orn out himself; making the three years of his
reign, as I think Gibbon says, read like thirty; disestablishing
Christianity, and refounding Paganism,--not the Paganism
that had been of old, but a new kind, based upon compassion,
human brotherhood, and Theosophical ethics, and illumined
by his own ever-present vision of the Gods;--how he reformed
the laws; governed; made his life-giving hand felt from
the Scottish Wall to the Nile Cataracts;--instilled new vigor
into everything; forced toleration upon the Christians,
stopping dead their mutual persecutions, and recalling from
banishment those who had been banished by their co-religionists
of other sects;--made them rebuild temples they had torn down,
and disgorge temple properties they had plundered;--and amidst
all this, and much more also, found time in the wee small hours
of the nights to do a good deal of literary work: Theosophical
treatises, correspondence, sketches....--And you will know
of the spotless purity, the asceticism, of his life; and how
he stedfastly refused to persecute;--whereby his opponents
complained that, son of Satan as he was, he denied them the glory
of the martyr's crown;--and of his plan to rebuild the Temple at
Jerusalem, and to re-establish Jews and Judaism in their native
land:--of his letter to the Jewish high priest or chief Rabbi,
beginning "My brother";--of the charitable institutions he
raised, and dedicated to the Lord of Vision, his God the
Unconquered Sun;--of his contests with frivolity and corruption
at Antioch, and his friendship with the philosophers;--and then,
of his Persian expedition, with its rashness,--its brilliant
victories,--its over-rashness and head-strong advance;--of the
burning of the fleet, and march into the desert; and retreat;
and that sudden attack,--the Persian squadrons rising up like
afreets out of the sands, from nowhere; and Julian rushing
unarmed through the thickest of the fight, turning, first here,
then there, confusion into firmness, defeat into victory;--and of
the arrow, Persian or Christian, that cut across his fingers and
pierced his side; and how he fainted as he tried to draw it out;
and recovered, and called for his horse and armor; and fainted
again; and was carried into a tent hastily run up for him:--and
of the scene there in the night, that made those who were with
him think of the last scene in the life of Socrates; Julian
dying, comforting his mourning officers; cheering them; talki