Every year, Julian grew more inveterate and malignant in his hostility to Christianity. The city of Antioch, in Syria, was the capital of Asia Minor. Paul had long and successfully preached the gospel in that city; and, under the Emperor Constantine, every vestige of paganism had disappeared from its temples and its streets. Julian made strenuous efforts to re-establish pagan rites in Antioch. He reared an idol temple in the vicinity of a Christian burying-ground, and then ordered the bodies of the Christians to be removed from their graves, as polluting the soil which the idol temple rendered sacred to the pagan gods.
The Christians met to transfer, in solemn procession, the remains of their honored dead to another burial-place. With united voice they chanted the ninety-seventh Psalm, which calls upon the heathen deities to prostrate themselves before the majesty of Jehovah:—
“The Lord reigneth: let the earth rejoice;
Let the multitude of the isles be glad thereof.
Confounded be all they that serve graven images,
That boast themselves of idols.
Worship him, all ye gods.”
Julian, in his exasperation, caused the arrest of several of the most prominent of these Christians, and sentenced them to the severest punishments. One young man, Theodosius, was subjected to the utmost extremity of torture. He bore the agony with such fortitude as to excite the admiration of the pagans.
While Julian was thus breathing threatenings and slaughter against the Church, he was summoned to the frontiers of Persia, where a terrible invasion was menacing the empire. Persia had gradually risen into a military power which threatened to assume independence.
The country between the Euphrates and the Tigris, called Mesopotamia, or between the rivers, consisted of a region about five hundred miles long and fifty wide. It was an exceedingly fertile plain. The inhabitants called themselves Assyrians. Being wealthy and numerous, and far distant from the central power of Rome, they had not only raised the banner of revolt against the empire, but had sent large armies across the Euphrates, which ravaged the adjacent provinces, and returned enriched with plunder and slaves.