Julian, by Gore Vidal Read online

  On 22 February I issued another edict, reserving to myself alone the right to use the public transport. The bishops, hurrying here and there at the state's expense, had wrecked the system. Note: At this point list all edicts for the year, as well as government appointments. They are of course on permanent file at the Record Officej but even so one must be thorough. Meanwhile, I want only to touch on the high points of those six months in Constantinople.

  Late in February I learned, quite by accident, that Vettius Agorius Praetextatus and his wife were in the city. He is the leader of the Hellenist party at Rome while his wife, Aconia Paulina, has been admitted to every mystery available to women as well as being high priestess of Hecate. I was eager to meet them. Praetextatus is a slight, frail man, with flowing white hair and delicate small features. His wife is somewhat taller than her husband and as red-faced and robust as a Gaul, though she is of the purest Roman stock. They are most enthusiastic at what I am doing, particularly Aconia Paulina. "We have had a remarkable response at our temple of Hecate. Truly remarkable. And all due to you. Why, last year in Rome we could hardly get anyone to undergo initiation but now… well, I have received reports from Milan, Alexandria, Athens… everywhere, that the women are flocking to us! We are second only to Isis in enrolment, and though I am devoted to the Isis cult (in fact, I am an initiate, second degree), I think Hecate has always drawn a better class of women. I only hope we shall be able to open a temple right here."

  "You shall! You shall!" I was delighted. "I want every god represented in the capital!"

  Aconia Paulina beamed. Praetextatus smiled gravely. "Every day," he said softly, "every waking hour, we pray for your success."

  For at least an hour the three of us celebrated that unity' which only those who have been initiated into the mysteries can know. We were as one. Then I got down to business.

  "If we are to defeat the Gallleans we must, very simply, have a comparable organization."

  Praetextatus was dubious. "We have often discussed this at Rome, and until recently we thought we were at least holding our own. At heart, Rome is anti-Christian. The senate is certainly Hellenist." He paused and looked out of the window, as though searching for Zeus himself in the rain clouds rolling in from the sea. "You see, Augustus, we are not one organization like the Galileans. We are many. Also, we are voluntary. We do not have the support of the government…"

  "You do now."

  "… now, yes, but is now too late? Also, our appeal is essentially to the individual, at least in the mysteries. Each man who is initiated undergoes the experience alone. At Eleusis it is the single soul which confronts eternity."

  "But there is also the sense of fellowship with other initiates! Look at us! You and I are brothers in Mithras…"

  "That is not the same thing as belonging to an open congregation, our conduct governed by priests who are quite as interested in property and political power as they are in religion."

  "I agree." I tapped the papers in front of me. "And I surest we fight them on their own ground. I plan a world priesthood, governed by the Roman Pontifex Maximus. We shall divide the world into administrative units, the way the Galileans have done and each diocese will have its own hierarchy of priests under a single high priest, responsible to me."

  They were impressed. Aconia Paulina wanted to know if cults would be represented in the priesthood. I said yes. Every god and goddess known to the people, no matter in what guise or under what strange name, would be worshipped, for multiplicity is the nature of life. We all believe -even the Galileans, despite their confused doctrine of trinity—that there is a single Godhead from which all life, divine and mortal, descends and to which all life must return. We may not know this creator, though his outward symbol is the sun. But through intermediaries, human and divine, he speaks to us, shows us aspects of himself, prepares us for the next stage of the journey. "To find the father and maker of all is hard," as Socrates said. "And having found him it is impossible to utter him." Yet as Aeschylus wrote with equal wisdom, "men search out god and searching find him." The search is the whole point to philosophy and to the religious experience. It is a part of the Galilean impiety to proclaim that the search ended three hundred years ago when a young rabbi was executed for treason. But according to Paul of Tarsus, Jesus was no ordinary rabbi nor even messiah; he was the One God himself who rose from the dead in order to judge the world immediately. In fact, Jesus is quoted as having assured his followers that some of them would still be alive when the day of judging arrived. But one by one the disciples died in the natural course and we are still waiting for that promised day. Meanwhile, the bishops amass property, persecute one another, and otherwise revel in this life, while the state is weakened and on our borders the barbarians gather like winter wolves, waiting for us to stagger in our weakness, and to fall. I see this as plainly as I see my hand as it crosses the page (for this part I do not entrust to any secretary). To stop the chariot as it careers into the sun, that is what I was born to do.

