The infancy of Julian had been dabbled in blood. His earliest recollections would carry him back to the time when fathers, brothers, uncles, cousins, all had fallen in one indiscriminate massacre. From this carnage he and his brother Gallus alone had escaped; he himself, so he believed, because he was too young to be feared, and his brother because he was then a sickly boy, and seemed not to have long to live. The odium of this foul crime, whether justly or unjustly, rested on his cousin, the Emperor Constantius. If Constantius had not directly ordered it, he was thought to have connived at it. Certainly he had been on the spot, and, whether for want of power or for want of will, he had not prevented it. The courtiers and attendants attempted to palliate his cousin's guilt to the child Julian. They represented to him that Constantius had been deceived; that he was unable to restrain the savage outbreak of the soldiers; that he suffered fearful pangs of remorse; that he attributed to this crime all the misfortunes of his after life. It seems plain from this account that the spectre of this ghastly massacre haunted Julian's childish memory. He could not but feel that the bare sword was hanging over his own neck.
Julian was left an orphan before he was seven years old. His mother had died a few months after his birth. His father had perished, as we have seen. For some years after the massacre, he appears to have resided at Constantinople. Of his brother Gallus we hear nothing during this period. Julian himself was placed under the charge of an old family servant—a Scythian, Mardonius by name, a strict and pedantic disciplinarian, but also a man of culture, as the sequel shows. Mardonius taught his pupil to keep his eyes fixed on the ground as he took his walks. He led him always to and fro to school by the same way, knowing no other himself, and preventing the lad from discovering any other. He strictly prohibited him from going to the theatre or the circus, and altogether filled his mind with a distaste for the popular amusements of his age. We hear nothing of companionship, nothing of outdoor exercise, nothing of the cheerfulness and the sympathy which are equally necessary with the moral discipline and the intellectual training for the proper expansion of child's faculties. Julian was not like other children. Whatever may have been his natural disposition, his education had never allowed him to be a boy. Human nature, more especially childish nature, must seek relief somewhere from hard conventional restraints. Where all the usual outlets are closed, the buoyancy and the enthusiasm of the child will devise some means of escape. The paradise of Julian's childish existence was made up of two things. First, his tutor Mardonius was an enthusiastic admirer of Homer. If he prevented him from playing in the field he took him to the leafy islands of Calypso, to the Cave of Circe and the Gardens of Alcinous. With a less intelligent child this might have bred a feeling of disgust; but Julian was quick, imaginative, absorbing, and here was field for his sensibility. And, again, though his walks might be confined to one city, and to one street in that city, yet no bounds could shut out the glories of the heavens above. We have Julian's own authority for saying that his childish imagination was profoundly impressed by their contemplation. "From my earliest days," he wrote long afterwards, "a strange yearning after the rays of the God, the Sun God, sunk into my soul; and thus from the time I was quite a little child, when I looked at the light of heaven, I was beside myself with ecstasy, so that not only would I look eagerly and fixedly on the sun, but at night also, when there was a cloudless and clear sky, I gave up everything at once, and was rivetted by the beauties of the heavens, no longer understanding anything that any one spoke to me, nor giving heed to myself what I was doing." These, then, were the two bright spots which relieved the gloom of his childish life—the literature of Greece and the contemplation of the heavens. How large an influence these early memories had on his later apostasy, it will not be difficult to imagine.
This went on for some years with slight interruptions, and then there was a complete change. It was apparently about the year 344, when Julian would be thirteen or fourteen years old, and Gallus eighteen or nineteen, that, by the Emperor's orders, the two brothers were carried away to Macellum, an imperial castle in the mountain districts of Cappadocia. There they spent the next six years of life in strict retirement. What may have been the reason of this change we are not told, but we can easily suspect. Gallus was now growing up to manhood. He was tall, well made, and handsome, with flowing auburn hair; not unlike his uncle, the great Constantine, as we may infer from the description of the two men. The suspicious temper of Constantius might take alarm lest this young man should become the centre of disaffection and treason. But, however this may be, the seclusion was complete. Julian speaks of it as banishment. To himself it was the worst kind of banishment. He was banished not only from the city and the court, about which probably he knew little and cared less, but he was banished also from his books and his teachers. The two brothers saw no one of their own rank; their domestics were their only associates. Gallus was no companion for Julian. He had no literary taste; notwithstanding his handsome looks he was coarse and violent, even ferociously brutal, in his disposition, as the sequel shows. The treatment of Julian during this critical period of his life must have been altogether injurious to the healthy development of his character. A cramped boyhood almost certainly produces a one-sided manhood.
