A Philosophical Dictionary, Volume 07. Voltaire
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Christian religion depended upon his life; the efforts which he made for its destruction rendered his name execrable to the nations who have embraced it. The Christian priests, who were his contemporaries, accuse him of almost every crime, because he had committed what in their eyes was the greatest of all – he had lowered and humiliated them. It is not long since his name was never quoted without the epithet of apostate attached to it; and it is perhaps one of the greatest achievements of reason that he has at length ceased to be mentioned under so opprobrious a designation. Who would imagine that in one of the "Mercuries of Paris", for the year 1745, the author sharply rebukes a certain writer for failing in the common courtesies of life, by calling this emperor Julian "the apostate"? Not more than a hundred years ago the man that would not have treated him as an apostate would himself have been treated as an atheist.
What is very singular, and at the same time perfectly true, is that if you put out of consideration the various disputes between Pagans and Christians, in which this emperor was engaged; if you follow him neither to the Christian churches nor idolatrous temples, but observe him attentively in his own household, in camp, in battle, in his manners, his conduct, and his writings, you will find him in every respect equal to Marcus Aurelius.
Thus, the man who has been described as so abominable and execrable, is perhaps the first, or at least the second of mankind. Always sober, always temperate, indulging in no licentious pleasures, sleeping on a mere bear's skin, devoting only a few hours, and even those with regret, to sleep; dividing his time between study and business, generous, susceptible of friendship, and an enemy to all pomp, and pride, and ostentation. Had he been merely a private individual he must have extorted universal admiration.
If we consider him in his military character, we see him constantly at the head of his troops, establishing or restoring discipline without rigor, beloved by his soldiers and at the same time restraining their excesses, conducting his armies almost always on foot, and showing them an example of enduring every species of hardship, ever victorious in all his expeditions even to the last moments of his life, and at length dying at the glorious crisis when the Persians were routed. His death was that of a hero, and his last words were those of a philosopher: "I submit," says he, "willingly to the eternal decrees of heaven, convinced that he who is captivated with life, when his last hour is arrived, is more weak and pusillanimous than he who would rush to voluntary death when it is his duty still to live." He converses to the last moment on the immortality of the soul; manifests no regrets, shows no weakness, and speaks only of his submission to the decrees of Providence. Let it be remembered that this is the death of an emperor at the age of thirty-two, and let it be then decided whether his memory should be insulted.
As an emperor, we see him refusing the title of "Dominus," which Constantine affected; relieving his people from difficulties, diminishing taxes, encouraging the arts; reducing to the moderate amount of seventy ounces each those presents in crowns of gold, which had before been exacted from every city to the amount of three or four hundred marks; promoting the strict and general observance of the laws; restraining both his officers and ministers from oppression, and preventing as much as possible all corruption.
Ten Christian soldiers conspire to assassinate him; they are discovered, and Julian pardons them. The people of Antioch, who united insolence to voluptuousness, offer him an insult; he revenges himself only like a man of sense; and while he might have made them feel the weight of imperial power, he merely makes them feel the superiority of his mind. Compare with this conduct the executions which Theodosius (who was very near being made a saint) exhibited in Antioch, and the ever dreadful and memorable slaughter of all the inhabitants of Thessalonica, for an offence of a somewhat similar description; and then decide between these two celebrated characters.
Certain writers, called fathers of the Church – Gregory of Nazianzen, and Theodoret – thought it incumbent on them to calumniate him, because he had abandoned the Christian religion. They did not consider that it was the triumph of that religion to prevail over so great a man, and even over a sage, after having resisted tyrants. One of them says that he took a barbarous vengeance on Antioch and filled it with blood. How could a fact so public and atrocious escape the knowledge of all other historians? It is perfectly known that he shed no blood at Antioch but that of the victims sacrificed in the regular services of religion. Another ventures to assert that before his death he threw some of his own blood towards heaven, and exclaimed, "Galilean, thou hast conquered." How could a tale so insipid and so improbable, even for a moment obtain credit? Was it against the Christians that he was then combating? and is such an act, are such expressions, in the slightest degree characteristic of the man?
Minds of a somewhat superior order to those of Julian's detractors may perhaps inquire, how it could occur that a statesman like him, a man of so much intellect, a genuine philosopher, could quit the Christian religion, in which he was educated, for Paganism, of which, it is almost impossible not to suppose, he must have felt the folly and ridicule. It might be inferred that if Julian yielded too much to the suggestions of his reason against the mysteries of the Christian religion, he ought, at least in all consistency, to have yielded more readily to the dictates of the same reason, when more correctly and decidedly condemning the fables of Paganism.
Perhaps, by attending a little to the progress of his life, and the nature of his character, we may discover what it was that inspired him with so strong an aversion to Christianity. The emperor Constantine, his great-uncle, who had placed the new religion on the throne, was stained by the murder of his wife, his son, his brother-inlaw, his nephew, and his father-in-law. The three children of Constantine began their bloody and baleful reign, with murdering their uncle and their cousins. From that time followed a series of civil wars and murders. The father, the brother, and all the relations of Julian, and even Julian himself, were marked down for destruction by Constantius, his uncle. He escaped this general massacre, but the first years of his life were passed in exile, and he at last owed the preservation of his life, his fortune, and the title of Cæsar, only to Eusebia, the wife of his uncle Constantius, who, after having had the cruelty to proscribe his infancy, had the imprudence to appoint him Cæsar, and the still further and greater imprudence of then persecuting him.
He was, in the first instance, a witness of the insolence with which a certain bishop treated his benefactress Eusebia. He was called Leontius, and was bishop of Tripoli. He sent information to the empress, "that he would not visit her unless she would consent to receive him in a manner corresponding to his episcopal dignity – that is, that she should advance to receive him at the door, that she should receive his benediction in a bending attitude, and that she should remain standing until he granted her permission to be seated." The Pagan pontiffs were not in the habit of treating princesses precisely in this manner, and such brutal arrogance could not but make a deep impression on the mind of a young man attached at once to philosophy and simplicity.
If he saw that he was in a Christian family, he saw, at the same time, that he was in a family rendered distinguished by parricides; if he looked at the court bishops, he perceived that they were at once audacious and intriguing, and that all anathematized each other in turn. The hostile parties of Arius and Athanasius filled the empire with confusion and carnage; the Pagans, on the contrary, never had any religious quarrels. It is natural therefore that Julian, who had been educated, let it be remembered, by philosophic Pagans, should have strengthened by their discourses the aversion he must necessarily have felt in his heart for the Christian religion. It is not more extraordinary to see Julian quit Christianity for false gods, than to see Constantine quit false gods for Christianity. It is highly probable that both changed for motives of state policy, and that this policy was mixed up in the mind of Julian with the stern loftiness of a stoic soul.
The Pagan priests had no dogmas; they did not compel men to believe that which was incredible; they required nothing but sacrifices, and even sacrifices were not enjoined under rigorous penalties; they did not set themselves up as the first order in the state, did not form a state within a state, and did not mix in affairs of government. These might well be considered motives to induce a man of Julian's character to declare himself on their side; and if he had piqued himself upon being nothing besides a Stoic, he would have had against him the priests of both religions, and all the fanatics of each. The common people would not at that time have endured a prince who was content simply with the pure worship of a pure divinity and the strict observance