Part 49

--And you know, probably, how Julian loved his Paris, and governed Gaul thence in civil affairs in such a manner that Paris and Gaul loved him;--how his own special legions, his pets, his Tenth, so to say, were the _Celts_ and _Petulants,_ and after these, the _Herulians_ and _Batavians_ (or shall I say _Dutchmen?_);--how Constantius tried to deprive him of these, ordering him to send them off to him for wars with Sapor in the east;--how Julian sorrowfully bade them go, judging well by Gallus his brother's experience (whom Constantius had treated in the same way as a first step towards cutting off his head) what the next thing should be;--but how they, (bless their Celtic and Petulant and Herulian and Dutch hearts!) told him very plainly that that kind of thing would not wash with them: "Come!" said they; "no nonsense of this sort; be you our emperor, and _condemn_ that old lady your cousin Constantius!--or we kill you right now." Into his bed-room in Paris they poured by night with those terms,--an ultimatum; whether or not with a twinkle in their eyes when they proposed the alternative, who can say?--What was a young hero to do, whom the Gods had commissioned to strike the grand blow for them; and who never should strike it, that was certain, if Constantius should have leave to take away from him, first his Celts and Petulants, and then his head? So he accepts; and writes kindly and respectfully to his Maiden Aunt-- Spidership the Emperor telling him he must manage _without_ the legions, and _with_ a Co-Augustus to share the empire with him,-- ruling (it was to be hoped in perfect harmony with himself) the west and leaving the east to Constantius. However, all will not do: Constantius writes severe and haughtily, Send the men, and let's hear no more of that presumptuous fooling about the second Augustus!--So Julian marches east; whither, accompanying him, the lately rebellious Celts and Petulants are ready enough to go now; and Constantius might after all have fallen in battle, and so missed his saving baptism; but his plans had gone agley, and the whole situation was extremely disturbing; and you never knew what might happen: and really, when you thought how you had treated this Julian's father, and his two brothers, and numberless uncles and cousins, you might fear the very worst;-- and so, good maiden-auntish soul, he fell into a sadness, and thence into a decline; and while Julian and his Petulants were yet a long way off, got baptized respectably, and slipped off to heaven.

And you know, too, probably, how Julian, being now sole emperor, reigned: working night and day; wearing out relays of secretaries, but never worn out himself; making the three years of his reign, as I think Gibbon says, read like thirty; disestablishing Christianity, and refounding Paganism,--not the Paganism that had been of old, but a new kind, based upon compassion, human brotherhood, and Theosophical ethics, and illumined by his own ever-present vision of the Gods;--how he reformed the laws; governed; made his life-giving hand felt from the Scottish Wall to the Nile Cataracts;--instilled new vigor into everything; forced toleration upon the Christians, stopping dead their mutual persecutions, and recalling from banishment those who had been banished by their co-religionists of other sects;--made them rebuild temples they had torn down, and disgorge temple properties they had plundered;--and amidst all this, and much more also, found time in the wee small hours of the nights to do a good deal of literary work: Theosophical treatises, correspondence, sketches....--And you will know of the spotless purity, the asceticism, of his life; and how he stedfastly refused to persecute;--whereby his opponents complained that, son of Satan as he was, he denied them the glory of the martyr's crown;--and of his plan to rebuild the Temple at Jerusalem, and to re-establish Jews and Judaism in their native land:--of his letter to the Jewish high priest or chief Rabbi, beginning "My brother";--of the charitable institutions he raised, and dedicated to the Lord of Vision, his God the Unconquered Sun;--of his contests with frivolity and corruption at Antioch, and his friendship with the philosophers;--and then, of his Persian expedition, with its rashness,--its brilliant victories,--its over-rashness and head-strong advance;--of the burning of the fleet, and march into the desert; and retreat; and that sudden attack,--the Persian squadrons rising up like afreets out of the sands, from nowhere; and Julian rushing unarmed through the thickest of the fight, turning, first here, then there, confusion into firmness, defeat into victory;--and of the arrow, Persian or Christian, that cut across his fingers and pierced his side; and how he fainted as he tried to draw it out; and recovered, and called for his horse and armor; and fainted again; and was carried into a tent hastily run up for him:--and of the scene there in the night, that made those who were with him think of the last scene in the life of Socrates; Julian dying, comforting his mourning officers; cheering them; talking to them quietly about the beauty and dignity of death, and the divinity of the Soul; then suddenly inquiring why Anatolius was not present,--and learning that Anatolius had fallen,--and (strange inconsistency!) the dying man breaking into tears of the death of his friend.--And you will know of the hopeless march of the army back under ignominious Jovian, all Shah Sapor's hard terms accepted;--and the doom of the Roman Empire sealed.