At length, after six years of seclusion, the brothers were again set free. What was the motive of Constantius—whether he considered that they had been sufficiently restrained, or whether some conscientious scruples found their way into his heart—we cannot say. Gallus and Julian were summoned to Constantinople. Soon after this a formidable insurrection broke out in the West, and Constantius found it necessary to associate some one with him in the cares of the empire. Accordingly Gallus, then twenty-five years old, was nominated Cæsar, and appointed to the command of the East. The appointment was most disastrous. Now that he was free from control, the innate ferocity of his disposition revealed itself. He has been compared, and the comparison does him no injustice, to a bloodthirsty tiger, who has broken through the bars of his cage, and, enraged by long confinement, fiercely attacks every one who comes in his way. Complaints of his savage, turbulent administration came thick upon the ears of Constantius. There were also rumours of a disloyal conspiracy on the part of the new Cæsar. Constantius might, perhaps, have forgiven the misgovernment; but the treason could not be overlooked. Gallus was recalled, stripped of the purple, and put to death without a hearing. Constantius had dyed his hand once more in the blood of Julian's kindred. Julian was left alone in the world, confronted by the tyrant. This happened in the year 354.
But while the caged passions of Gallus had sought compensation in this savage outbreak, the caged intellect of Julian was running riot in its own way. For a time he seems to have enjoyed comparative freedom. At Constantinople, at Nicomedia, at Pergamos, at Ephesus, we hear of his attendance on philosophers, on rhetoricians, on teachers of all kinds. The jealousy of Constantius could look with complacency on his philosophical and literary ardour. An ungainly, enthusiastic, unpractical scholar was the last man whom he need fear as a rival. It was during this period of turbulent, energetic, unreflecting, intellectual activity that the change came upon him. Whatever might have been the religious feelings of his boyhood, it was only now that Paganism asserted its power over his mind. The incident that decided his apostasy is eminently characteristic of the man and of the period. It happened in the year 351, the same year as that in which Gallus was invested with the purple, when Julian himself was twenty years of age. In the course of conversation one of his teachers happened to speak of Maximus, a famous philosopher, whom he described as possessing great natural gifts, and as accompanying his teaching by demonstrations. Julian's curiosity was excited. He demanded an explanation. He was told that on one occasion Maximus, in the presence of the speaker and others, had burnt a grain of incense in the temple of Hecate and chanted some mysterious hymn, when suddenly they saw the statue of the goddess smile upon him. On their expressing surprise, he told them that they should see a greater marvel than this—the torches in the hands of the goddess should burst out into flames of their own accord. He had scarcely said the word when the lights burst out from the torches. "Stay with your books," said Julian, "and I wish you joy of them; I have found the man I have been seeking for." He sought out Maximus, and was initiated in his philosophy and his magic.
This grotesque and unnatural combination was, as I have said, characteristic of the man and of the age. In earlier times philosophy and popular superstition were deadly foes, but in face of Christianity both the one and the other had learnt their weakness, and this unequal alliance was patched up. The new Platonist philosophy adopted not only the mythology of Greece and Rome, but the nature-worship and the magic of the East. A true theology must appeal at once to the intellect which demands a reason for its allegiance, and to the religious instinct which is conscious of dependence on a higher power. Christianity recognises both these claims. Greek philosophy appealed to the one faculty; Pagan religion to the other. Thus divided they could do nothing, though the alliance was formed. It was well conceived, but it was impossible, because it was a fundamental violation of truth. Julian, the champion of heathendom, advanced to slay Christianity with philosophy in his right hand and superstition in his left, and both weapons shivered in his grasp.
