History Books Review

Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire by Edward Luttwak

2012-01-25T08:00:00.005Z

The history of the Byzantine Empire is continuous with the history of the original Roman Empire. But although there was never a day when the eastern half of the empire announced that it was now a different entity, the story of the Greek speaking Byzantines is radically different from that of their Latin predecessors.

Nowhere is this discontinuity clearer than in military strategy. The strategy of the Romans was domination. They aimed to destroy their enemies. Caesar summed it up in a few words. 'I came, I saw, I conquered.' The Romans aspired to be and soon became the predominant military power in their world.

But once that power collapsed, what was left was a new world full of aggressors who were certainly dangerous, but none of which were strong enough themselves to replace Rome as the overwhelming superpower.

As a former military policy wonk in the Pentagon, Edward Luttwak would probably describe this as a move from a unipolar to a multi-polar world, or something like that. Luckily for the reader he doesn't bring the jargon from his day job to his account of the strategic problems facing the Byzantines. But he does bring the insight of someone who has wrestled with those kinds of dilemmas. He is not afraid to be controversial. In fact he seems to relish it. I heard him on the radio in the UK recently astonishing an interviewer with the view that the US should withdraw its troops from Afghanistan and instead bribe the Chinese to occupy it. Whatever the pros and cons of this approach, at the very least it would be cheaper. And given that foreign policies rarely have the desired outcome picking one that requires a low outlay of blood and treasure deserves to at least be considered.

This isn't Luttwak's first study of Roman history. He has also written a book about the western empire's defensive strategy. This got a mixed reception with many specialists not agreeing with it. But this book covering the Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire has received as far as I can tell universally positive write ups. It is certainly a good read. You don't need any prior knowledge to follow it and it doesn't use any jargon or make too many references to other works in the field. He does use a few unfamiliar terms that you might need to look up. To give one example and to save you the trouble, redacting means editing together a document from multiple sources. I imagine that is an everyday word in an intelligence gathering department but not for those of us who don't work with spies regularly. But it reminds you that Luttwak is a backroom guy and this a book about what was happening in the backrooms of Constantinople during centuries it was trying, always against the odds but usually successfully, to survive in a hostile world.

There was a culture in Constantinople that individual emperors could draw on, and contribute to. The Byzantines studied war as a science and wrote up what they learned. This gave them an edge that allowed them to deal with their many enemies in the field with maximum efficiency. The goal was not the glory of an individual. Alexander the Great would have got short shrift. They did not aim to eliminate the enemy. Pitched battles were to be avoided. Clever strategies and spying were the preferred way to get an edge. Professional soldiers require training, equipping and supplying - all resource intensive procedures. The result was effective troops, but there were never many of them and they could not easily be replaced.

Military investment was capital intensive. Weapons were sophisticated with designs committed to vellum and later to paper. Some dated back to antiquity others were more recent innovations. The most famous was the Greek fire that enabled attacking fleets to be completely destroyed. For all their conservatism and religiosity the Byzantines were always ready to develop creative solutions when new problems arose. The Huns deployed advanced bows whose range and power combined with superb horsemanship made them invincible. They could simply fire their bows from a safe distance and massacre their enemies. If attacked they could retreat more quickly than any pursuit. Their speed allowed them to run rings around the movements of any regular army deployed against them.

For a while the Huns had the empire at their mercy. No quick countermeasures could be devised. But when the Hun menace disappeared following the death of Attila the lessons could be absorbed and used. The training of cavalry was overhauled. Bows were upgraded. Before long the Romans could deploy units as effective as the Huns. This was one of the reasons that in the Sixth Century Justinian was able to revive Roman power and start the reconquest of much that had been lost. He even recaptured Rome itself. If he could have matched the numbers as well as the skills of the Huns, who knows what he might have achieved.

But even when it was at its strongest the Byzantine position was always fragile. The state could only function thanks to highly efficient tax collection. But this in turn created a concentration of highly visible wealth that made it everyone's target of choice. It was never strong enough to overawe everyone at the same time. It was necessary to project what is now called soft power as well. Byzantine officials underwent huge journeys, thousands of miles sometimes, to influence foreign powers and get them to do their bidding using guile, gold and God. The religious prestige of the emperor and the archbishop of Constantinople could be used to help achieve state objectives. Out and out bribery was also in the toolkit. As was intrigue. Dissidents who might be useful were always welcome.

Byzantine commanders didn't just follow the book without any imagination. They often formulated highly creative and risky solutions to the problems they faced. For example sending a large force into Persia itself even when the Persians were laying siege to Constantinople itself. The Byzantines were able to behave like a superpower long after they ceased to have the resources of a superpower. When they were at war they used the forces at their disposal intelligently for maximum impact. They rarely aimed to destroy their enemies. In Byzantine diplomacy today's enemy could be tomorrow's ally. There were in any case an unlimited number of new enemies. But war was not their favoured approach in any case even though they continually prepared for it.

The Byzantine empire was finally ended in 1453 some eleven hundred years since Constantine moved the capital from Rome. For most of that time it had looked weak, often catastrophically so. It had been on its knees many times. Somehow it always managed to come through against the odds. Edward Luttwak's book goes a long way to explain how it managed it. If you are managing a declining superpower, this is a must read book.

Why I like Ron Paul

2012-01-23T08:00:00.002Z

Lots of people like Ron Paul. But not generally people like me. Not many Europeans have even heard of him. The maverick Republican senator only gets microscopic coverage in the news media over here, even now when he is one of the hopefuls trying to pick up the nomination for president. I am pretty much on the left politically, so I don't generally warm towards Republicans. I'm not keen on their politics to begin with. And on top of all that, as an atheist I find bringing religion into politics annoying, so the primaries when the candidates are trying to appeal to the committed are something I usually prefer to ignore.

So what gets me into the Ron Paul fan club?

I've forgotten how I first came across him, but somehow I ended up watching a video on Youtube where he was talking about legalising drugs, not a position I'd have expected from the right of the Republicans. I did a bit of googling and found an article with more detail. It was thought provoking stuff.

I have never taken drugs nor ever been greatly tempted to, and I am pretty supportive of legislation to stop other people from taking them. I personally think that one of the good things about living in an ordered society is that we can have rules that stop people doing stupid things to themselves that they are quite likely to regret later. Drug abuse is a classic case, damaging the health of the taker themselves and also affecting the people around them. So when governments deploy police and troops to cut off the supply of drugs I am one of the people cheering.

But Ron Paul came at the subject from an angle that had never crossed my mind before. The war on drugs is effectively an intervention by the government to stop people doing what they choose with their own money. Fair enough in my opinion, limiting individual freedom is sometimes a price worth paying in order to achieve a greater good.

But what are the effects of this policy? In particular what are the consequences of the 'war on drugs' where effort is concentrated at tackling drug supply at source. Well one undesired consequence is it generates monopoly profits for people daring and ruthless enough to run the gauntlet of the enforcers. This makes some pretty unsavoury characters rich and powerful. So the efforts to stamp out drugs, while they may reduce drug use, also create a huge problem that didn't exist before. In some countries the drug barons have both wealth and armed supporters and can rival the power of the government. Wouldn't it be better just to let people who want to take them get on with it?

The answer is no of course, but the Ron Paul argument is very persuasive. When I thought about it, it occurred to me that the problem could be solved by making the supply and distribution of drugs legal and only imposing penalties on the end users. I wasn't keen on that as a solution at first. It was only on reflection that I realised why. People who use drugs are a lot like me. I sort of identify with them. Ideally I wouldn't be interfering with their freedom to use drugs in the first place, and actually punishing them for using them, particularly in small quantities, seems a bit draconian. By contrast drug barons are a long way away and I don't have much sympathy for them. They also don't give me personally any particular trouble. So directing action at the providers rather than the users is the most convenient for me personally.

So if I am honest the status quo happens to suit me fine. It would do so even more if I was a recreational drug user. I can afford the elevated prices - I get to enjoy the drugs and the thrill of breaking the law without much fear of getting caught and I'd only suffer a fairly light penalty if I did. None of which alters the reality which is that the war on drugs is a huge waste of resources that doesn't even achieve much of a reduction in the behaviour it is supposed to suppressing. And for people who have to contend with the operations of drug trafikers it can be a deadly problem literally. Allowing drugs to be sold cheaply would very likely cause considerably less misery than the illicit trade in drugs currently does. It would also make it much easier to prosecute the end users who at the end of the day are the people who actually caused the problem in the first place.

So that was quite beneficial. Confronted with a point of view I didn't agree with, and still don't agree with, I ended up realising that my own opinion had been not only wrong, but was probably positively harmful.

I have had similar experiences with quite a lot of the libertarian views that Ron Paul expresses in various places online. I recommend having a look at some of Youtube videos of him. His views on Israel are particularly interesting and I think illuminating. This is an area where most people focus on issues of morality or justice. What is Israel justified in doing to defend itself? Should there be a two state solution? Etc, etc. All interesting and important stuff of course, but not something that lends itself to easy answers. Some people dispense with the ethical issues and concentrate on the power politics. Is Israel simply a tool of American policy, providing military bases and support in projecting US power? Paul on the other hand seems to regard the whole thing as simply an exercise in pork barrel politics. He doesn't say this explicitly, but I think he regards the vast sums of money the US gives to Israel as the main issue. Could he be right? Could the high level of funding, a relatively recent development historically, simply represent the strength of the Jewish lobby? Piles of cash for projects of dubious value is the ultimate sign of success for a lobby after all. This would put Israel in exactly the same position as the farming lobby seeking to get agricultural subsidies. It has to be said that Israel did pretty well before it started receiving large levels of cash from the US. Regardless of what you think of Israel based on their track record they ought be able to manage quite well without it. Perhaps Paul is on to something there as well. Does even Israel merit a blank cheque?

I think this independence from the vested interests that so many politicians - not just in America -rely on may be the key to Ron Paul's appeal. He seems to be immune to lobbies. If nothing else, the fact that he almost never votes for increased spending shows that either nobody is paying him, or they are getting a terrible deal on their donations. In any democracy vested interests play as big a role in decision making as they can get away with. But this is the case in spades in the United States where Washington is packed with full time lobbyists promoting their particular agenda. The Jewish lobby is the most effective, but they are simply one member of a huge industry employing tens of thousands of people. It is mainly a reflection of the size of the US, which has a budget large enough to make such activities profitable. The generally commercially minded political culture helps as well. But it makes it very easy for the ordinary voter to feel excluded and alienated from the government, so it isn't surprising that both the Tea Party movement and the Occupy Wall Street protests arise and both show a deep suspicion of Washington insiders. I wonder if they ever get together to compare notes - they may find they have quite a lot in common. But it also explains why Ron Paul's campaign seems to have resonated with so many people. He talks the way a conservative would talk if he was simply speaking his mind.

I don't want him to win the presidency of course. I am still a socialist and I don't want a more libertarian world. I don't think his ideas are really up to being the basis for a programme of government. Having said that, the decision making of people with more mainstream views isn't always that great so if he did pull it off, it probably wouldn't be any more of a disaster than usual. In any case, at time of writing the level of support he is attracting makes the prospect of him reaching the White House slim in the extreme.