That was the Man: that is the record, outwardly, of a Soul fed upon the immensities of Vision. Vision is the keynote of him: the intense reality to him of the ever-beautiful compassionate Gods.... It is true there was a personality attached; and all his defenders since have found much in it that they wished had not been there. A lack of dignity, it is said; a certain self-consciousness... Well; he was very young; he died a very boy at thirty-two; he never attained to years of discretion:--in a sense we may allow that much. You say, he might very well have followd the reaonable conventions of life; and condescended, when emperor, not to dress as a philosopher of the schools. So he might. They laughed at his ways, at his garb, at his beard;-- and he went the length of sitting up one night to write the _Misopogon,_ a skit upon his personality. Only philosophers wore beards in those days; it was thought most unsuitable in an emperor. I do not know what the men of Antioch said about it; but he speaks of it as unkempt and,--in the Gibbonistic euphemism,--_populous;_ indeed, names the loathsome cootie outright, which Gibbon was much too Gibbonish to do. In the nature of things, this was a libel.

I read lately an article, I think by an Irish writer, on the eccentricities of youthful genius. It often happens that a soul of really fine caliber, with a great work to do in the world, will waste a portion of his forces, at the outset, in fighting the harmless conventions. But as his real self grows into mastery, all this disappears, and he comes to see where his battle truly lies. Julian died before he had had time quite to outgow the eccentricities; but for all that, not before he had shown the world what the Soul in action is like.

Every great soul, incarnating, has still this labor to carry through as prolog to his life's work:--he must conquer the new personality, with all its hereditary tendencies; he must mold it difficultly to the perfect expression of the glory and dignity of himself. Julian had to take up a body in which on the one side ran the warrior blood of Claudius Gothicus and Constantius Chlorus, on the other, the refinement and culture of the senatorial house of the Anicii. Two such streams, coming together, might well need some harmonizing: might well produce, for example, an acute self-consciousness,--to be mastered. What he got from them, for world-service, was on the one hand his superb military leadership and mastery of affairs; on the other, his intense devotion to learning and culture. Thus the two streams of heredity appeared, dominated by his own quality of Vision. The paternal stream, by his generation, had grown much vitiated: it was pure warriorism in Claudius Gothicus, and even in Constantius Chlorus; it was warriorism refined with subtlety and cruelty in Constantine I; it was mere fussy treacherous cruelty in the Spider-Octopus,--and sensual brutality in Julian's brother Gallus. The vices of the latter may indicate how great a self-conqueror the unstained Julian was.

He was a Keats in imperial affairs, dying when he had given no more than a promise of what he should become. He laws, his valor, his victories, his writings, are no more than _juvenilia:_ they are equal to the grand performance, not the promise, of many who are counted great. He came out from his overshadowment and long seclusion, from him books and dreams; was thrown into conditions that would have been difficult for an experienced statesman, and won through them all triumphantly; was set to conduct a war that would have taxed the genius of a Caesar, a Tiberius, or an Aurelius,--and swept through to as signal victories as any of theirs. He learnt the elements of drill, and was straight sent to conquer the conquering Germans; and did it brilliantly. He came to a Gaul as broken and hopeless as Joan of Arc's France; and found within himself every quality needed to heal it and make it whole.

Joan conquered with her Vision; Julian conquered with his. He set out with this before his eyes and in his soul:--The Gods are there; the beautiful Gods; uttermost splendor of divinity is at the heart of things. The glory of the Gods and of their world filled his eyes; and the determination filled his soul to make this outer world conform to the beauty of his vision. The thing he did not care about,--did not notice, except in a humourous way,--was that queer thing of a personality that had been allotted to himself. How could he have succeeded, in the world that then was?--And yet even a Christian poet was constrained to say,--and to rise, says Gibbon, above his customary mediocrity in saying it,--that though Julian was hateful to God, he was altogether beneficent to mankind.

I do not know how to explain the Persian expedition. He himself said, when dying, that he had loved and sought peace, and had but gone to war when driven to it. We cannot see now what were the driving factors. Did he go to reap glory that he might have used, or thought he might have used, in his grand design? Did he go to break a way into India, perhaps there to find a light beyond any that was in Rome? ... Or was it the supreme mistake of his life.... one would say the only mistake?

It failed, and he died, and his grand designs came to nothing; and Rome went out in utter darkness. And men sneered at him then, and have been sneering at him ever since, for his failure. Perhaps we must call it that; it was a forlorn hope at the best of times. But you cannot understand him, unless you think of him as a Lord of Vision lonely in a world wholly bereft of it: a man for whom all skies were transparent, and the solid earth without opacity, but with the luminous worlds shining through wherein Apollo walks, and all the Masters of Light and Beauty;--unless you think of him as a Lord of Vision moving in an outer world, a phase of civilization, old, tired, dying, dull as ditch-water, without imagination, with no little vestige of poetry, no gleam of aspiration,--with wit enough to sneer at him, and no more; by no means with wit enough to allow him to save it from itself and from ruin.

