Had he lived any longer, his sense of tolerance and his hatred of stupidity would have turned him into the most intolerant man of his age. Now, from his cot in the hospital, he could reflect that during his rule, not a single person had suffered death for his private opinions. For this mercy, his Christian subjects rewarded him with their undying hatred. They boasted that an arrow from one of his own soldiers (a Christian legionary) had killed the Emperor and with rare delicacy they composed eulogies in praise of the murderer. They told how, just before he collapsed, Julian had confessed the errors of his ways and had acknowledged the power of Christ. And they emptied the arsenal of foul epithets with which the vocabulary of the fourth century was so richly stocked to disgrace the fame of an honest man who had lived a life of ascetic simplicity and had devoted all his energies to the happiness of the people who had been entrusted to his care.
When he had been carried to his grave the Christian bishops could at last consider themselves the veritable rulers of the Empire and immediately began the task of destroying whatever opposition to their domination might remain in isolated corners of Europe, Asia and Africa.
Under Valentinian and Valens, two brothers who ruled from 364 to 378, an edict was passed forbidding all Romans to sacrifice animals to the old Gods. The pagan priests were thereby deprived of their revenue and forced to look for other employment.
But the regulations were mild compared to the law by which Theodosius ordered all his subjects not only to accept the Christian doctrines, but to accept them only in the form laid down by the “universal” or “Catholic” church of which he had made himself the protector and which was to have a monopoly in all matters spiritual.
All those who after the promulgation of this ordinance stuck to their “erroneous opinions”—who persisted in their “insane heresies”—who remained faithful to their “scandalous doctrines”—were to suffer the consequences of their willful disobedience and were to be exiled or put to death.
From then on the old world marched rapidly to its final doom. In Italy and Gaul and Spain and England hardly a pagan temple remained. They were either wrecked by the contractors who needed stones for new bridges and streets and city-walls and water-works, or they were remodeled to serve as meeting places for the Christians. The thousands of golden and silver images which had been accumulated since the beginning of the Republic were publicly confiscated and privately stolen and such statues as remained were made into mortar.
The Serapeum of Alexandria, a temple which Greeks and Romans and Egyptians alike had held in the greatest veneration for more than six centuries, was razed to the ground. There remained the university, famous all over the world ever since it had been founded by Alexander the Great. It had continued to teach and explain the old philosophies and as a result attracted a large number of students from all parts of the Mediterranean. When it was not closed at the behest of the Bishop of Alexandria, the monks of his diocese took the matter into their own hands. They broke into the lecture rooms, lynched Hypatia, the last of the great Platonic teachers, and threw her mutilated body into the streets where it was left to the mercy of the dogs.
In Rome things went no better.
The temple of Jupiter was closed, the Sibylline books, the very basis of the old Roman faith, were burned. The capital was left a ruin.