But I hope he stays in the race and keeps up what he is doing, and I hope the supporters he has stick with him. From what I have gleaned from Youtube and his websites he seems to be an honest, intelligent and sincere man. I recommend finding the video where he is booed at a Republican party meeting for suggesting that Al Qaeda's objectives should be taken at face value rather than the rather bizarre fiction that they 'hate liberty'. He must have anticipated that reaction. If you have ideas to get across, then there is every reason to keep going even if, as all the pundits are saying, you are not going to win. You can win people over without winning the vote, and ideas can be tough things with a life of their own if you can get them planted. It is a shame there aren't more people like him around. I would much rather follow a debate about ideas than try and work out what a sound bite means, and I really want to hear ideas that I disagree with and that challenge my assumptions. Thank you to Ron Paul for providing them.

(Big caveat - I don't follow American politics that closely. He has been in politics since the seventies and so has had plenty of time to get up to all sorts of things I wouldn't approve of if I knew about them.)

Why The West Rules – For Now: The Patterns of History and what they reveal about the Future by Ian Morris

2012-01-22T09:23:00.001Z

As an industrial scientist I have learned quite a few problem solving tricks over the years. One of the simplest, at least in principle, is simply tabulating the data. Many impossible issues that fox everyone involved suddenly become obvious if you just put the information into a form that makes it easy to understand. But there is a downside. You present your painstakingly assembled piece of work to your colleagues. One of them usually grasps the issue rapidly and often claims to have solved it. From that point on nobody is interested in how you got to that point and weeks or months of effort are rapidly forgotten.

Ian Morris' Why the West Rules is a somewhat similar exercise on a much larger scale. What he has done is pull together all the data he can to try and quantify the social and economic development of different parts of the globe over a very long period indeed. Using this data he can assess how they are doing compared to one another. The work involved must have been huge and I don't doubt that Morris would have loved to have written a book about the process. But wisely he has put that to one side - though there is a website for anorak wearing enthusiasts to pore over his workings. But that isn't the bit we want to know about. What we are interested in is how well people are doing, and we are really interested in how we are doing relative to other people. We want to hear how the West came to be on top, and this is the story we get.

The scope is enormous. It goes right back to prehistory and comes up to the present day - in fact there is even some speculation about technologies of the future towards the end of the book. Early on it becomes clear that there were only ever two contenders in the race to be the most advanced. The West is defined here as the culture that developed in Mesopotamia and spread out from there to cover Europe, Egypt, North Africa and the rest of the Middle East, and which later subsumed the Americas. The only rival is China. To make this point the book opens with a fictional account of a Chinese ship visiting London in the reign of Queen Victoria. I am not normally a fan of alternative history scenarios. A bit of speculation on what might have happened diffierently in the aftermath of a particular event is okay, but elaborate flights of fancy of what might have happened if Helen of Troy's nose had been a bit longer generally leave me cold. It is hard enough working out what actually happened let alone what might have happened. But in this case it sets the scene for the rest of the book beautifully. After all, it is such an ingrained feature of the history of the world for the last five hundred years that Europeans set sail towards the rest of the world that it is a jolt to imagine that it might have worked the other way around.

What we get next is the whole story of how it came to be that in the Victorian era it was British troops that arrived in Peking rather than Chinese troops in London. And it really is the whole story, going right the way back as far as it can be taken. The West has almost always been in the lead, getting started first and usually maintaining that lead. But it has always been close. There have been centuries on end when China took the lead. It very nearly beat the West to the stage of full scale industrialisation for example. For much of history this race has been a totally unconscious one. The Chinese only became aware of the Roman Empire some time around the reign of Marcus Aurelius in the second century. The Romans in turn never had more than the haziest notion of the other big civilisation on the block even though they did manage to trade with them via intermediaries. It wasn't until the late Middle Ages that Marco Polo brought back detailed accounts of just how advanced Chinese civilisation was.

During the Middle Ages the sophistication and size of China dwarfed anything in Europe or the Middle East and an impartial observer would no doubt have confidently predicted that it would be the Chinese who were destined to rule the world. But they had achieved this by default thanks to problems and instability at the other end of the huge Eurasian continent. Later it was to be the Chinese that succumbed to problems leaving the West to forge ahead. Today the situation is that both are stable enough for development to proceed. They are also very well aware of one another and interacting like never before. This is a new and unique situation in history. What will happen next?

Morris can't and doesn't answer this directly. But what he does do is tell the story in enough detail to give an idea of where we are now. And it is quite a story. The economic history is used as the backbone of the book, but we get a lot of insight into how most of the time people are simply working to solve the problems they are faced with. We don't see the big picture on a day to day basis. You have to read a book like this to see that.

Zenobia the Musical

2012-01-20T16:14:00.000Z

I am afraid I know almost nothing about this, but as this is the Internet I am not going to let that stop me.

I have just come across this rather amazing Youtube video of a musical version of the life of Zenobia. I am a bit behind the times because it seems to have been put on in Dubai in 2008. And boy must it have been spectacular judging the by the clip with a huge cast up to and including horses and camels. The music sounds pretty good too.

It is good to see Zenobia getting some decent billing and being portrayed in a positive light. I have previously covered the full story of Zenobia but I don't know how well she is known in the Arab world - though I guess this musical must have raised her profile whatever it was. I hope some people were inspired.

The Hymn to Cybele by Julian the Apostate

2012-01-11T22:46:00.000Z

The Goddess Cybele praised by Julian the Apostate (thanks to Wikipedia for the image)

The Roman emperor Julian the Apostate is a one off in history. He was the nephew of Constantine, the man that introduced Christianity to the empire. But he spent most of his adult life trying to convert it back again. He was born a Christian and died a pagan. He was a philosopher by inclination. He could easily have been remembered as a leading exponent of Neoplatonism, but proved to be a great warrior when forced to become one. Above all, he was full of surprises.

So naturally I was interested when I found his hymn of praise to Cybele online. I couldn't find out anything about how it came to survive or what else is known about it so all I can say is what I have gleaned from the document itself. It sounds like a speech given at a religious occasion. I assume it was given in Athens, since the Athenians are specifically praised in it. And given that bits of it are rather unpolished and rambling it sounds a lot like it was a record made by somebody as the speech was being given. Reading it aloud took about 40 minutes, about the length of time a reasonable speech might take. As such it is a pretty rare chance to listen to someone speaking in their own voice from the ancient world. And it is a speech from one of the most interesting characters from that world.

Very few people can talk to an audience off the top of their heads, so I imagine Julian had done some kind of preparation. Even so, his ability to talk on his feet is impressive. Accounts of him from his own time report that he was likeable and engaging, and reading this speech made that easy to believe. It is less easy to work out why he made it and to who. It sounds to me like he was consecrating a new temple, or more likely reconsecrating one that had been desecrated. Whoever was listening, Julian has high expectations of them. He doesn't hold back on the full details of his Neoplatonic philosophy, and to follow him you would have to have a pretty good grasp of who Plato, Aristotle and Epicurus were and what their teachings were about.

We get to hear what Julian himself thinks of these leading lights of Greek thought. Epicurus is dismissed: he is just plain wrong. Aristotle has made himself ridiculous by diverging from Plato. It is Plato that is regarded as the authority. Porphyry, who had reinterpreted Plato's ideas for Julian's time, also gets a respectful mention.

Who is Cybele?

As we'll see, Julian is interested in how Cybele fits into the general metaphysical system of the Neoplatonist philosophy to which he subscribed. But today we probably first have to answer the more basic question of who Cybele was in the first place, given that she isn't one of the gods whose name is still a part of everyday speech.

The cult of Cybele goes back a long way, and she may well have originally been worshiped as an earth mother way back in prehistory. The origin of her worship was in Phrygia. This is the region of central Turkey roughly where the current capital of Ankara is. There are a lot of respectful and knowledgeable references to Phrygia and its culture in the speech, enough to make me think that there may have been some Phrygians in the audience, or indeed the speech may have been given somewhere in Phrygia. The Phrygians were closely related to the Greeks, and early on the Athenians had picked up the worship of Cybele from them. There was a temple to Cybele in Athens which also contained the public records.

Cybele comes to Rome

The Phrygians must have had a good marketing department, because when the Romans were in trouble during their war with Carthage they turned to Cybele for divine support. A statue of the goddess was commissioned from Phrygia and dispatched to Rome in a large ship. When the vessel approached the Tiber the city's inhabitants turned out to greet it, led by the priests and senators. Unfortunately it got stuck in the mouth of the river, and nothing would move it. The rumour arose that the chief vestal virgin, Clodia, had not been sticking to the purity of her vows and this was offending the goddess. Stories like that tend to spread.

In order to clear her name Clodia wrapped her girdle around the statue. As a result the boat finally started moving getting the delivery back on plan. Julian was telling this story some five hundred years after the event but had no truck with people who were skeptical about it. Julian insists on taking the story at face value. There were plenty of testimonials attesting to it. It also fitted in with his idea that the gods took an active interest in human affairs, intervening when the need arose.

The Romans went on to be highly successful in their fight against Carthage. Cybele was obviously effective as a protector. She rapidly became one of the most popular gods in town. Augustus built a huge temple to her right next to his own palace.

The Meaning of the Cybele

But Julian is just as interested in her religious significance as her history. He asks, who is the mother of the Gods? He then proceeds to answer his own question in great detail. As a pupil of Neoplatonism he was intensely interested in the metaphorical significance of these kinds of myths. We get a lot of detail of the philosophical meaning of it all. This is pretty involved, going deep into Plato's theory of forms and with references to Aristotle, Porphyry, Theophrastus and Xenagorus. And this isn't simple name dropping. Julian has clearly read them and understood their arguments and feels quite able to put his own ideas forward in the same company. It is tough going, believe me. But he eventually gets where he wants to go. Cybele is identified as the greatest being created by the One, and the god who transfers creative urges from the Divine Mind down to the Earth.

Prayer to Cybele

Having warmed up with this, fairly major, metaphysical explanation he goes on to draw some conclusions about how one of the stories about Cybele could be used to explain the path of the Sun in the sky. He then seems to get a bit sidetracked with quite a bit of rather unfocused speculation about the origin of particular dietary restrictions required by traditional religious practices. As we all know, the cleverest of speakers can wander off topic and end up forgetting what they are supposed to be talking about. But Julian pulls it back. He finishes with a simple and sincere prayer to the Goddess.

"Grant unto all men happiness, of which the sum and substance is the knowledge of the gods; and to the Roman people universally, first and foremost to wash away from themselves the stain of atheism, and in addition to this, grant them propitious Fortune, that shall assist them in governing the empire for many thousands of years to come! To myself grant for the fruit of my devotion to thee–-Truth in belief concerning the gods, the attainment of perfection in religious rites, and in all the undertakings which we attempt as regards warlike or military measures, valour coupled with good luck, and the termination of my life to be without pain, and happy in the good hope of a departure for your abodes!"

The West's Lost Legacy of Paganism

The reference to the stain of atheism is poignant. Julian may have been making a general point, but I can imagine that he was speaking in a temple that still had signs of damage. Atheism referred to Christianity. Christians do not accept the Platonic concept of a single transcendent God who is the source of creation, so the atheist tag can be justified from Julian's point of view though to our way of thinking it is a bit confusing.