  I explained my plans to Praetextatus. Some I have already put into effect. Others must wait until I return from Persia. The failure of Hellenism has been, largely, a matter of organization. Rome never tried to impose any sort of worship upon the countries it conquered and civilized; in fact, quite the contrary. Rome was eclectic. All religions were given an equal opportunity and even Isis—after some resistance—was worshipped at Rome. As a result we have a hundred important gods and a dozen mysteries. Certain rites are—or were—supported by the state because they involved the genius of Rome. But no attempt was ever made to co-ordinate the worship of Zeus on the Capitol with, let us say, the Vestals who kept the sacred fire in the old forum. As time passed our rites became, and one must admit it bluntly, merely form, a reassuring reminder of the great age of the city, a token gesture to the old gods who were thought to have founded and guided Rome from a village by the Tiber to world empire. Yet from the beginning, there were always those who mocked. A senator of the old Republic once asked an augur how he was able to get through a ceremony of divination without laughing. I am not so light-minded, though I concede that many of our rites have lost their meaning over the centuries; witness those temples at Rome where certain verses learned by rote are chanted year in and year out, yet no one, including the priests, knows what they mean, for they are in the early language of the Etruscans, long since forgotten.

  As the religious forms of the state became more and more rigid and perfunctory, the people were drawn to the mystery cults, many of them Asiatic in origin. At Eleusis or in the various caves of Mithras, they were able to get a vision of what this life can be, as well as a foretaste of the one that follows. There are, then, three sorts of religious experiences. The ancient rites, which are essentially propitiatory. The mysteries, which purge the soul and allow us to glimpse eternity. And philosophy, which attempts to define not only the material world but to suggest practical ways to the good life, as well as attempting to synthesize (as Iamblichos does so beautifully) all true religion in a single comprehensive system.

  Now into this most satisfactory—at least potentially—of worlds, came the Galileans. They base their religion on the idea of a single god, as though that were a novelty: from Homer to Julian, Hellenes have been monotheist. Now this single god, according to the largest of the Galilean sects, sent his son (conceived of a virgin, like so many other Asiatic gods) to preach to the world, to suffer, to rise from the dead, to judge mankind on a day which was supposed to have dawned more than three hundred years ago. Now I have studied as carefully as any bishop the writings of those who knew the Galilean, or said they did. They are composed in bad Greek, which I should have thought would have been enough to put off any educated man, while the story they tell is confused, to say the least (following Porphyry I have discovered some sixty-four palpable contradictions and absurdities).

  The actual life story of the Galilean has vanished. But I have had an interesting time trying to piece it together. Until thirty years ag
o, the archives at Rome contained a number of contemporary reports on his life. They have since disappeared, destroyed by order of Constantine. It is of course an old and bitter ioke that the Nazarene himself was not a Christian. He was something quite else. I have talked to antiquarians who knew about the file in the archives; several had either read it or knew people who had. Jesus was, simply, a reforming Jewish priest, exclusive as the Jews are, with no interest in proselytizing outside the small world of the Jews. His troubles with Rome were not religious (when did Rome ever persecute anyone for religious belief?) but political. This Jesus thought he was the messiah. Now the messiah is a sort of Jewish hero who, according to legend, will one day establish a Jewish empire prior to the end of the world. He is certainly aor a god, much less the One God's son. The messiah has been the subject of many Jewish prophecies, and Jesus carefully acted out each prophetic requirement in order to make himself resemble this hero (the messiah would enter Jerusalem on an ass; so did he, et cetera). But the thing went wrong. The people did not support him. His god forsook him. He turned to violence. With a large band of rebels, he seized the temple, announcing that he had come with a sword. What his God would not do for him he must do for himself. So at the end he was neither a god nor even the Jewish messiah but a rebel who tried to make himself king of the Jews. Quite correctly, our governor executed him.