XXIV. FROM JULIAN TO BODHIDHARMA

When the news came drifting back over the Roman world that the Emperor had been killed in Persia, and that an unknown insignificant Jovian reigned in his stead;--and while three parts of the population were rejoicing that there was an end of the Apostate and his apostasy; and half the rest, that there was an end of this terrible strenuosity, this taking of the Gods (good harmless useful fictions--probably fictions) so fearfully in earnest: I wonder how many there were to guess how near the end of the world had come? The cataclysm was much more sudden and over-whelming than we commonly think; and to have prophesied, in Roman society, in the year 363, that in a century's time the empire and all its culture would be things of the past (in the West), would have sounded just as ridiculous, probably, as such a prophesy concerning Europe and its culture would have sounded in a London drawing-room fifteen years ago. There were signs and portents, of course, for the thoughtful; and no doubt some few Matthew Arnolds in their degree to be troubled by them. And of course (as in our own day, but perhaps rather more), an idea with cranks that at any moment Doomsday might come. But while the world endured, and the Last Trump had not sounded, of course the Roman empire would stand.--Christianity? Well, yes; it had grown very strong; and the extremists among the Christians were rabid enough against culture of any sort. But there were also Christians who, while they hated the olden culture of Paganism, were ambitious to supply a Christian literature in prose and verse to take the place of the Classical. There had been an awful devastation of Gaul; the barbarians of the north had been, now and again, uneasy and troublesome; but see how Julian--even he, with the Grace of God all against him--had chastised them! The head of the Roman State would always be the Master of the World.

And strangely enough, this was an idea that persisted for centuries; facts with all their mordant logic were impotent to kill it. Hardly in Dante's time did men guess that the Roman empire and its civilization were gone.

Life, when Julian died, was still capable of being a very graceful and dignified affair,--outwardly, at any rate. On their great estates in Gaul, in Britain, in Italy, great and polished gentlemen still enjoyed their _otium cum dignitate._ The culture of the great past still maintained itself amongst them; although thought and all mental vigor were buried deep under the detritus. In fourth century Gaul there was quite a little literary renaissance; centering, as you might expect, in the parts furthest from German invasion. Its leading light was born in Bordeaux in the three-thirties; and was thus (to link things up a little) a younger contemporary of the Indian Samudragupta. He was Ausonius: teacher of rhetoric, tutor to the prince Gratian, consul, country gentleman, large land-owner, and, in a studious uninspired reflective way, a goodish poet. Also a convert to Christianity, but unenthusiastic:--altogether, a dignified and polished figure; such as you might find in England now, in the country squire who has held important offices in India in his time, hunts and shoots in season, manages his estates with something between amateur and professional interest, reads Horace for his pleasure, and even has a turn for writing Latin verses. Ausonius leaves us a picture of the life of his class: a placid, cultured life, with quite a strong ethical side to it; sterile of any deep thought or speculation; far removed from unrest.-- Another respresentative man was his friend Symmachus at Rome: also highly cultured and of dignified leisure; a very upright and capable gentleman widely respected for his sterling honesty; a pagan, not for any stirring of life within his heart or mind, but simply for love of the ancient Roman idea,--sheer conservatism;--for much the same reasons, in fact, as make the Englishman above-mentioned a staunch member of the English Church.

There were many such men about: admirable men; but unluckily without the great constructive energies that might, under Julian's guidance for example, have saved the empire. But the empire! In that crisis,--in that narrow pass in time! It is not excellent gentlemen that can do such near-thaumaturgic business; but only disciples; for the proposition is, as I understand it, to link this world with the God-world, and hold fast through thunders and cataclysm, so that what shall come through,--what shall be when the thunder is stilled and the cataclysm over,-- shall flow on and up onto a new order of cycles, higher, nearer the Spirit. . . . . No; it is not to be done by amiable gentlemen, or excellent administrators, or clever politicians. . . . Julian had come flaming down into the world, to see if he could rouse up and call together those who should do it; but his bugles had sounded in the empty desert, and died away over the sands.

There were tremendous energies abroad; but they were all with the Destroyers, and were to be, ever increasingly: with such men as, at this time, Saint Martin of Tours, that great tearer-down of temples; or in the next century, Saint Cyril of Alexandria and Peter the Reader, the tearers-to-pieces of Hypatia. Perhaps the greatest energies of all you should have found, now and later, in the Christian mob of Alexandria,--wild beasts innocent of nothing but soap and water.