Many temples had been attacked and destroyed during the previous forty years, many converted into churches. Julian's love and veneration for the gods of his country is evident, and he must have found the evidence of this desecration heartbreaking. But the buildings could be restored - the loss of the tradition was much harder to make good. This culture, once destroyed, could not be revived. Julian himself, being brought as a Christian must have felt keenly this break with the past. But at least as emperor, he could now save what was left. But it was not to be. His reign was not even to last two years, and when he was gone it was not long before the destruction resumed. Steadily more severe laws against pagan practice were brought in, stripping them of rights and forbidding their literature.Paganism did not die out, it was killed.

Much of our culture has been lost forever. Julian failed to save it, but at least he put up a fight, and a visible one. Julian will certainly never be forgotten. His Hymn to Cybele is both a window on a world that has been destroyed and a reminder that people cared deeply about it.

Orwell, Tolkien, C.S.Lewis and the Nazis

2012-01-02T22:34:00.001Z

My three favourite twentieth century English authors are Orwell, Tolkien and C.S.Lewis. It isn't a perfectly equal trinity though. I think Orwell and Tolkien are writers of huge genius who will be read for centuries to come. Lewis I like a lot and enjoy reading, but he isn't really in the same category. He can certainly write well and has lots of interesting ideas, but I think he is very much of his time and will get steadily less relevant as the world changes. He also got a lot of his ideas from the other two. This doesn't diminish how much fun you get from reading him. But originality always commands more respect than derivation, no matter how skilfully done.

But it is interesting to consider that all three men were pretty close to each other in age and to some extent background, and so had fairly similar lives and influences. The major events of their lives were the two wars. They would all have followed the rise of the Nazis in Germany and were all influenced by it. But they all developed their ideas and outlooks beforehand, and so responded in the light of their prior positions.

For Orwell, whatever else he had in the way of problems and issues, had no difficulty in working out his position towards the Nazis. Orwell was a socialist, a moderniser and a believer in progress. The Nazis were clearly opposed to everything he believed in. He was very acute in working out the psychology of it all. He bemoans they way some people seem to have a need to belong which is transferred to enjoying marching around carrying flags and the like. He spotted the link between nationalism and totalitarianism, pointing out that it was significant that Hitler was Austrian. He was close to being a German but wasn't actually one himself, and so could work out what made Germans tick in a way an insider would be blinded to by familiarity. He suggested than any English dictator would probably be an Ulsterman for the same reason.

He was also well aware of the link between organised religion and the Nazis. He had seen the support given to the fascists in the Spanish Civil War by the Catholic Church. He was an atheist himself and was quite happy to regard the established church and less mainstream irrational belief systems as being much the same to all intents and purposes. Basically the Nazis were his perfect enemies. They were conservative, backward looking and wrapped up all their illiberal prejudices in a medieval mumbo jumbo.

Although they didn't give Orwell any ideological problems, living near and working in London through the war they did give him some practical issues in the form of dropping bombs on him. The solution to this was pretty straight forward, like most people at the time Orwell did what he could to help his country's war effort. Being a writer he used his skills in producing propaganda. More widely he used his literary gifts to promote the causes he believed in. Even before his two hugely influential novels he was well known both for his skill putting words together and for his left wing political sympathies. Once the war was over and the Nazis were no longer an immediate threat he turned his attention to the problems with his own beliefs. Everyone on the left has to come to terms with the fact that if you want to create a fairer, more equal and more tolerant society, it doesn't come for free. You have to restrict people's economic and social freedoms to some extent which can work against their individual liberty. How do you make sure you don't go too far? These were the issues to which Orwell turned his mind, and important and serious stuff it is.

But while he was getting on with fighting totalitarian fascism and keeping socialism from becoming totalitarian, he didn't totally neglect straight forward conservatives. He was well aware of C.S.Lewis and there are two mentions of him print that make this clear. (There may be more but I have only found these two.) First off is a scathing dismissal of a radio programme by C.S.Lewis. Orwell derides the false chuminess of the tone, and warns that religious viewpoints often sound a lot more comforting than they work out in practice. He also reviews That Hideous Strength, one of C.S.Lewis' science fiction trilogy. This he effortlessly damns by faint praise. He acknowledges it is well written but draws attention to the supernatural elements in the plot, saying that these let down what otherwise might have been a decent novel.

I feel sorry for anyone who took Orwell's review at face value and spent good money in a time of great austerity to buy the book on the grounds that it was basically okay apart from a bit of magic here and there. The magic is the whole point of the book and if you don't like it you are going to be very disappointed. Lewis must have read the review - being noticed by Orwell was a compliment in itself. But he wouldn't have been fooled by the apparently positive tone. He would have realised straight away that Orwell was dismissing his fundamental world view as redundant and out of date.

At the time, the political situation that enabled Orwell to be both a radical calling for change and a leading figure in the establishment had the effect of isolating Lewis, a natural conservative if ever one was born. And I think the Nazis were a big part of the problem. Considering how big an impact they had on the times in which he lived, it is surprising how little Lewis talks about them. But I don't think he ignored them. I suspect he agonised over them. And the root of the problem was, as it often is, religion. Orwell is well aware of the Nazis general religious approach, but is more interested in other things about them. Lets face it, there is a lot to talk about when it comes to Nazis.

Despite the huge numbers of television documentaries, books, and now websites and podcasts about the Second World War, it is surprising how little coverage the religious attitudes of the Nazi's gets. In fact, it gets so little coverage that it is often grossly misrepresented. There is the Hitler was an atheist myth for example. This one goes roughly Hitler was a bad man, therefore he wasn't a Christian. And so as he wasn't a Christian and was a bad man, this shows that non-Christians are bad men. That atheists are specifically criticised by Hitler in Mein Kampf ought to be enough to sink this one, but I suspect it probably won't. But detail is usually the enemy of a good debating point. This didn't stop the Pope insinuating that rational belief systems predisposed people to totalitarian forms of government in a speech he gave in his recent visit to Britain. I dare say if challenged he would have said that he was thinking of the Soviet Union. But in Britain the first totalitarian system most people think of is the Nazis. They were the ones that dropped all those bombs on us after all.

The pope's point was an unpleasant one, but at least he wears a silly hat so we know not take him seriously. But he raises an interesting point. For Orwell it didn't matter too much what the details of the Nazis' beliefs were. They were clearly wrong ones. Likewise, he took no trouble to investigate what exactly Lewis was going on about in That Hideous Strength. It wasn't true and it ruined the suspense of the plot. What more needs to be said? This is a reasonable position if you dismiss supernatural beliefs. Most rational people reject religion along with homeopathy, astrology, flying saucers and so on. But to completely twist the pope's actual message into the precise opposite of what he was saying, are there particular irrational beliefs that lend themselves to totalitarianism?

Because nobody exists that accepts all non-rational beliefs. You just wouldn't have a head big enough to hold them all in. Christians in particular are generally very snooty about mixing their particular beliefs with ones from other traditions. You have to take the whole package and give it largely exclusive adherence. You can't really be a Christian and also believe in other stuff. You might get away with reading your horoscope, or wishing someone luck. But you can't back up your prayers with a sacrifice to the Earth Mother to be on the safe side. But this is tough. Most people in history have been a lot more eclectic in their approach. Look at Japan for example. It is quite standard for people to accept both Shintoism and Buddhism. The process of blending religious systems even has a name. It is called syncretism. It seems a bit odd if you are imbued in the Christian tradition, but syncretism does have a long history. The most blatant example was the god Serapis in ancient Alexandria. He was a blend of Jupiter and Osiris, and was created by one of Alexander the Great's generals. The idea was to come up with a deity that suited both Greeks and Egyptians in his new kingdom. Everyone knew that he had done this, but that didn't stop it becoming a very popular cult.

So to go back to the religion of the Nazis, they were syncretists. The idea was to meld ancient Paganism, Medieval Christianity, Hinduism and modern Catholicism. This sounds crazy, and indeed on one level it is indeed crazy. But it had a certain logic. For a start, the pagan elements linked the Nazis to the historic German gods. This gave them a patina of nationalism, and also tied in with Hitler's love of Wagner. They also had some ideas about the Aryan race having descended from refugees from Atlantis. This was where the interest in Hinduism originated, and where they got the swastika symbol from. The story was that the Atlanteans (or whatever they would be called) had escaped to the Himalayas. Himmler sent an expedition to Tibet to investigate this. Probably mystified by the whole process, Tibetan villagers were induced to have their skulls measured. They also searched southern France looking for the Holy Grail.

It would be easy to laugh at this kind of thing, but remember this is the Nazis we are talking about. They meant business. They took this kind of thing seriously. They even used astrology and dousing to deploy their submarines once the war started. But they also wanted to keep the Church onside as well. This wasn't a pushover, but they did manage to get formal support from the Catholic organisation and many of the protestant denominations as well. It wouldnt' be fair to say they had wholehearted support from all Christians. There certainly were individuals who showed great personal courage in resisting the Nazis. There were also individuals who went out of their way to help the Nazis. In fact the famous exit of the leading Nazis to South America after the war was facilitated by high ranking Catholic officials. But the Nazis got enough co-operation from enough churches to portray themselves as Christians.

In fact Hitler clearly had ideas for Christianity. He was from the Catholic tradition himself, but he went out of his way to speak positively of Martin Luther's translation of the Bible into German and announced plans to unite all the protestant churches of Germany. Churches and cathedrals were used for Nazi ceremonies. Of course we can't know what the long term plan was. It might have been to steadily remove the Christian element and replace it with more pagan ones. But if so, Hitler was offering a lot of hostages to fortune in his frequent claims to be a Christian himself. I think it is way more likely that he planned a national Christian church into which pagan and occult elements were inserted to give it a distinctly national character.

The Nazi obsession with paganism is most clearly visible in their use of runes. The most famous one is now so familiar you hardly notice it. The SS used a pair of the Sig runes in their symbol and you see them in every war film. This symbolised victory. (Or something like that - the Nazis were not too scholarly about this kind of thing.) But runes turned up quite often in Nazi imagery.

The Nazis were not the only people interested in this sort of stuff. Tolkien and Lewis were both medievalists who read Old English poems like Beowulf for fun. They had reacted with horrors to the mechanisation of suffering during the First World War. The general ugliness of the Britain they lived in thanks to the reliance on coal as an energy source and bricks as the main building material probably didn't help. They retreated into the same past that the Nazis were ransacking.

Neither C.S.Lewis or Tolkien had the remotest sympathy with Nazism. They were decent compassionate human beings who would have had no truck the brutality of the Nazi regime. And leaving that aside, unlike the Nazis they actually did care about getting things right. So they had a much deeper and more rounded picture of what the Dark Ages and the Middle Ages were actually like. Tolkien even had the chance to make his position clear. A German publisher wanted to translate the Hobbit in 1938. But the publisher didn't want to publish anything by a Jewish author and asked the question directly. Tolkien replied that he regretted not having any blood from that talented race but objected to the impertinent question and refused to go on with the deal. He lost out on royalties in favour of his honour. But it showed a very particular frame of mind. To attribute talent to an ethnic grouping is not particularly objectionable, but it is a form of racism when you think about it.

It is also interesting that Nazi Germany was the first country to show an interest in the Hobbit. Bilbo Baggins is hardly a good example of the Aryan superman, so the appeal was not a direct one. But think of it in terms of a syncretic pagan-christian project and it begins to make perfect sense. Distinctly northern European dwarves with rune maps looking for a dragon's treasure. Wagner comes to mind straight away. And it is such a moral story too.

