THE CAMBRIDGE MEDIEVAL HISTORY I 056
Julian’s Youth and Education
4-7. Julian’s Youth and Education
The sons of Constantine changed all this. They proposed to destroy paganism by legislation. Their laws, doubtless, inflicted much injury on individual pagans, and, in the hands of such unprincipled Imperial sycophants as Paulus and Mercurius, were the pretexts for many executions, banishments, and confiscation of goods; but they remained inoperative in all the greater pagan centres. The worship of the gods went on as before in Rome, Alexandria, Heliopolis, and in many other cities. But they could not fail to irritate. If the laws were inoperative, they remained to threaten. Proposed destruction of temples and prohibition of heathen ceremonies meant in many cases the abandonment of the games and spectacles to which the careless multitude were strongly attached. Scholars saw in the advancing power of the Church the destruction of the old learning which gave its charm to their lives. Christianity itself, troubled by the meddling of the heads of the State, seemed to be rent in pieces by its controversies, to have lost its original purity and simplicity, and to have degenerated into "old-wife superstitions " (Ammianus). So wherever paganism abounded, and in places too where it only lingered, there was a general feeling of discontent ready to welcome the first signs of a reaction and eagerly listening to whispers that the last of the race of Constantine, if he lived to assume to the Imperial purple, would undo what his kinsmen had accomplished.
At the death of Constantine his nephew, Flavius Claudius Julianus, was six years old. The child escaped, almost by accident, the massacre of his family connived at if not ordered by Constantius. He lived for more than twenty years in constant peril, in the power of that suspicious cousin who scarcely knew whether he wished to slay or to spare him. He was kept secluded, now in one or other of the great cities of the East, for long in a palace far from the haunts of men, solacing himself with hard uninterrupted studies. Then for seven brief years he startled the Roman world by his meteor-like career, and died from wounds received in battle against the Persians at the age of thirty-two. Two things about him filled the imagination of his contemporaries and have drawn the attention of succeeding generations: that he a recluse, suddenly snatched from his loved studies in poetry and philosophy, proved himself all at once not merely an intrepid soldier but a skilful general, and a born leader of men; and that he, a baptised Christian, who had actually been accustomed to read the lessons at public worship, threw off like a mask the Christianity he had professed and spent the last years of his short life in a feverish attempt to restore the old and expiring paganism. It is this last fact that made him the object of undying hate and unconquerable love to his contemporaries, and still excites the interest of mankind.
His own writings which have survived make it plain that from his earliest years he looked at Christianity and Christians through the blood-red mist of the massacre of his relations — father, brother, uncles, cousins. His education did little to remove the impression. The lonely, imaginative, lovable child had never known his mother's care, but he inherited her fondness for Homer, Hesiod, and the masters of Greek poetry. Mardonius, who had been his mother's tutor, was his also, and the boy went through the same course of study. The tutor was. passionately fond of Greek literature and especially of Homer, and he imbued mother and son with his own tastes. For the rest he was something of a martinet. The young Julian had the strictest moral training and never forgot those early lessons. He was taught to be temperate and self -restrained ; to look with dislike on pantomimes, races, and the other more or less licentious amusements of the populace. His tutor made him read in Plato, Aristotle, Theophrastus, and other pagan moralists, and was unwearied in enforcing pure living after these examples of antiquity. Julian was all his life a puritan pagan, and this puritanism of his was perhaps his greatest obstacle in accomplishing the task to which he subsequently dedicated himself. He never entered a theatre save when he was commanded to do so by the Emperor, and was seldom on a race-course in his life. He was naturally a dreamy, sensitive child, full of yearning fancies, which he kept to himself. He tells us that from early boyhood he felt a strange elevation of soul when he watched the sun and saw it dispensing light and heat; that he worshipped the stars and understood their whispered thoughts. He was filled with enthusiasm for everything Greek and the very word Hellas sent a thrill through him when he pronounced it. Seven years were spent under the care of the kindly, stern preceptor, and the impress they made was lasting.
In 344 Constantius suddenly sent Julian into obscurity. His elder brother, Gallus, who had escaped the massacre of 337 because he was so sickly that he was not expected to live, accompanied him. They were sent to Macellum, a palace in a remote part of Cappadocia — splendid enough with, its baths, its springs, and its gardens, but which Julian looked upon as a prison. There he was supplied with teachers in abundance, Christian clergy who were supposed to teach the faith to the young princes, and from whose instructions Julian doubtless acquired that superficial knowledge of the Scriptures he afterwards shewed that he possessed. Books were granted him, and he seems to have been permitted to send to Alexandria for what Greek literature he desired. He mentions specially volumes from the library of Bishop George because, along with many treatises on Christianity for which he did not care, they included the writings of philosophers and rhetoricians. But he bitterly complained that neither he nor his brother were allowed to see any suitable companions, and he believed that all their attendants were imperial spies.
The boy, reserved before, shrank further into himself. Outwardly he was a pattern of devotion. He received Christian instruction; was taught the "evidences of Christianity" and used the knowledge later to expose its weaknesses ; was trained to give alms, to observe fasts, to venerate the shrines of saints to the extent of aiding to build them with his own hands ; and occasionally to officiate as reader at public worship. Privately he fed his mind on the lessons of Mardonius and studied such books of philosophy and rhetoric as he could command. Ammianus Marcellinus, who knew him well, says that from his early years he felt attracted to the worship of the gods.
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