morality to Greek mythology, and with this he busied himself on two occasions, about the same time. The two orations, The Praise of the Mother of the Gods and Against the Cynic Heraclius, were probably both delivered about the time of the vernal equinox, while he was still at Constantinople, A.D. 362. In the first of these he gives an elaborate explanation of the story of Attis; in the second he rebukes Heraclius for his immoral teaching in the form of myths, and gives an example of one which he thinks really edifying, which describes his own youth under the protection of the gods.
The explanation of the myth of Attis is important as a specimen of Julian's theology. According to modern interpreters, this myth, as well as that of Adonis in its hundred forms, describes merely the succession of the seasons; Julian adapts it to his speculations on the triple hierarchy of worlds. With him the mother of the gods is the female principle of the highest and most spiritual world. He calls her the lady of all life, the mother and bride of great Zeus, the motherless virgin, she who bears children without passion, and creates things that are together with the father (p. 166 A, B). Here we are landed into the full obscurity of Gnostic principles and emanations, and the whole story is evidently only a kind of converse arrangement of that which meets us in the Valentinian myth of Achamoth (see Mansel, Gnostic Heresies, lects. 11, 12). Attis is a principle of the second or intelligent world, "the productive and creative intelligence, the essence which descends into the farthest ends of matter to give birth to all things" (p. 161 c). It is difficult to see how he is distinguished in his functions with regard to creation from the sovereign sun, but this is only one of the many weak points of this fanciful exposition. His material type in the lowest world is the Milky Way, in which philosophers say that the impassible circumambient ether mingles with the passible elements of the world (p. 165 c). The mother of the gods engages Attis to remain ever faithful to herself, that is, to look always upward. Instead of this, he descends into the cave, and has commerce with the nymph, that is, produces the visible universe out of matter. The sun, who is the principle of harmony and restraint, something like the Valentinian Horus (ὅρος), sends the lion or fiery principle to put a stop to this production of visible forms. Then follows the ἐπτομή of Attis, which is defined as the ἐποχή τῆς ἀπείριας, the limit placed upon the process into infinity. The part played by the sun is indicated by the season at which the festival took place, the vernal equinox, when he produces equality of day and night (p. 168 C, D). All this is explained as a mere passionless eternal procedure on the part of the supposed gods. A real creation proceeding from God's love and good pleasure was a thought far above the scope of this philosophy, to which the world was as personal as the so-called gods.
Enough has been said to shew how thoroughly pantheistic was Julian's interpretation of the myths; how destructive of any true conception of the divine nature, how thoroughly unmoral, how utterly incapable of touching the heart, was his theology. Yet he felt the need of some personal commerce with God, however inconsistent such a wish was with his intellectual view of divine things.
(3) Intercourse with God.—When Julian was in Asia Minor under the influence of the philosophers Eusebius and Chrysanthius, and heard the details of the wonderful works of Maximus, he said (according to Eunapius), "Farewell, and keep to your books if you will; you have revealed to me the man I was in search of" (Eunap. Vita Maxima, p. 51). This story has been discredited by some, who think it strange that so great a lover of books as Julian should speak slightingly of them. But it is confirmed by his own language in his Oration on the Sun (p. 137 C): "Let us say farewell to poetic descriptions; for they have much that is human mixed up with the divine. But let us go on to declare what the god himself seems to teach us both about himself and the other gods" (ix. II, 5). Julian here appeals from a book revelation, as it were, to a direct instruction given him in the numerous visions in which he was visited by the gods.
We have already noticed Julian's enthusiasm for the mysteries and his love of all rites and practices which promised a closer intercourse with the gods. He could never bring himself to acquiesce in the colder methods of some of the masters of the neo-Platonic school. He was not satisfied with the intellectual ecstasy described by Plotinus, nor with the self-purification of Porphyry, who generally rejected sacrifice and damnation (Ueberweg, Hist. of Philosophy, § 68, notes, vol. i. p. 251, Eng. trans.). The party of Iamblichus, to which Julian belonged, required something approaching a control of a god (theurgy), a quasi-mechanical method of communication with him, which could be put in force at will, and the result of which could only be called a "Bacchic frenzy" (Or. vii. pp. 217 D and 221 D, etc.). Julian was duped by men who were half deceivers and half deceived. He is one among many who are forced by an inward conviction to believe in supernatural revelation, but who will only have it on their own terms. Libanius tells us that Julian knew the forms and lineaments of the gods as familiarly as those of his friends, and we have mentioned the visions which appeared to him at great crises of his life. He himself says, "Aesculapius often healed me, telling me of remedies" (St. Cyril. adv. Jul. viii. p. 234), and elsewhere he speaks of this deity as a sort of incarnate Saviour (Or. iv. p. 144 B, C). This temper of mind, while it speaks in high-flown, positive language of the knowledge of God and pours contempt on the uninitiated, yet means something by "knowledge" very different from the sober and bracing certainty attained by Christian faith, hope, and love. Here, as elsewhere, the pantheistic temper speaks grandly, but feels meanly. Death indeed is looked forward to with some composure as the emancipation of the divine element in man from darkness. Julian several times prays for a happy death, and expected after it to be raised to communion with the gods. His orations to the Sun and the Mother of the Gods both conclude with such prayers, and we have seen how he actually met his end (Liban. Ep. p. 614; Amm.