The Hobbit, set in an imaginary world, is one thing. The Silmarillion is another altogether. Tolkien produces a whole set of gods controlled by one overarching God. It is a pre-Christian world so there is no Christ in it. But there are plenty of heroic warrior figures with germanic sounding names wandering around doing heroic warrior stuff. The Nazis would have loved it. There is plenty for Christians to love as well, since the morality all comes directly from the Christian tradition. But it would really appeal to a Neoplatonist. Tolkien seems to have lifted big chunks of Platonic thought to give his creation a sort of intellectual coherence. I have to say that if I didn't know Tolkien was specifically a Christian I wouldn't have worked it out even from my many re-readings of the Silmarillion. Once you know it, you can see it. But there is plenty of other stuff in there too. In other words, if Tolkien had set out to create a bit of work to help with a syncretic objective he really couldn't have done much better.

Was Tolkien a closet syncretist, aiming to reconcile Paganism and Christianity? If he was, you could understand why he might have wanted to keep it to himself. With the Nazis trying to do the same thing while trashing Europe there was clearly a risk of things being misunderstood. Much better to withdraw into his own world. He seems to have been the kind of self reliant individual who would be happy to do this. And if you are going to withdraw into your own world, well he had quite a good one worked out to do it it.

C.S.Lewis was a much more outgoing character than his friend Tolkien, and also much keener on pushing his ideas. But he too seems to have had a real interest in things on the margins of Christianity and beyond. By contrast, he was remarkably uninterested in the doctrinal issues within Christianity. He joined the least ideological denomination going, the broadest of broad churches, the Church of England. All of his explicitly Christian writing that I have read is geared towards advising the lay Christian how to be a good Christian, or coming up with good reasons why non-Christians should sign up. I suppose that avoiding controversies within the faith is a sound tactic if you want to win over new converts. But he wrote loads and tackles all kinds of subjects, often coming up with very original ways of looking at them. That he never takes any interest in internal Christian debates in his writing suggests to me that he himself simply wasn't interested in them. (Actually on reflection, I have just remembered what he wrote about Purgatory. Basically he said it was optional. It was more convincing in his words, but that was clearly not so much ignoring a doctrinal difficulty as positively arguing it away.)

When you look at his other interests things get even more intriguing. He was interested in philosophy and classical myths. He was also interested in the stars and astrology. And although he probably wouldn't have claimed to actually believe in any of that stuff, I can't help thinking that it must have at least influenced him. And again, deep down did he dream of a single uniting religion pulling in elements from both Christianity and classical sources? Again, given what the Nazis were up to if he did have that sort of notion you could understand why he wouldn't want to shout it from the rooftop. In fact he did go up on the rooftop. That was where he kept his telescope that he used to watch the planets at night. As I say, he was really interested in this stuff.

At the very least, unifying people who believe in something against people who believe in nothing must have seemed like a good move to someone like Lewis in the war years and afterwards. Writing apologetics for Christianity didn't seem to be achieving very much. Church attendance was declining. People like Orwell who didn't just disbelieve in God, but could hardly even find the time to mention Him were making all the running. Being criticised is bad enough. Being ignored is intolerable.

The thing was, Orwell was just so good. He could write clearly and understood what he was writing about. And he got results. Animal Farm was published in 1945 and rapidly became a phenomenon translated into multiple languages. It got over the message to a huge number of people. Lewis published a book called Miracles in 1947 that argued form first principles that miracles were in fact possible by adapting David Hume's notions of.... well who cares what the argument was. It isn't a bad one actually, but nobody was reading it.

Lewis had attempted to sneak his ideas into a wider audience via his trilogy of science fiction novels. These had not been tremendously successful. The first two aren't bad reads, though I wouldn't want to read them again. The third one despite the good review from Orwell is virtually unreadable. I can't actually remember how it ends, though whether that is because I have forgotten or gave up I don't know. But in any case the least appealing thing about them is their overt religious message.

There can't be much more depressing than writing a book to popularise Christianity which turns out to be unpopular. Meanwhile Orwell showed how to do it. In 1949 he released 1984, a genuinely popular science fiction novel with a serious purpose. The Devil it seemed, not only had the best tunes but the best plot lines, syntax. pacing and ability to reach a wide audience.

I think this woke up Lewis. He had been working on some stories for children since 1939, but it was now he chose to get them into shape for publication. They were the now highly familiar Narnia chronicles. There were a number of reasons he might have held back earlier. For a start, they featured talking animals very heavily. Fair enough for something for very young children, but not really an obvious way of carrying a serious message. But Orwell had done it in Animal Farm and it had not done his reputation any harm at all. There was also the problem that the stories were not exactly mainstream Christian stories. In fact they were shot through with syncretism. Bacchus even turns up in one of them. There is also a thinly disguised Saturn sleeping in a cave in one of them, and who turns up to destroy Narnia in the last of the series. The last book, the Last Battle, is the one that deviates most conspicuously from Biblical Christianity. Narnia is dispatched by one of the pagan gods in a huge battle, Christ in the form of Aslan carries out the judgement role assigned to him, but sinners don't end up getting judged. Instead, they simply don't understand what is going on and end up living in their own world unaware of the wonders about them. Its an appealing way of getting out of the need for a Hell. But it is also far closer to the idea of the soul forgetting its divinity as per Neoplatonic ideas than the damnation us unbelievers are normally allocated Christian theology.

So was Lewis a syncretist? There are plenty of reasons to think not. For a start he was pretty clear about his Christian affiliation. He was pretty respectful of other beliefs. But that has become a characteristic of quite a lot of Christians. The intolerant zealotry of former centuries is a lot cooler now. And he certainly never let on that he was anything other than an orthodox believer.

But we can say that he was aware of the issue. Towards the end of the Last Battle, we get a full on example of the dangers of syncretism handed to us up front. The Narnians' enemies the Calormenes come up with the notion that their god, Tash, is the same person as Aslan. They call him Tashlan. This initiative doesn't work largely because Tash himself makes an appearance. So that would seem to settle the matter - Lewis was not just not a syncretist, he was positively opposed to it.

Or was he? The problem with the Tashlan notion was that both Tash and Aslan existed, and were not the same being. Elsewhere in the stories, the Voyage of the Dawntreader I think it is, Aslan tells Susan that she will have to get to know him by another name in her own world. Not quite syncretism, but sort of getting on that way. If the same being can have multiple formats in different places then couldn't different religions be looking at the same thing from a different angle? And as critics have pointed out, Aslan does seem to be very different in different books. Lewis did write very quickly and often in a single draft, but even so I find it hard not to believe that this is a flaw. To my mind it was quite deliberate and gives Aslan a lot more depth than he would have if he was more consistent.

But given the example of Nazis, maybe he just didn't dare say out loud that he was a syncretist. The science fiction novels that nobody reads are full of some seriously weird stuff. Merlin even shows up in the last one. Once again like the Silmarillion, if you read them not knowing Lewis was a Christian there is a good chance you wouldn't realise. Everything is in code.

But it is the Narnia books that are far and away the most interesting part of Lewis' output. They are beautifully written and full of really interesting stories that force you to keep turning the pages. The Christian symbolism is well hidden enough to not spoil the plots. And his cheerful ransacking of classical mythology and folklore along with his own vivid imagination gives you loads of new and surprising characters to meet in every book. It is a rich and varied experience, and one that goes well beyond the need to get over some biblical ideas in a palatable form. And when you get to the very end notice this. Once Narnia has passed away the characters themselves pass up to a new and better Narnia. But this is not their final destination, there is another even better one beyond once they have grown enough. If the death and rebirth of Aslan on the stone table in the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is a great illustration of the death and rebirth of Christ, the continual ascendancy of the characters to ever higher realms at the end of the Last Battle is a superb depiction of the Neoplatonic idea of the ascent of the soul.

St Mercurios Killing Julian the Apostate

2011-12-30T18:58:00.001Z

I can't top the excellent blog post about this painting, so I'll just add a link.

http://blog.interiorpaintsecrets.info/st-mercurios-killing-king-oleonus-st-mercurios-killing-emperor-julian-the-apostate/

If you want to follow my extended review of Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire from the beginning (and who wouldn't?) it starts with Augustus founding the empire.

When Magic Still Made Sense: The History Books Review Guide to Neoplatonism

2011-12-28T17:11:00.000Z

Imagine some people who had grown up and lived their entire lives chained to the wall of a cave. Their only view of the world comes from shadows cast into the cave. They would have some idea of what the world was like, but would be unable to fully experience and appreciate the full depth of the colours, the sounds and the smells of the world outside. They would have only the haziest notions of the motivations and passions of the people living there.

This is Plato's allegory for the way we experience the world. We see only a reflection of a true ideal that exists in the mind of the One, the transcendent being who created the Universe. It is a familiar idea to mathematicians, who often study concepts like, say, circles. They conceive of a perfect circle with precise mathematical properties, but which it is impossible to reproduce - any circle we can draw will have some deviation from perfection. In a sense it could be said that there was an ideal form of circle which all other circles are simply reflections or images of. This idea can be extended to things like trees, and to abstract concepts like beauty. Each of them has an ideal form created by the sublime thought of the One.

Although it is tempting to equate the One with the Christian notion of God, there really is little in common between them. For a start the One is a lot more transcendent and remote than God. It is beyond gender for example. It is also beyond Good and Evil. And most significantly, it doesn't have a direct personal relationship with the World. Plato's One is a much purer and more austere idea. Despite it being the fundamental cornerstone of his philosophy, Plato doesn't really go very far with this basic idea in his work, he is more interested in other questions.

Plato was enormously influential in the ancient world and his ideas continued to be discussed and developed long after his death. The two biggest philosophical threads in the early Roman Empire were Epicureanism and Stoicism. Both had some kind of debt to Plato, but neither treated the issues of the gods or the One as particularly significant. Marcus Aurelius for instance, the Roman emperor who tried most consistently to practice stoic virtues, wonders if the gods even exist. He concludes that they probably do, but that he has to work out the best way to live his life without taking them into account. His stoic philosophy was compatible with religious beliefs but didn't depend upon them. The Epicureans were equally uninterested and even doubted life continued after death.

It wasn't until around the First Century, some 500 years after his death, that the Neoplatonists started to look closely at the religious ideas of Plato and to forge a new interpretation that came to be known as Neoplatonism.

So who were the Neoplatonists and what is Neoplatonism? First off, the Neoplatonists themselves would have simply called themselves Platonists. They regarded themselves, quite rightly, simply as continuing the work of Plato himself. It was later scholars, much later, that have named them the Neoplatonists in recognition of the originality of their philosophical ideas.

The easiest question to answer is who they were. The first Neoplatonist is usually acknowledged to be Ammonius Sachus, about whom we know very little. His student, Plotinus is the first member of the school to leave any of his own work behind. Even Plotinus is mainly known from what his student,Porphyry, wrote about him. It is fair to say that Porphyry was the person who really popularised Neoplatonism and it is his writing that tells us most about it. He also had students, the chief of whom was Iamblychus, often referred to as the Divine Iamblychus. These men all had their own individual approaches, but were clearly a distinct and recognisable grouping.

What they had in common was an intense interest in the teachings of Plato about the mystical and religious. They looked closely at the nature of the One, the nature of the soul and how the idea of forms could be used to understand the relationship between the One, the Gods, the world and the souls of the men inhabiting it.

