selves to the task of turning the Scriptures into verse, adopting the idioms of classic Greek in the work.
Julian might have proceeded to actual violence had he not been arrested in mid career. His early death when fighting the Persians came as a great deliverance to the alarmed Church. It was the end of a strange tragedy. With all his serious aims, the emperor had been made to see that his life was a failure. His own religion was a curious compound of old-fashioned paganism and Neo-Platonic ideas. He restored the worship of the gods at many a neglected shrine, and renewed the sacrifices on long deserted altars; but the misery of it all was that the people would not respond. He paid Christianity the sincere homage of imitation, organising a regular hierarchy with choirs and liturgical services and pulpits for the preaching of pagan sermons. He founded pagan monasteries and hospitals. It was all in vain. Nobody cared. He had all the zeal of a revivalist. Yet he was laughed at by the people of his own religion. It has been suggested that if he had promoted Roman instead of Greek religion he might have met with some success.
A strange figure!—as dirty as a saint, if only Julian had been a Christian, his grimy hands, his tangled beard — at which the people of Antioch laughed outright, his coarse clothing rarely changed,[1] would have earned him the honour of sanctity. Undoubtedly he was a conscientious religious devotee, as he was also an honest, indefatigable administrator. And yet directly he died the whole fabric of renovated paganism that he had toiled so strenuously but singlehanded to build up fell to the ground like a house of cards. It may be said that he failed because he aimed too high. Perceiving that the old paganism was dying of its own rottenness, he set himself to be its reformer as well as its champion. He would support the pagan priests and supply the altars with sacrifices; but then these priests of his must show Christian sanctity in their conduct. But they had no wish to be screwed up to the new standard of virtue
- ↑ See Anim. Marc. xxii. xiv. 3.