  We must never forget that in his own words, Jesus was a Jew who believed in the Law of Moses. This means he could not be the son of God (the purest sort of blasphemy), much less God himself, temporarily earthbound. There is nothing in the book of the Jews which prepares us for a messiah's kinship with Jehovah. Only by continual reinterpretation and convenient "revelations" have the Galileans been able to change this reformer-rabbi's career into a parody of one of our own gods, creating a passion of death and rebirth quite inconceivable to one who kept the Law of Moses… not to mention disgusting to us who have worshipped not men who were executed in time but symbolic figures like Mithras and Osiris and Adonis whose literal existence does not matter but whose mysterious legend and revelation are everything.

  The moral preachings of the Galilean, though often incoherently recorded, are beyond criticism. He preaches honesty, sobriety, goodness, and a kind of asceticism. In other words, he was a quite ordinary Jewish rabbi, with Pharisee tendencies. In a crude way he resembles Marcus Aurelius. Compared to Plato or Aristotle, he is a child.

  It is the wonder of our age how this simple-minded provincial priest was so extraordinarily transformed into a god by Paul of Tarsus, who outdid all quacks and cheats that ever existed anywhere. As Porphyry wrote so sharply in the last century, "The gods have declared Christ to have been most pious; he has become immortal and by them his memory is cherished. Whereas, the Christians are a polluted set, contaminated and enmeshed in error." It is even worse now. B7 the time Constantine, Constantius and the horde of bishops got through with Jesus, little of his original message was left. Every time they hold a synod they move further away from the man's original teaching. The conception of the triple god is their latest masterpiece.

  One reason why the Galileans grow ever more powerful and dangerous to us is their continual assimilation of our rites and holy days. Since they rightly regard Mithraism as their chief rival, they have for some years now been taking over various aspects of the Mithraic rite and incorporating them into their own ceremonies. Some critics believe that the gradual absorption of our forms and prayers is fairly recent. But I date it from the very beginning. In at least one of the biographies of the Gallleans there is a strange anecdote which his followers are never able to explain (and they are usually nothing if not ingenious at making sense of nonsense). The Galilean goes to a fig tree to pick its fruit. But as it is not the season for bearing, the tree was barren. In a fit of temper, the Galilean blasts the tree with magic, killing it. Now the fig tree is sacred to Mithras: as a youth, it was his home, his source of food and clothing. I suggest that the apologist who wrote that passage in the first century did so deliberately, inventing it or recording it, no matter which, as a sign that the Galilean would destroy the worship of Mithras as easily as he had destroyed the sacred tree.

  But I do not mean here in the pages of what is supposed to be a chronicle to give my familiar arguments against the Galileans. They may be found in the several essays I have published on the subject.

  Praetextatus and I worked closely together all that winter in Constantinople. I found both him and his wife enormously knowledgeable on religious matters. But whenever I spoke of practical matters, Praetextatus would lose interest. So rtuite alone, I set about reorganizing… no, organizing Hellenism. The Galileans have received much credit for giving charity to anyone who asks for it. We are now doing the same. Their priests impress the ignorant with their so-called holy lives. I now insist that our priests be truly holy. I have given them full instructions on how to comport themselves in public and private. Though Praetextatus lacked inspiration, he worked diligently with me on these plans. But Aconia was no help at all. She does not, as the saying goes, grow on one. I am afraid that her only interest is her own salvation. She regards religion as a sort of lottery, and if she takes a chance on each of the gods, the law of averages ought to favour her to pick the right one who will save her soul. Though what eternity would want with Aconia Paulina, I don't know.

  Priscus: Bravo Julian!