The Neoplatonists were fascinated by the divine. They were interested in the properties of the soul and regarded it as having the ability to connect with beings from higher planes. In fact Plotinus visited a temple where he found that he was inhabited by an actual god - though the priest officiating at the ceremony was so scared by the power of the being his art had revealed that he panicked and stopped the reading before its name was revealed. It is hard to imagine Plato himself going along with something like that, not without at least challenging the basis behind it. But the Neoplatonists were interested in anything mystical. They looked back before Plato to Pythagoras and resurrected his belief in magical numbers. Plotinus was well versed in mathematics and music, though from a purely theoretical viewpoint. He was interested in what that study could tell him about the nature of the divine, rather than counting things or playing an instrument.

For similar reasons, Porphyry was fascinated by the leading edge science of the time.

An astronomer in Alexandria called Ptolemy had pulled off what still counts as one of the big achievements of science. He had constructed a working mathematical model of the solar system accurate enough to give excellent predictions of the future positions of the planets in the sky. His picture of the Universe had the Earth at the centre of seven heavenly spheres each corresponding to the five visible planets, the Sun and the Moon. This covered everything that could be seen to move in the sky before the invention of the telescope. This can still be considered as the starting point of the modern maths based approach to describing the Universe making Ptolemy the direct ancestor of Newton and Einstein and the men who are currently seeking the Higgs Boson in the tunnels under the Alps.

But for the Neoplatonists it had a completely different significance. The seven heavens represented different aspects of the One. Each sphere was presided over by a god with a particular character created directly by the One. Astrology was already well established, but the ability to predict the positions of the planets using Ptolemy's maths took it a stage further. The idea that what happens in Heaven influences what happens on Earth was not really all that far fetched based on what the men of the First Century knew. The influence of the Sun and the Moon is quite noticeable after all, and the seasons do move in step with what is happening in the sky. It is a deep rooted idea, and we still have horoscopes in the newspapers today. We use astrological metaphors in our language, often unconsciously. Influenza for example, gets its name from the time when medical men attributed it to the influence of the skies. But the Neoplatonists were really into astronomy in a big way. Porphyry studied Ptolemy's work closely and wrote a commentary on it. Observing the sky could reveal the secrets of the Divine will, and also give practical day to day predictions as a guide to action. The crystal ball still used today by people claiming knowledge of the future reminds me of Ptolemy's heavenly spheres, and I don't think it is a coincidence.

It's an easy step from observing, to predicting, to trying to influence. Sacrifices to gods could steer things in the way you wanted. You could even conceive that with a really detailed understanding of the movements of the celestial objects, the mood of the celestial being and knowing the right things to say, the right food to eat and auspicious moment to act you could bend the universe to your will. It sounds like magic, but the Neoplatonsts coined the term theurgy. Theurgy was very much the creation of Iamblichus, and was frowned on by Porphyry. But the objection was not that it wouldn't work, but that it was a distraction from the important business of reminding the soul of its true nature as part of the divine one.

Theurgy did make perfect sense if you followed the logic behind it. Plato's idea of forms came into its own here. If we can conceive of something like say beauty, this is because it exists as a form that has a reality in the mind of the One. No man had created the concept of beauty, it is something we are born aware of. This is because our immortal souls remember it from before birth. In a story like that of Helen of Troy, her beauty is another reflection or form from the divine will. So the beauty in the story is also true, it is just another form of reflection. Whether this meant that it must have actually happened is another matter, and something that might be open to debate. But even if it was made up, it was still true enough to command respect. The Neoplatonists were always interested in looking for metaphors and allegories in myths and in observations of nature as a way of seeking knowledge. Theurgy gave a practical way to apply this knowledge.

That it didn't actually work was not really an issue. Neoplatonism failed to gain mass appeal mainly because it had a more efficient competitor rather than not delivering the goods. But it was influential enough for the trappings of Neoplatonic mysticism to have stuck in our culture long after the philosophy behind them has been forgotten. Magicians wear hats decorated with starry symbols and continue to cast spells, count out in magic numbers and concoct things using strange ingredients with astrological significance.

Neoplatonism was initially an alternative to Christianity, but somehow never became an effective organised force. For all its elegance, it was perhaps just a bit too clever. To understand it took some effort which limited its appeal to men with the time and the inclination to study it carefully. But while it failed to compete on the practical level, it was still able to exert an influence on its rival. As Christianity grew in strength its weakness as a philosophy became more apparent. Many of the ideas of the Neoplatonists were adapted and incorporated into mainstream Christianity by thinkers like Augustine and Boethius - a debt that is rarely acknowledged. And it is a pretty big debt. If you follow the arguments between atheists and Christians on Youtube and in internet forums, you sometimes see Christians, I assume unknowingly, using Neoplatonic arguments about the nature of God. And they are good arguments. Atheists much prefer quoting the Bible - its easier meat.

Despite ransacking their ideas for anything that might be useful to them, the Christian elites did not look favourably on Neoplatonism, and after the emperor Justinian closed the Academy in Athens it went underground. Sorcery and magic became objects of suspicion, and have remained so. Despite this or maybe because of it a tradition of sorts has continued in shady corners. Elements of Neoplatonism have continued to surface in various forms over the centuries and still pops up from time to time even today. The works of C.S.Lewis and J.R.R.Tolkien for example both draw on the ideas of the Neoplatonists. A magic ring that imposing a particular form on the wearer? That would have made perfect sense to Iamblychus. Lewis goes even further with Bacchus himself turning up in Narnia.

But the biggest blow to Neoplatonism probably wasn't suppression by the authorities but the advance of natural science. Everything we have learned about the Universe tells us that it is random and unplanned, and that our role in it is down to pure chance. There is no sign of anyone having given much thought to its creation. In contrast, Ptolemy's cosmology of concentric spheres really does look a lot like the conception of a divine mind with a mathematical bent. Combining this picture of the world with Plato's concepts creates a beautiful and consistent concept that is hard to resist. It enables you to believe, literally, in magic. I find it tempting to look up into the night sky and imagine how it would feel to be indeed looking at a series of vast crystal heavens full of meaning and significance, and created by a sublime being far beyond imagination.

Tribute to Christopher Hitchens

2011-12-16T11:00:00.000Z

Christopher Hitchens showed great stoicism in his last year as the cancer in his throat slowly killed him. He continued to live as he had lived before with no hint of self pity or even much sign of inconvenience. As he pointed out, we are all dying, he was just doing it a bit more quickly.

It was this stoicism that made me realise that if you want a label for him, Stoic was about as close as you are going to get. He started off professing to be on the left, like his hero Orwell. This was never an accurate portrayal of his views or his attitudes, and as the years went by it became harder and harder to discern anything remotely socialist about Hitchens. But it was not really true to say that he drifted to the right either. He seemed supremely uninterested in social progress, either to support it or oppose it. He was much happier in the realm of ethics and ideas.

Ultimately, the only way to really describe him is to use out of date language. The cause that seemed to stir him was virtue, and what repelled him was villainy. But what made him unique was not so much the things he was passionate about, but the depths of that passion. The righteous indignation he can summon has become so famous it even has a name, the Hitchslap. Fans have collected prime examples on Youtube.

In the end, his interests were just too wide to fit into any pigeonhole. He loved life, and loved the freedom to live that life how he wanted. But it was ultimately the literature that freedom produced that he loved the most. His many enemies were the people who stifled greatness - tyrants, corrupt politicians, religious hucksters and theocratic bullies. They earned his contempt and he paid them in a way nobody will ever come close to. He didn't believe in immortality, but his work will live on making it just that much harder for rogues to get away with it. It is the legacy he would have wanted to leave.

Julian and the Christians

2011-12-08T07:58:00.001Z

Athanasius - apotheosis of the apostate

Alexandria was one of the major cities of the Roman empire, and one that would have appealed to Julian. It was founded by Alexander the Great, who was one of Julian's heroes. It was also the centre of a major pagan cult, that of Serapis. (If you are wondering who Serapis was, he was created by the Greek founders of Alexandria as an amalgam of Greek and Egyptian elements so as to appeal to both ethnic groups. Cynical manipulation of religion for political purposes has a long history.) And the intellectual achievements of the Alexandrians rivaled those of Athens. Basically it was his kind of place, or rather it would have been had it not also been an important centre of Christian thought as well.

When we last looked at Alexandria, the popular but wily and politically motivated Athanasius had been banished and replaced as archbishop by somebody willing to go along with the Arian sympathies of the then emperor Constantius. That person was George of Cappadocia who was just as unsuitable but for totally different reasons.

George had come from a poor background and made his fortune, or the start of it, supplying the army with bacon. When Athanasius was banished by Constantius George became the patriarch in his place with the support of the Arian faction. His exact position on the divinity of Christ hasn't been recorded, but his businesslike approach to maximising his income has. In an age where honesty was a rare commodity, he took corruption to a degree which earned the contempt of just about everyone. His targets had included the pagans as well as his co-religionists, coming up with the claim that the church actually owned the land in the city and so everyone with any property was liable to pay him ground rent. Even people with a complete disinterest in the theological disputes of the time - which was probably most people - would not have failed to have an opinion on that kind of thing. He clearly needed to be sorted out, and the removal of George from his post was announced in Alexandria at the same time as Julian's accession to the throne.

So George ended up in prison. But as is often the case in these kinds of situation, events went at their own pace, not the one the authorities tried to set. With the removal of the Arian appointee who should turn up and reclaim the vacant seat but Athanasius. This was definitely not what Julian had in mind and he had to send a rapid clarification explaining that when he had said that dissident bishops were restored to their seats, that didn't include known criminals like Athanasius.

Julian was well aware of the abilities of Athanasius and the last thing he wanted to do was to let him loose to provide the church with effective leadership. Meanwhile developments in the crisis continued. The pagans who had suffered badly at the hands of George's extortion could not wait for the natural course of justice. They stormed the jail and killed George themselves. Gibbon suggests that after his death George became the origin of the famous St George, dragon slayer, paragon of knightly virtue and patron saint of a great many places including of course England. This was a reasonable enough idea in the light of what Gibbon knew, as this was then the earliest use of the name George. Since then a couple of churches dedicated to a St George that predate George of Cappadocia's death - one by 16 years - have been discovered. This clears St George of being a dodgy bacon trader, which for a patriotic Englishman like myself is a relief, though it does mean that we have no idea who he actually was or whether he even existed. But potential non-existance has not harmed his career as a saint and he continues to attract fans from most Christian denominations and even some Muslims.

Getting back to Alexandria, it is hard not to sympathise with the pagans, but no state can tolerate people taking the law into their own hands no matter how provoked they might be. And Athanasius had prudently kept the Christian faction out of the action, enabling the episode to be portrayed, quite accurately, as one where a Christian had been killed by a pagan mob. This was a potentially dangerous situation. Julian's response was self indulgent and inflammatory. He mildly rebuked the pagans saying that although they had good cause they should not have behaved in such a way. But given their Grecian heritage and their love of the gods he generously pardoned them. Having given his own side a license to kill, he then moved against the man who might have been able to diffuse the situation. Athanasius was banished again - though he must have been getting used to it by now.

