And the Gods look down:  to a gloomy castle upon a crag in the wild mountains of Cappadocia; and they see there a youth, a captive banished to that desolate grand region:  well-attended, as befits a prince of the royal blood, but lonely and overshadowed; —­not under fear, because fear is no part of his nature; but yet never knowing when the order for his death may come.  They read all this in his mind, his atmosphere.  They see him deep in his books:  a soul burning with earnestness, but discontented, and waiting for something:  all the images of Homer rising about him beckoning on the one hand, and on the other a grim something that whispers, These are false; I alone am true!  —­“What of him?” says Zeus; “he too is a Christian.”—­“Watch!” says Sol Invictus; “I have sent my man to him.”—­And they watch; and sure enough, presently they see a man coming into this youth’s presence, and pointing upwards towards themselves; and they see the youth look up, and the shadow pass from his eyes as a great blaze of light and splendor breaks before him,—­as he catches sight of them, the Gods, and his eye meets theirs, and he rises, illumined and smiling;—­and they know that in the Roman world there is this one man with the Grand Vision; this man who may yet (if they play their cards well) wear the Roman diadem;—­ that there is vision in the Roman world again, and it may be the people shall not perish.

It was Julian, “the Dragon, the Apostate, the Great Mind”; I thank thee, Gregory of Nazianzus, for teaching me that word!—­and the one that came to him there in Cappadocia was Maximus of Smyrna, Iamblichus’ disciple.  His story has been told and re-told; I expect you know it fairly well.  How he was a son of Julius Constantius, son of Constantius Chlorus,—­and thus a nephew of Constantine the Great, and a first cousin to the Octopus-Spider-Maiden Aunt Constantius then on the throne;—­how he because of his infancy, and his half-brother Gallus because of a delicate constitution which made it seem impossible he should grow up, were spared when Constantius had the rest of the family massacred;—­how he was banished and confined in that Cappadocian castle;—­of Gallus’ short and evil reign that ended, poor fool that he was, in his being lured into the spider-web of Constantius and beheaded;—­how Julian was called then to the court at Milan, expecting a like fate;—­how he spent seven months there, spied on at every moment, and looking for each to be his last;—­how he was saved and befriended by the noble Empress Eusebia (a strangely beautiful figure to find in those sinister surroundings);—­and sent presently to the University of Athens, there to spend the happiest moments of his life;—­then called back to be made Caesar:  he who had never been anything but a student and a dreamer, called from his books and dreams at twenty-four, and set to learn (as Caesar) his elementary drill,—­ which he found very difficult to learn indeed;—­and then sent to fight the Germans in Gaul.  How