaminated and enmeshed
in error. ” Christianity was the one religion to be fought against and if
possible conquered.
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The growing strength of Christianity
95
What Neoplatonism did theoretically the force of circumstances
accomplished on the practical side. The Oriental creeds had not merely
gained multitudes of private worshippers ; they had forced their way
among the public deities of Rome. Isis, Mithra, Sol Invictus, Dea
Syra, the Great Mother, took their places alongside of Jupiter, Venus,
Mars, etc. , and the Sacra peregrina appeared on the calendar of public
festivals. As most of these Oriental cults contained within them the
monotheist idea it is possible that they might have fought for pre-
eminence and each aspired to become the official religion of the Empire.
But they all recognised Christianity to be a common danger, and
M. Cumont has shewn that this feeling united them and made them
think and act as one.
Such was the paganism which faced Christianity in the fourth
century-a marvellous mixture of philosophy and religion, not without
grandeur and nobility of thought, feeling keenly the unity of nature,
the essential kinship of man with the Divine, and knowing something of
the yearning in man's heart for redemption and for communion with
God. It was able to fascinate and enthral many of the keenest intellects
and loftiest natures of the time. It laid hold on Julian.
Christianity was the common opponent of all these cults. It had
entered the field last and seemed easily outstripped in the race. In its
beginning it was but a ripple on the surface of a Galilaean lake. Now,
in the fourth century, it had compelled Imperial recognition and alliance.
In strength and in weakness its claim had been always the same. It
was the one, the only true, the universal religion.
,
From its beginning it had never lacked at least a few wealthy and
cultured adherents, but during the first two centuries the overwhelming
majority of its converts had come from the poorer classes—slaves,
freedmen, labourers. It had early drawn upon itself the contempt of
society and the hatred of the populace. It was held to be something
inhuman. Its votaries were “ the third race. They had all the un-
social vices of the Jews and even worse vices of their own. Christians
had appropriated the epithet Aung at them in scorn. They were “ the
third race," a peculiar people, separate from the rest of mankind, a
natio by themselves.
The last decade of the second century witnessed the beginnings of a
change. Men of all ranks and classes became converts-members of the
.
Senatorial and Equestrian Orders, distinguished pleaders, physicians,
officers in the army, officials in the civil service, judges, even governors
of provinces. Their wives, sisters and daughters accompanied or more
frequently preceded them. Then the tone of society began to change,
gradually and insensibly. Scorn and contempt gave place to feelings of
toleration. Before the end of the third century no one gave credit to
the old scandalous reproaches which had been Hung at the followers of
Jesus, even when an Emperor tried to revive them. Statesmen were
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96
The growing strength of Christianity
a
compelled to consider the movement-not now because it affected a
town or a province, but as something pervading the Empire. They
found that it possessed two characteristics which were enormous sources
of strength-a peculiar power of assimilation and a compact organisation.
From the first Christianity had proclaimed that the whole life of
man belonged to it. This meant that everything that made man's life
wider, deeper, fuller; whatever made it more joyous or contented;
whatever sharpened the brain, strengthened and taught the muscles,
gave full play to man's energies, could be taken up into and become
part of the Christian life. Sin and foulness were sternly excluded; but,
that done, there was no element of the Graeco-Roman civilisation which
could not be appropriated by Christianity. So it assimilated Hellenism
or the fine flower and fruit of Greek thought and feeling; it appro-
priated Roman law and institutions; it made its own the simple festivals
of the common people. All were theirs; and they were Christ's ; and
Christ was God's.
Then the Christian churches were compactly organised. Their polity
had been a natural growth. Its power of assimilation had enabled
Christianity to absorb what was best in Roman civil and temple organi-
sation, to exclude the worst elements of the bureaucracy, and to preserve
much democratic popular life. Its local rulers belonged to the people
they at once ruled and served. No over-centralisation crushed the local
and provincial life. Christian societies formed themselves into groups,
more or less compact, and made use of the synod to effect the grouping.
One common life throbbed through the network of synods. The feeling
of brotherhood did not exhaust itself in sentiment. If one part were
attacked all the others were swift to help. Nothing within the Empire
save the army could compare with the compact organisation of the
Christian Church.
In the middle of the third century the Emperor and the Empire
learnt to dread this organised force within their midst. The despised
" third race" had become indeed a natio within the Empire. The
first impulse was to exterminate what seemed to be a source of danger.
One well-organised universal persecution followed another.