  Though Julian makes no mention of it, at about this time our old friend Maximus made his triumphant entry into Constantinople. I was not there when he arrived, but I certainly heard enough about it. When he became emperor, Julian invited every philosopher and magician in the empire to court. And just about all of them came. Only his Christian "friends" stayed away. Basil was being holy in Cappadocia; I don't think Gregory was invited. It might be interesting to check the Record Office about Gregory because I seem to recall a most flattering letter he wrote Julian at about this time, but perhaps I dreamed it… Only last week I called Hippia by my mother's name, after half a century of marriage! I am of course losing my mind. But why not? When death comes, it will have nothing to take but a withered sack of bones, for the memory of Priscus, which is Priscus, will long since have flown.

  Several times, Julian tried to get Maximus to leave Ephesus and come to Gaul, but the omens were never right. I'm sure they weren't! Maximus was not about to ally himself to what most people thought would be the losing side of a rebellion. But when an invitation finally came from the Sacred Palace, Maximus was ready. He arrived in Constantinople while Julian was at the senate house. Incidentally, Julian was in his element with that body, though l'm not sure they enjoyed him as much as he did them.

  The senate usually cannot master a quorum. But with an emperor present, the senate chamber threatened to burst. The conscript fathers sat on one another's laps while Julian joked, prayed, exhorted and, all in all, got quite a lot of work done, for there was nothing which he did not concern himself with.

  During the six months he was at Constantinople, Julian built a harbour at the foot of the palace. He exempted all men with thirteen children or more from paying taxes: he was much concerned at our declining birthrate. I can't think why. It is not as if there were not too many people on earth as it is and to make more of them will simply dilute the breed. But he was disturbed by the fact that the barbarians increase in numbers while we decrease. He also confirmed our old friend Sallust as praetorian prefect of Gaul, though he clearly would have liked to have him close by. He made this personal sacrifice because there was no one else he could trust to protect the West, and he was right, as each year confirms. Today Gaul is still secure while the Goths are now just a few days' march from this house in Athens where'I sit, writing of old things, and remembering more than I thought.

  Julian was in the middle of an impassioned speech when Maximus appeared in the door of the senate chamber. The great "philosopher" was dressed in green silk robes covered with cabalistic designs; his long grey beard was perfumed and his shaggy eyebrows were care
fully combed—I've actually seen him comb them to give the effect of two perfect arches. He carried his magic staff carved from dragon's bone, or some such nonsense. The senators were shocked, for no one but a senator may enter during session; certainly, no one may enter when the emperor is speaking. But Julian, seeing Maximus, stopped in mid-sentence and ran, arms outstretched, to embrace that old charlatan. I'm glad I was not there.

  Julian then presented Maximus to the senate, calling him the world's wisest and holiest man and stressing what an honour it was for all present to be able to do homage to such a man. Needless to say, everyone was scandalized. Maximus and his wife were given an entire wing of the Sacred Palace for their own court; and there were now two emperors in Constantinople. Maximus's wife did a considerable business on her own as a sort of unofficial Master of the Offices, arranging audiences with the Emperor and granting petitions. They made a fortune in those months. They were a rare couple.

  Though I am not in the habit of laughing at anyone's death, I still chuckle to myself when I think of her death. Do you know the story? After the Persian campaign when Maximus was first in trouble, he decided to commit suicide. His wife agreed that this was the correct thing to do. She also insisted on killing herself. With her usual brisk efficiency, she put their affairs in order; bought poison and composed farewell letters of enormous length. Then, gravely, they said good-bye to one another. She drank first and promptly died. Maximus lost his nerve, and survived. To this day I find myself smiling whenever I think of that preposterous couple.

  Julian Augustus

  At the beginning of April, for my own amusement, I summoned the bishops to the palace. After all, I am Pontifex Maximus and all religion is my province, though I would not have the temerity to say to any priests what Constantius said to the bishops at the synod of Milan in 355: "My will shall be your guiding line!"