It was Symmachus who was chosen by the Roman Senate to remonstrate with the emperor Valentinian against the removal of the altar and statue of Victory,--the Pagan symbols,--from the senate house. I quote you Gibbon's summary of a part of his petition:

"The great and incomprehensible Secret of the Universe eludes the enquiry of man. Where reason cannot instruct, custom may be permitted to guide; and every nation seems to consult the dictates of prudence by a faithful attachment to those rites and opinions which have received the sanction of ages. If those ages have been crowned with glory and prosperity--if the devout people have frequently obtained the blessings which they have solicited at the altars of the Gods--it must appear still more advisable to persist in the same salutary practise and not to risk the unknown perils that may attend any rash inovations. The test of antiquity and success, (continues Gibbon), was applied with singular advantage to the Religion of NUMA, and Rome herself, the celestial genius that presided over the fates of the city, is introduced by the orator to plead her own cause before the tribunal of the emperors. 'Most excellent princes,' says the venerable matron, 'fathers of your country! pity and respect my age, which has hitherto flowed in an uninterrupted course of piety. Since I do not repent, enjoy my domestic institutions. This religion has reduced the world under my laws. These rites have repelled Hannibal from the city, and the Gauls from the Capitol. Were my grey hairs reserved for such intolerable disgrace? I am ignorant of the new system I am required to adopt; but I am well assured that the correction of old age is always an ungrateful and ignominious office.'"

Symmachus was addressing a Christian emperor; and it was an ill thing then, as in the days of Hadrian, to argue with the master of the legions. Still, the method he chooses is interesting: it holds a light up to the inwardness of the age, and shows it dead. This was at twenty-one years after the death of the Dragon-Apostate; whose appeal had all been to the realities and the divinity of man and the living splendor of the Gods he knew and loved. That splendor, said he, should burn away the detritus, and make Romans men and free again. But Symmachus, for all his admirable restraint, his rhetorical excellence, his good manners and gentlemanly bearing,--which I am sure we should admire,-- appeals really only to the detritus; to nothing in the world that could possibly help or save Rome. The Christians wanted to be free of it, because they felt its weight; the Pagans wanted to keep it, because they found it warm and comfortable. Symmachus sees nothing higher or better than custom; the secret of the universe, says he, is unknowable; there is no inner life. --He was confuted by a much more alive and less estimable man: Ambrose, bishop of Milan,--with whom, also, both he and Ausonius were on friendly terms. Ambrose's argument, too, is illuminating: like the King of Hearts', it was in the main that "you were not to talk nonsense." How ridiculous, said he, to impute the victories of old Rome to the Religion of Numa and favor of the Gods,--when the strength and valor of the Roman soldier were quite enough to account for all. Thus he appears in the strange role of a rationalist. Christianity, he continued, was the one and only true religion; and all the rest--etc., etc., etc. Ambrose and his party were fighting towards a definite and positive end; knew what they wanted, and meant to get it. Of course they won. Symmachus and the senate were fighting only for a sentiment about the past, and had no chance at all. And it really did not matter: Rome was doomed anyway.

But in passing I must e'en linger on a note of sublimity in this petition of Symmachus: of sublime faith;--when he makes Dea Roma refer to her history as having "hitherto flowed in an uninterrupted course of piety." It makes one think that they taught Roman history in their schools then much in the same way that we teach our national histories in our schools today; here and in England, and no doubt elsewhere, _"An uninterrupted course of piety!"_ quotha. Marry come up!

But all this is anticipating the years a little: looking into the eighties, whereas we have not finished with the sixties yet. Julian died in 363, on the 26th of June; and within a couple of years, you may say,--many said so then,--the Gods began to avenge him. Nature herself took a hand, to warn a degenerate world. In 365 came an earthquake; gollowed by a huge withdrawal of the sea, so that you could explore dry-shod the antres of the sea-gods. And then a tidal wave which threw large ships up onto the roofs of houses two miles inland, and killed in Alexandria alone fifty thousand people.--"Aha!" said the Pagans, "we told you so."--"Nothing of the kind!" said the Christians in reply; "did not we set a saint on the beach at Epidaurus, before whom the oncoming billow stopped, bowed its head, and retired?" Well; no doubt that was so; but Alexandria was a perfect hotbed of saints, one of whom, you might think, might have been lured down to the beach and the perilous proximity of water for the occasion. But let it pass!

Ten years later the Law began to marshal its armies seriously for the destruction of an obsolete world. The Huns crossed the Volga, and fell upon the Ostrogoths, who had had a Middle-European empire up through Austria and Germany. The Ostrogoths, somewhat flattened out, joined with the Huns to fall upon the Visigoths; who theeupon poured down through the Balkans to fall upon the Romans; and defeated and killed the emperor Valens at Adianople in 378. Theodosius, from 379 to 395, held precariously together a frontier cracking and bulging all along the line as it had never cracked and bulged before. When he died, the empire finally split: of his two sons, Arcadius taking the East, Honorius the West.