Athanasius was a tricky character and was just about the polar opposite of Julian. Where Julian was full of intellectual curiosity, Athanasius was unimaginative but effective. Julian cared about ideas, Athanasius was a political operator. Above all, Athanasius was intent on destroying everything Julian wanted to save. It is no wonder that Julian wanted him out of the way and preferably dead.

But Athanasius was at least able to deliver some kind of peace deal, so it might well have been better to have at least tried to negotiate with him. Much might have been gained by a more measured approach trading a degree of acceptance for the Church for the promise of good behaviour by its members. But compromise was not the spirit of the time and Julian was set on confrontation.

And confrontation there was. Temples were attacked by the Christians even though they no longer had any official blessing to do so. There is something uniquely horrible about the deliberate destruction of other people's religious images. The destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas by the Afghan Taliban in 2001 is recent enough to recall just how horrific such behaviour is. These huge monuments were dynamited on the orders of extreme muslim clerics in a triumph of righteous indignation over fellow feeling and respect for others. The statues were 1500 years old and can never now be replaced. The classical world was full of monuments as old in their time as the Budhhas were in ours. The destruction of many of these by the Christians must have been profoundly shocking for the sincere pagans and non-believers alike. With a pagan back on the throne the Churches were now attacked. If Church sources are to be believed, which they generally aren't, the Christians themselves were attacked too. But the attacks on pagan monuments continued as well. In Pessinus the alter of Cybele was overturned almost in the presence of Julian himself.

We are familiar with the pattern of sectarian violence from so many places around the world. In fact as I am working on this piece, from Egypt itself comes a transparent attempt by somebody to convert a political crisis into a religious one by carrying out attacks against the Coptic Christians. The Egyptians seem unwilling to go along with this and their pro-democracy protestors are remaining non-factional. This is greatly to their credit. It is impossible to give the same credit to Julian. This was his reaction to trouble breaking out in Edessa. The Arian Christians had attacked the Valentinian Christans and the magistrates had struggled to restore order. Rather than follow judicial procedure to identify and punish the specific wrong doers, Julian simply confiscated the Church's property in Edessa. The money was distributed among the soldiers. Meanwhile Julian engaged in the sort of thing that many democratic politicians probably wish they could get away with by telling his opponents exactly what he thought. "I show myself," says Julian, "the true friend of the Galilaeans. Their admirable law has promised the kingdom of heaven to the poor; and they will advance with more diligence in the paths of virtue and salvation, when they are relieved by my assistance from the load of temporal possessions." His light tone did not continue. "Take care, how you provoke my patience and humanity. If these disorders continue, I will revenge on the magistrates the crimes of the people; and you will have reason to dread, not only confiscation and exile, but fire and the sword."

The Roman Empire wasn't a cuddly place and being equally ferocious to all parties would probably have been tolerated, and even approved of. But pagan atrocities were indulged while Christian ones were not. It is hard not to interpret this as indicating that Julian was quite prepared to use violence to achieve his religious ends. I suspect he did not have any plans for a widespread violent crackdown on Christianity, but I think that was not for any other reason than that he thought it wouldn't be the most effective means of achieving his ends. At the same time as handling day to day politicking with his opponents he also brought in a policy that would have had a long term weakening effect. He banned the use of the classical Greek texts by teachers unwilling to accept that the Gods in those texts were true. This had the effect of preventing Christians from teaching. This was a serious blow against the propagation of Christianity. Getting them young is still one of the main strategies used to keep the faith going. It rankles with me that my taxes subsidise what are known as 'faith based schools', or schools which promote irrational nonsense as I like to think of them. Julian's move was a subtle one, because the study of the great works of ancient literature was a passport into the civil service, so passing up on it would be a tough thing to do.

Julian also applied financial pressure, again using what looked like a long term strategy to starve out Christianity rather than directly confront it. The Church had already lost the patronage of the state more or less from day one of his reign, and this was bad enough. He also stopped people leaving their property to it - which cut off another major source of income.

His third prong was a very clever one. Individual Christian leaders were made liable for repairing the damage done to pagan places of worship. It was hard to argue with the justice of this. It also had the effect of hitting the Christian leadership without offering them the chance of martyrdom. Perishing by the sword for refusing to renounce your beliefs has a certain romantic appeal. Ending up potless due to criminal damage charges doesn't have the same resonance.

So Julian's campaign against the Christians was well thought out and implemented with energy. If it had a weakness it was that Julian was sincere in his paganism. He was intelligent and worldly wise, but he underestimated the strength of his opponents, probably because he thought he actually had the heavens on his side. He also grossly overestimated the strength of his own faction. Converts are often very zealous.

This was made most clear in his visit to Antioch. He went to Syria to visit the famous temple of Apollo. This had been founded by one of Alexander the Great's generals and was renowned as a beautiful location five miles outside the city itself. The vast statue of Apollo filled a huge portion of the temple overawing worshippers. It was located in a shady grove of laurels and cypresses offering shade from the harsh Syrian sun, with numerous streams flowing through keeping the leaves in the trees green and making it even more idyllic. The laurel tree was sacred to Daphne, who in legend had been loved by Apollo, but who got herself turned into a laurel to escape his clutches. There was also a spring which supported a shrine to Daphne and which was famous as an oracle that rivalled that of Delphi. The situating of places of worship for Apollo and Daphne so close together had an obvious romantic attraction for young couples. Gibbon manages to put it decorously.

"the senses were gratified with harmonious sounds and aromatic odors; and the peaceful grove was consecrated to health and joy, to luxury and love. The vigorous youth pursued, like Apollo, the object of his desires; and the blushing maid was warned, by the fate of Daphne, to shun the folly of unseasonable coyness."

Julian knew all about this famous religious centre and was anxious to see it. No doubt he imagined white robed youths celebrating with music and dancing overseen by a cadre of priests presenting burnt offerings to the beneficent deities in heaven. And where better to get council on the momentous events in which he was playing a part than in the prophetic springs of Daphne. But his information was out of date. When he arrived he found that it had fallen into disrepair and neglect. There was only one priest in attendance. And he could only rustle up a single goose as a sacrifice. For the devout Julian it must have been a heart breaking visit. And there was worse to come. The site had been desecrated by having a Christian saint interred on the holy ground. Rebuilding the temple would be a long job, but the sacrilegious burial at least could be dealt with quickly. He ordered the body to be removed and sent to a church in the city of Antioch.

The saint in question was Saint Babylos who was supposed to have been killed during the persecution of Decius. The return of his body was turned into a major demonstration by the Christians who turned out in great numbers to accompany the bones and sing hymns leaving Julian in no doubt that they had a very high level of support in the city. That night a huge fire broke out destroying the temple of Apollo. There is some doubt raised by some accounts as to whether the Christians were indeed responsible for the fire. Right. If it was an accident, you have to say that was one heck of a coincidence. Julian at any rate had no doubt that his religion had suffered a terrorist attack and reacted.

Or to be more accurate, overreacted.

The cathedral in Antioch was closed and its wealth was seized. To try and find the culprits - and some valuables that had been hidden - a few church officials were tortured and one of them beheaded. Torture was standard legal procedure at the time, so nobody thought much about that, but the beheading was a bit harsh.

It was not ordered by Julian and he later condemned it. There are a number of martyrs in the Catholic canon who are supposed to have been killed by Julian, but this is the closest he got to ever actually killing a Christian simply for his faith. Having said that, Julian's actions raised the temperature of the issue. This led to many avoidable deaths.

But although Julian was not the monster his enemies later portrayed him as, it has to be said that his time in Antioch was the low point of his career. He had been popular in Gaul, where Christianity had not yet made much progress and his paganism was not much of an issue. In Constantinople and Egypt faction fighting was already in progress and so he had ready made adherents and supporters simply by choosing a side. Antioch wasn't like that. Religious change had been a bit more steady and organic there. It had been a haven of peaceful coexistence of pagans and Christians before Julian's visit. He was probably unconcerned about upsetting the Christians, though even on the narrowest of tactical considerations provoking a group that posed no threat while there was already trouble elsewhere was hardly a good move. But he didn't really hit it off with the pagans either. Being traditionalists they didn't really take to his novel brand of paganism and he ended up arguing with them as well. In turn they mocked his beard, which given his power was a braver mover than it sounds. When Julian finally left on his way to Persia he left made a promise never to return. I doubt many were too disappointed.

Julian never did return to Antioch as we'll see in the next episode.

If you want to follow my extended review of Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire from the beginning (and who wouldn't?) it starts with Augustus founding the empire.

Julian and the Pagans - Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Chapter 23 Part 3

2011-11-27T23:02:00.001Z

Constantine's adoption of Christianity and the ramifications of it triggered off a full scale religious crisis in the empire that was to last for the whole of the fourth century. As Julian came to the throne Christians were already fighting other Christians and it was only a matter of time before other religions resorted to violence as well. What would Julian do about it? To everyone's surprise his first edict was one of tolerance. His approach looked good on paper. Everyone was free to follow whatever spiritual path that suited them. Full religious freedom was good news for most people on a personal level. Jews and pagans had a whole series of irksome restrictions lifted. The previously non-favoured brands of Christianity also were able to worship in freedom.

Announcing universal freedom of worship and stopping religious persecution was a great start. Letting people believe what they choose so long as they respect other people's right to do the same is a very sound policy. Tolerance is a good thing for its own sake. But it was also just what the empire needed. The energy being consumed by religious fanaticism was desperately needed to defend the empire from the very real external threats it faced. If Julian could have succeeded in creating genuine religious tolerance he would have been the greatest emperor that had ever lived at any time in any empire. Given the previous history, in particular the partial policies practiced by Julian's uncle Constantine and his sons, it was never really going to be possible. But even an unsuccessful but sincere attempt would have been admirable.

But what Julian did next made it crystal clear that he was not an even handed monarch concerned only for his subjects' well being. By identifying himself so strongly with one particular faction it was impossible for Julian to appear completely impartial. And he didn't try very hard with the pretence either. Characteristically, he did something that nobody else in his position would have done and which nobody would have expected. He wrote a book. His three volume work 'Against the Galileans' attacked the very core of Christian belief. Nobody likes being criticised. It hurts a lot more when it is, as this was, done very well. And when it comes directly from the hand of the man in charge with the power of life and death it is still more alarming.

Knowing Julian, it is entirely possible to believe that he thought that his book would actually win people back to their old gods. This seems naive at first, but it might have served just that purpose. It was after all a pretty powerful message about how to win the favour of the new ruler. This message was not lost on the professional career bureaucrats that were now a feature of the imperial organisation. They were less concerned about whether a doctrine was true than whether it is expedient. So it isn't surprising to see some officials switching to paganism with the new regime, and later switching right on back when the tide turned again. It is always worth remembering that even at times of great religious controversy the vast majority of people couldn't care less and simply follow the line of least resistance. These people don't make it into the pages of history books, but they probably enjoy their lives more and in most cases those lives last longer.

In any case, Julian was soon promoting his fellow pagans calling on his religious network to staff his court as far as he could. Apart from his immediate circle Julian did not immediately purge the Christians. It wasn't really possible given that they were so well established in the government organisation. In any case his official line was that all his subjects were free to chose their religion. But the sincere Christians were no doubt disgruntled even when they weren't actually being replaced. The Christians had been highly influential for 40 years and had no doubt got used to it. Their position changed very quickly. They had enjoyed favourable legal treatment, direct revenues from the government and the pleasure of being able to persecute their opponents. All these great advantages disappeared overnight.

