[Sidenote:  Julian’s reorganisation of heathenism.]

Once master of the world, Julian could see its needs without using the eyes of the Asiatic camarilla.  First of all, Christian domination must be put down.  Not that he wanted to raise a savage persecution.  Cruelty had been well tried before, and it would be a poor success to stamp out the ‘Galilean’ imposture without putting something better in its place.  As the Christians ‘had filled the world with their tombs’ (Julian’s word for churches), so must it be filled with the knowledge of the living gods.  Sacrifices were encouraged and a pagan hierarchy set up to oppose the Christian.  Heathen schools were to confront the Christian, and heathen almshouses were to grow up round them.  Above all, the priests were to cultivate temperance and hospitality, and to devote themselves to grave and pious studies.  Julian himself was a model of heathen purity, and spared no pains to infect his wondering subjects with his own enthusiasm for the cause of the immortal gods.  Not a temple missed its visit, not a high place near his line of march was left unclimbed.  As for his sacrifices, they were by the hecatomb.  The very abjects called him Slaughterer.

[Sidenote:  His failure.]

Never was a completer failure.  Crowds of course applauded Caesar, but only with the empty cheers they gave the jockeys or the preachers.  Multitudes came to see an Emperors devotions, but they only quizzed his shaggy beard or tittered at the antiquated ceremonies.  Sacrificial dinners kept the soldiers devout, and lavish bribery secured a good number of renegades—­mostly waverers, who really had not much to change.  Of the bishops, Pegasius of Ilium alone laid down his office for a priesthood; but he had always been a heathen at heart, and worshipped the gods even while he held his bishopric.  The Christians upon the whole stood firm.  Even the heathens were little moved.  Julian’s own teachers held cautiously aloof from his reforms; and if meaner men paused in their giddy round of pleasure, it was only to amuse themselves with the strange spectacle of imperial earnestness.  Neither friends nor enemies seemed able to take him quite seriously.

[Sidenote:  Julian’s policy against Christianity.]

Passing over scattered cases of persecution encouraged or allowed by Julian, we may state generally that he aimed at degrading Christianity into a vulgar superstition, by breaking its connections with civilized government on one side, with liberal education on the other.  One part of it was to deprive the ‘Galileans’ of state support and weed them out as far as might be from the public service, while still leaving them full freedom to quarrel amongst themselves; the other was to cut them off from literature by forbidding them to teach the classics.  Homer and Hesiod were prophets of the gods, and must not be expounded by unbelievers.  Matthew and Luke were good enough for barbarian ears like theirs.  We need not pause