12. But the belief in dreams would be strong and undoubted if the interpreters of them were never deceived; and sometimes, as Aristotle asserts, they are fixed and stable when the eye of the person, being soundly asleep, turns neither way, but looks straight forward.
13. And because the ignorance of the vulgar often talks loudly, though ignorantly, against these ideas, asking why, if there were any faculty of foreseeing the future, one man should be ignorant that he would be killed in battle, or another that he would meet with some misfortune, and so on; it will be enough to reply that sometimes a grammarian has spoken incorrectly, or a musician has sung out of tune, or a physician been ignorant of the proper remedy for a disease; but these facts do not disprove the existence of the sciences of grammar, music, or medicine.
14. So that Tully is right in this as well as other sayings of his, when he says, "Signs of future events are shown by the gods; if any one mistakes them he errs, not because of the nature of the gods, but because of the conjectures of men." But lest this discussion, running on this point beyond the goal, as the proverb is, should disgust the reader, we will now return to relate what follows.
II.
§ 1. While Julian, still with the rank of Cæsar only, was at Paris one day, exercising himself in the camp-field, and moving his shield in various directions, the joints by which it was fastened gave way, and the handle alone remained in his hand, which he still held firmly, and when those present were alarmed, thinking it a bad omen, he said, "Let no one be alarmed, I still hold firmly what I had before."
2. And again, when one day after a slight dinner, he was sleeping at Vienne, in the middle of the darkness of the night a figure of unusual splendour appeared to him, and when he was all but awake, repeated to him the following heroic verses, reciting them over and over again; which he believed, so that he felt sure that no ill fortune remained for him:—
"When Jove has passed the water-carrier's sign,
And Saturn's light, for five-and-twenty days
Has lightened up the maid; the king divine
Of Asia's land shall enter on the ways
That painful lead to death and Styx's gloomy maze."
3. Therefore in the mean time he made no change in the existing condition of affairs, but arranged everything that occurred with a quiet and easy mind, gradually strengthening himself, in order to make the increase of his power correspond with the increase of his dignity.
4. And in order, without any hindrance, to conciliate the good-will of all men, he pretended to adhere to the Christian religion, which in fact he had long since secretly abandoned, though very few were aware of his private opinions, giving up his whole attention to soothsaying and divination, and the other arts which have always been practised by the worshippers of the gods.