Julian was a Pagan now, but he carefully concealed the change. During the next ten years, until the death of Constantius, this cloak of dissimulation was never thrown aside. The immediate outward effect of his conduct was a stricter attention to the services of the Church. The old fable, said his heathen friend Libanius afterwards, was here reversed, and the lion was clothed in the ass's skin. Only one or two most intimate friends were in the secret, but it was more widely suspected. Ardent Pagans began to look to him as the future restorer of Paganism; old prophecies were banded about that Christianity was soon to come to an end. One such oracle fixed the limit of 365 years for the worship of Christ. The term was fast drawing to a close. I shall not undertake the task of arraigning Julian as before the bar of the Eternal Righteousness. All such attempts to anticipate the verdict of the Great Judge must be as vain as they are presumptuous; but it is due to the nobler features of his character—and these were neither few nor insignificant—to dwell on the extenuating circumstances of his case. And surely no man's education was more faulty, or more likely to produce a disastrous revulsion. Christianity was associated in his memory with everything that was gloomy, terrible, repulsive. Its champion, in his eyes, was his most deadly enemy, Constantius, who had shed the blood of his nearest kinsmen, and who was ready at any moment to shed his own blood when the occasion might demand. Writing of himself at a later date in apathetic allegory, he describes himself as a youth who, looking back upon the mass of evil that had befallen him from his own kinsmen and cousins, was so astounded that he resolved to throw himself down to Tartarus, but was rescued by Helios, the Sun God. This throws a flood of light on the personal influences which coloured his views of Christianity, and finally led to his apostasy. Moreover, the form of Christianity which was presented to him was not calculated to impress him deeply or favourably. The coldness of asceticism would take no firm hold of his ardent and enthusiastic nature. Its representatives, the Arian bishops, would not recommend the cause; the exceeding bitterness of theologic controversy called down his contempt, and the superstitious reverence for the bones of the martyrs aroused his disgust. In the allegory to which I have already alluded he speaks of himself as a child covered with filth and dirt, on whom the Sun God at length took pity. Whatever rays of light had burst the gloom of his earlier life were associated with the glories of nature.
While this strange revel of philosophy and fanaticism was going on in his mind, Julian visited Athens—Athens at once the home of Greek literature and the sanctuary of Pagan idolatry. No place more congenial to his temper could have been chosen than this. Here it was that he fell in with two devout Christian students, Gregory and Basil—names destined hereafter to be famous in the history of the Church. Gregory has left a description of the future emperor as he appeared at this time—a speaking likeness we cannot doubt. The convulsive movements of the shoulder, the half-scared, half-frenzied glance of the eye, the grotesque contortions of the face, the tumultuous, hesitating speech, the loud, immoderate laughter, the restlessness of the whole man from head to foot, seemed to Gregory to bode no good. Much of this was natural to Julian, but much, also, may have been due to the consciousness of the secret seething within his soul. We know what Gregory did not know—that Julian was a Pagan already when he was discussing Christian topics with Christian students.
But Julian's studies were rudely interrupted. Constantius again found the burden of the empire too heavy for his shoulders, and again he resolved to divide it. Julian, very reluctantly on his part, was appointed Cæsar, and charged with the administration of Gaul. He was now twenty-five years of age. The courtiers of Constantius laughed at the new Cæsar, and certainly the appointment did not give any fair promise of success. But this enthusiastic philosopher, this student recluse, soon showed that he had in him the making not only of an able ruler, but also of a consummate general. In vain the flatterers of Constantius ridiculed Julian's petty triumphs, as they were pleased to call them; in vain they dubbed him a scribbling Greek. Campaign after campaign added to his reputation. His administration of Gaul was unmistakably brilliant. So matters went on for five years, till the jealousy of Constantius brought about a crisis. An ill-judged attempt to withdraw Julian's best Gaulish troops produced a mutiny; the soldiers proclaimed him emperor, and he accepted the title. Having assumed the imperial purple, he marched to force his recognition on Constantius; but he was saved the peril of an appeal to arms. Fever anticipated the conflict, and carried off Constantius opportunely. Julian was now absolute emperor, master of himself and master of the world. He could throw off the mask at length; he was free to carry out his long cherished design for the restoration of Paganism. With what energy, with what devotion, with what fanaticism, with what futility he worked for this end it will be my business in my next and concluding lecture to describe.