However, they remained a formidable power, particularly in the East. By now, they may even have actually formed a majority in the provinces of Syria and Egypt. Julian's response was to try and create what we would probably nowadays call a rainbow coalition against them.

Julian was to show favour to traditional pagans, not just the neoplatonic elites. This was natural enough. But he was also indulgent to Mithraism and to the Jews. In contrast he attempted to foster the divisions between the Christians, which must have seemed like an easy strategy. In the event, in the face of a common enemy the Arians and the Orthodox were able to some extent to bury their differences for the time being. Looking back on this it isn't hard to see how this revealed the true motives of the different factions, whose deep seated theological differences suddenly became less important once who got to benefit from the imperial largesse was no longer at issue.

He certainly indulged his own particular religious inclinations to the full. His particular special deity was the Sun, and he sacrificed personally to him at sunrise and sunset. But he didn't neglect the stars and the Moon, which he also regularly worshiped. He assisted in ceremonies when he was able to, taking the role of a simple functionary in the temple. He would bring the wood, and sometimes carry out the sacrifice of the animal and with his own hands examine the entrails. And if his personal life was Spartan, there was nothing modest about his worship. Oxen would on some occasions be sacrificed by the hundred.

Augustus had acquired for himself the role of Pontifex Maximus some three hundred and fifty years before. The wily founder of the empire had used this position in charge of the Roman's state religion as a means to bolster his power and authority. Julian took it seriously as a sacred duty. He supported temples throughout the empire with the liberal grants that had previously been funding the official church. The revival of the ancient religion was popular with lots of the subjects of the empire. One pagan writer praises the revival of religious practices that could now be performed openly and without danger recording the rapture of the votaries as the sacrifice gained the favour of the gods and provided them with a congenial supper.

Julian surrounded himself with advisors on heavenly matters, many of whom were drawn directly from the circle who had initiated him into the cult in secrecy all those years before. This might well have been his biggest mistake. At least one of his confidants was later put on trial to explain his sudden acquisition of great wealth. It turned out that even Platonic philosophers find the allure of wealth hard to resist. But Julian needed these people for what he probably regarded as the most important project of his life. His aim was to put the pagans on a footing that would enable them to resist Christianity in the long run. Paganism wasn't really a single religion. It was a whole load of different cults, some quite closely related to each other, some less so. Julian had a Neoplatonic framework that gave them all a single theoretical underpinning. But that was all it was, just a theory. There was no reflection of this theory on the ground in the organisation of the temples and other religious activities. Julian proposed to fill this gap. He had in mind a hierarchy of priests all reporting back into him as the Pontifex Maximus. The state had funded a lot of religious activities in the past and Julian proposed to put the whole thing onto a much more organised footing. He certainly had some very clear ideas about the way the priests should behave. They would have to be upstanding moral characters, beyond reproach. They needed to chose their friends wisely. This being Julian, he was interested in what they had in their libraries. Philosophy and history were okay. Satires were not approved of.

This brings up one point that Gibbon only makes the most fleeting of references to. Julian was in no way narrow minded and was supportive of other religions and was a huge enthusiast for learning in general. That his chief animosity was directed towards the Christians is understandable. Their intolerance of anyone else's beliefs was the biggest threat to his vision after all, quite apart from the fact that for a lot of his life they had been trying to kill him.

But he also disliked the Epicureans, the Skeptics and other atheist philosophers. They weren't organised and didn't cause any trouble so they never became an issue. Unlike the Christians these people had no problems at all going through the motions of worship for the sake of a quiet life. Previous pagan emperors had not given them a second thought. The fact that Julian was highlighting them shows how deeply he had imbibed his ideology and for me makes clearer than anything else how for all his desire to restore the past he was far more a radical than he was a conservative. It is also ironic that the belief system that was ultimately to triumph was the one that made the least noise. As is often the case, it is the quiet ones you have to watch.

Julian was well aware that one of the Christians' big plus points was their distribution of charity indiscriminately. It must indeed have infuriated both him and other pagans. Taxes were raised from everybody then passed to the church for distribution to the poor, building up the reputation of the church in the process. Julian planned to take this idea and simply transfer it to the temples. So you can see why he was concerned about the character of the people who he was going to have on the front line of this new project. This was in fact the weakest point in the plan.

Julian might have been at least partially blind to the defects on his own side, but he was well aware of the ins and outs of Christian controversy and had a keen idea of how this weakness could work to his advantage. He invited the leaders of the main Christian factions to the palace for dinner. This would have been a politically sound and statesmanlike thing to do, to reach out to the different groups in his empire and to establish a relationship with each of them. But he invited them all at the same time, knowing full well that they were at loggerheads with each other. On cue, arguments broke out and voices were raised. Julian was as keen as anyone on a good argument and would no doubt have liked to join in, but his voice was soon drowned out by the noise of the assembled clerics. In the end he resorted to shouting 'hear me, hear me. The Alemanni have heard me. The Germani have heard me!'

Julian was contemptuous of the Christians and it is not hard to agree with him. Given that they set such a low base it wasn't hard to outclass them, but it has to be said that while Julian's behaviour wasn't as bad it wasn't a huge amount better.

A glaring example of the way he was anything but even handed in practice was his handling of the army. The army of the West had taken Julian's enthusiasm for paganism in general and sacrifices in particular to heart. I imagine modern soldiers might be tempted too. It involved chanting and dancing girls followed by roasting an ox which the participants got to share a portion of. It sounds a bit more fun than a sermon and prayers. The eastern legions had not had the same experience and were used to fighting under Christian symbols. Julian had these replaced with the traditional ones obliging Christian soldiers to commit sacrilege when going about their normal duties. This seemed to go well and there is no indication that Julian was in any danger of a Christian inspired religious mutiny. His successful exploits against the barbarians in the west stood him in good stead here. But to really cement his hold over the true power in the empire a successful campaign against the Persians would be just the trick. With that under his belt Julian's position would be strong enough to cope with any crisis, up to and including a civil war.

Given the raised passions it wasn't long before a crisis arose. In fact it was almost straight away, and in exactly the place that would have been predicted - the hot bed of religious controversy and strife: Alexandria. That is where we we'll be going for the next podcast.

If you want to follow my extended review of Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire from the beginning (and who wouldn't?) it starts with Augustus founding the empire.

Was St Paul a Christian?

2011-11-26T22:37:00.004Z

St Paul converted on the road to Damascus

I am indebted to a couple of my Twitter chums, @BibleAlsoSays and @TheDudeDiogenes for provoking some thoughts that I thought worth sharing. Just to give a bit of background, I have got the King James Bible on my Kindle. I never used to read the Bible much. For a start I am an atheist. Also, in print form the type is rather small. And the layout is a bit weird. Why do they have to number all the paragraphs? I suppose it makes sense for reference purposes but it does make it hard work to actually read. And there is another drawback to reading a printed copy of the Bible. If you read it in public, well it makes you look a bit odd.

But having it on the Kindle has meant that I have taken to dipping into it at odd moments. There is some good prose in it. Genesis is quite moving if you can suspend disbelief. It isn't as good as Paradise Lost or Lord of the Rings, but it isn't bad. The Song of Solomon is quite a nice bit of writing. Most of it is dull of course. Has anyone in history ever actually read the Book of Numbers? I know from writing this blog that coming up with decent content can be a problem, but frankly how does an inventory of state assets at a particular point in time get to be incorporated into a major religion's foundational text?

Another low point is the four Gospels. Plodding plot, unbelievable characters and frankly rather unremarkable miracles build up to a reasonably dramatic ending when the main character meets an unpleasant end. This is spoiled for me by the way it turns out he was a god all along and so isn't really dead after all. It is a bit like all those Star Trek films where the main characters don't ever seem to stay dead for very long.

But aside from the gospels, there are some good bits in the New Testament. I have developed a bit of a soft spot for Saint Paul. This is a bit surprising because I read him specifically because he was being quoted by some intolerant bigots to justify their intolerant bigotry in an online forum I was following. It turned out that the man himself was a lot more palatable. "Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal" is pretty much as good a rebuke to those who condemn others without showing them compassion as it is possible to frame in English.

What I hadn't noticed until my friends on Twitter pointed it out, is how rarely Paul refers to the well known stories about Jesus. Now I haven't read everything by Paul in the Bible, so I am taking what @BibleAlsoSays on trust. His tweet says "Question: Why doesn't Paul (or any other early epistles) mention anything in the Gospel Story, not even the empty tomb?" This is consistent with everything by Paul I have read so I am going to assume it is true - nobody has contradicted it on Twitter as far as I can see.

Now this is an intriguing thing isn't it? One of the leading figures in setting up Christianity, whose letters are so significant that they get included in the holy book, somehow barely mentions the resurrection explicitly? Considering how central this supernatural event is to Christianity it is a most curious omission. Is it possible those bits were stuck in later?

I wonder if when the Bible was being sorted out at the Council of Nicea early in the fourth century they looked at the gospels and decided they needed something to beef it up a bit. They alighted on the work of Paul which fitted the bill nicely, with no doubt a few modifications. Like for instance, a miraculous conversion? That would handily explain away any previous writings that might turn up that contradicted the party line. Thinking along the same lines, what is it with that change of name business? How many other people changed their names when they changed religion? (Actually one of the things that puts me off a sudden conversion in the style of St Paul is that I might need to change my first name. I quite like being called Colin. Polin sounds a bit odd.)

Of course altering one letter of a name is a great way of quickly and easily re-attributing somebody's work. In an age where the idea of plagiarism hadn't arisen and where there was no such thing as copyright it would not be a particularly difficult thing to do to steal someone's intellectual property and use it for purposes which the author had never conceived of. And this is hardly conspiracy theory stuff. Biblical scholars agree that at least some of the writing attributed to Paul in the Bible was actually written by someone else. Editing in a few references to Jesus in the actual Paul material doesn't seem particularly unlikely.

A religion is a lot more than just a book of course. In fact The Book is not even the most important bit of it. The organisation and the traditions are way more important, and it is the constant repetition of the rituals and the social pressure that really hold the whole thing together and keep it going. I am sure there are plenty of Christians who never read the Bible, and those that do seem totally unfazed by the discrepancies between what is written and what is actually practised. Protestants and Catholics don't even use the same Bible. If the Bible seems to have been bodged together when they realised they needed to standardise the writings, well that is the way these things tend to develop.

We don't have the original documents on which the Bible is based so this all has to be pure speculation. But I wonder if the historical Paul's beliefs were anything like those of the Christians who now use his writing as a key part of their faith. He might well have had some very different views. In fact, I wonder if he was in reality even a Christian?

Julian and the Jews: Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Chapter 23 Part 2

2011-11-21T22:57:00.001Z

It is hard not to admire the way that the Jews have succeeded in maintaining their culture and identity for many thousands of years. This has been achieved in the face of some pretty big practical difficulties. They have rarely had the support of a state and have often been subject to some pretty severe persecutions.

For instance, when Julian became the last pagan to come to the throne they were going through one of their bad patches. The Christians had not that long ago broken away from the Jewish tradition and the two faiths had the kinds of issues that might be expected from a pair that had just been through a messy divorce. Prior to the rise of Christianity the Jews had fallen foul of several of the emperors as a result of a number of brave but not tremendously successful revolts. Hadrian had banned them from Jerusalem. The ban was still in force and on top of that Constantius had imposed extra taxes on them.

So having suffered at the hands of the traditional pagans and the newly established Christians, it is unlikely that they had much hope that the new pagan emperor was going to be any different to what they had been used to. They would probably not have guessed that they were about to get just about the most pro-Jewish gentile leader in history. Nor would anyone else. But Julian was a man who was always full of surprises.

I think the best way to think of him is to imagine someone today growing up in a strongly working class area, Pittsburgh, Sheffield, somewhere like that, with left wing parents. Say they were union officials or something like that. He shows promise, goes off to college and comes back an ardent libertarian free marketeer. He baffles everyone. He knows all the foundational texts of socialism. Unlike all the traditional believers he has actually read Marx. He knows all the arguments back to front so there is no point trying to win him back. But he is equally bizarre to his new friends on the right. They haven't read people like Hayek either, and can't keep up with free market jargon, so are often just as baffled as to what this guy is on about.

This is how I see Julian. In his time religion was the major point of controversy rather than politics, but he had basically crossed from the side you would expect him to be on to being a partisan for the other side. This gave him a radically different perspective on things to just about everyone around him. He wasn't brought up a pagan. He had to study it and learn it. So he didn't pick up the traditional disdain of the polytheist for the monotheism of Judaism. In fact far from it, he had studied the old testament carefully and had worked out his own ideas about what the teachings of Moses really meant. I have a feeling that under other circumstances the Jews might well have been much happier without that level of interest from an outsider. But Julian was in a position to help them and did so when he dropped the extra taxes the Jews had to pay - which must have opened their ears. He also proposed to let them return to Jerusalem.

At this time Jerusalem had already acquired its status as a religious tourist destination and the Christian holy places were generating healthy trade revenues. There was little evidence of its long history as the centre of worship of the Jewish faith. The temple on Mount Zion had been destroyed with typical Roman thoroughness by Hadrian. The ruins had been removed and the ground ploughed up. In news broadcasts about the current problems in the Middle East it is often pointed out that the temple mount is sacred to three different religions - Islam, Christianity and Judaism. In fact there is a fourth one with a claim. After the destruction of the Jewish temple by Hadrian a temple to Venus had been built. Let's keep that one to ourselves shall we? In think they have enough trouble out there already. The removal of the Jews from Jerusalem had been the Christians' big break and its development as a point of pilgrimage was a nice little earner. So it isn't surprising that they found the destruction of the Jewish temple to be something of a sweet moment for them. The story grew up that Jesus had predicted the destruction of the temple and that it would never be rebuilt. It must have been a comforting prophecy for the traders making a living there.

As prophecies go it must have seemed like a pretty good bet. After all a Christian emperor was in on the act. And even in the event of a pagan emperor they were hardly likely to trouble to rebuild a temple to a god they didn't acknowledge to please a small group of habitual malcontents and troublemakers. Nobody anticipated an emperor like Julian.

Lots of people find thinking outside the box a bit difficult. Julian on the other hand rarely seems to have thought inside the box. He looked at Jewish scriptures through his neoplatonic lens. Where other people might see an incompatible monotheistic religion with troublesome requirements that were a potential for public disorder, Julian recognised another imperfect but still valuable reflection of the One. The only trouble was that the Jews were not fulfilling the requirements Julian had picked up in the texts for performing sacrifices. On enquiring it turned out that the problem was a practical one - without a temple in Jerusalem there was no sacred place to carry out the sacrifices in. A tough problem for most people, but Julian was an emperor. He could order the temple to be rebuilt. This would not just bring the Jews more closely into line with his religious ideals, it would disrupt the Christian's revenues from the holy places. So that was good too. And it would also flatly contradict the Christian prophecy. What's not to like? And that is without even considering the long term benefits of creating a reliably anti-christian institution bang in the middle of the Christian heartland.

Julian took this project very seriously, putting Alypius in charge of it. Alypius was a native of Syria who at the time was running the province of Britain and was one of Julian's closest friends. On top of this high level state backing the Jewish community shared in the enthusiasm providing further funds, labour and equipment to clear the ground and to lay the foundations for the re-establishment of the centre of their religion. Unfortunately despite all this the whole thing turned out to be in vain and nothing was achieved. Six months after the start of the project Julian was dead, and with him any hope of its successful completion died as well. The Christian writers were quick to attribute the failure to the the direct intervention of God. There had been earthquakes to upset the clearing and digging and firebolts had been shot down from Heaven actually burning some of the workers.

It would be easy to dismiss these testamonials from Christian sources. They tend to lie a lot. But pagan sources tell the same story. It is notable that God seems to have adopted Jupiter's signature means of communicating his displeasure on this occasion. It could well be that the pagans were just as cheesed off with imperial resources going to such an eccentric scheme as the Christians were. Julian really was one of a kind and it is hard to imagine anyone else conceiving of the idea in the first place, let alone actually instigating it. Julian's promise to return to share in the worship at the newly consecrated temple was never to be fulfilled. But like much of his life, it is almost impossible not to speculate what might have happened if he had succeeded. A Jewish temple that survived the fall of the empire and which lasted to the present day would almost certainly have had some kind of effect on history, whether for good or bad it is hard to say. Might it have been a focus that allowed a Jewish state to be created centuries earlier than the present one? And if it had would that have helped? Given the grim nature of the history of the Jews it could hardly have made things much worse. But that has to be speculation. What is certain is that there was never going to be another emperor like Julian.

If you want to follow my extended review of Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire from the beginning (and who wouldn't?) it starts with Augustus founding the empire.

Against the Galileans by Julian the Apostate

2011-11-11T11:04:00.000Z

Not many leaders in history write books. Quite a few don't read books. Those that do put pen to paper rarely write anything of more than historical interest. But even among the small number that do stand up to scrutiny, Julian the Apostate's lengthy polemic 'Against the Galileans', his critique of the Christianity of his time, is a completely unique document. There really is nothing to compare it with.

It must have been a therapeutic book to write. For ten years he had hidden his paganism. As the nephew of Constantine, the man who brought Christianity to the empire, and possible heir to the throne it would have been suicide to admit it. Now he was the emperor himself he could say what he really thought, and boy did he ever do so! Being brought up as a Christian in the middle of all the controversies of the time, he knew his enemies and their literature well. In fact that is an understatement. He was as knowledgeable of Christian doctrine as any bishop. More so probably. He knew Christianity well and had long been aware of its flaws. Against the Galileans isn't simple nit picking, it is a full out and out assault on every aspect of the beliefs of the Christians from the bottom upwards.

His first problem is with God. As a pagan Julian had adopted Plato's conception of the God. The Christian version just doesn't stack up against the Platonic one. The God of Plato is supreme and transcendent, the definition of creativity and perfection. God is beyond good and evil and is the unique source of all knowledge. Matter is not simply created by God, it is the manifestation of His soul and provides an imperfect and incomplete vision of the forms in His sublime mind.

Compare that to the rather workaday God of the book of Genesis who seems to be bedeviled with project management issues and has severe problems in the design department. He fails to get it right first time on several occasions having to flood his own handiwork and intervene personally to stop mankind doing undesirable things. He starts getting things wrong from day one in the Garden of Eden by neglecting to provide Adam with a companion. (Actually strictly speaking that is day six.) When he belatedly adds her she instantly gets herself and Adam into trouble by eating forbidden fruit - though why the forbidden fruit needed to be created in the first place isn't explained.

As to the plan of creating a man with no conception of good or evil in the first place, what, Julian asks, is the use of someone who can't tell good from bad? In any case, Julian has noticed that in Genesis God creates relatively little in the way of new material - his main activities are devoted to rearranging stuff. To Julian this is indicative that God doesn't really have the full capabilities of a genuine creator. It all sounds much more like a low level regional god who has been puffed up beyond his pay scale by overenthusiastic supporters.

Moses is demoted to the role of a tribal leader pushing his own people's deity against those of the neighbours'. The ten commandments are dismissed as commonplace with the exception of the requirement to stick to one god.

Having put God and Moses in their place, Julian next finds fault with a few of the individual stories. Anyone who flicks through the Bible knows that it isn't hard to find the completely unbelievable in its pages. For example Julian forensically examines the account of the tower of Babel, one of the times God needs to come down to Earth to sort things out in the world that he had created. There was a danger that the tower being built would enable men to get into Heaven. There are a number of counter strategies open to an omnipotent being faced with this situation. The one God settles on is to give men lots of different languages to hinder future co-operation.

Julian points out that even with the advantage of a common language, it would be an impossible task even for the whole of mankind to make enough bricks to even reach the Moon let alone Heaven. He doesn't quote it, but he is probably using the very accurate figure calculated by Aristarchus some 600 years before.

That Julian is abreast of this kind of detailed scientific information and the authors of the Bible aren't is telling. We are used to the idea that science has vastly outstripped the compass of the Bible but it is worth remembering that the Greeks were ahead of the Bible before it was even written.

Saint Paul was well aware of this shortcoming and pops a warning against listening to philosophers into one of his letters.

Of course it is possible to treat a story like that of the Tower of Babel as simply a fable. But Julian is equally unimpressed looking at it that way. It might account for the differences in language, but it fails to explain why the people who speak such different languages also have different cultures and appearances.

Julian treats us to a quick review of how he, and presumably other educated Romans, saw the characteristics of the various races - he is generally quite positive about them all. Modern day Germans will no doubt be intrigued that their ancestors are described as being courageous and loving liberty, but badly organised. He attributes the differences between peoples to their different national gods. And he makes the rather obvious point that the Hebrews had not exactly flourished as you might have expected for a race that had been singled out for special treatment from the All-mighty. They had failed to produce not only any respectable philosophers but hadn't even managed a decent general and consequently had not prospered greatly.

Julian is a mystic not a skeptic: he is more than happy to accept the supernatural as an explanation and to take the writings of the Bible at face value where there is no particular reason to doubt it. He just doesn't rate it much. The miracles of Christ are dismissed as crummy rather than untrue. It is hard to disagree. Turning water into wine seems a bit prosaic for someone who is supposed to be God. Feeding 5,000 people with five loaves and two fish is a handy talent for a poorly organised party thrower, but hardly resonates with the role of creator of the universe. The non-catering related miracles are even more random and uninspiring unless you find pigs jumping off cliffs particularly exciting.

That the Bible has not been very well edited and is full of inconsistencies and contradictions is too obvious to miss and has amused generations of readers, but as far as I can tell Julian was the first to publicise them. He points out the striking difference between John and the other gospels. He derides the inability of Mathew and Mark to even agree on the same flagrantly bogus genealogy for Joseph. And what is the point of tracing him back to King David anyway. If Jesus was the son of God, the credentials of the man who happened to be married to his mother would be irrelevant.

Julian is respectful of Jewish culture. He goes to some lengths to justify an assertion that Moses required the Jews to sacrifice to their God. This enables him to minimise the differences between the Jews and other races, especially as he has demoted their God to a minor one. I have a feeling that Jews of the time reading it would not have been entirely happy with this interpretation. But it was an attempt by Julian to reach out to a group that whatever else they might be, were reliably anti-Christian. I imagine that they would go along with it as it meant that they could worship freely and even to rebuild their temple in Jerusalem which Hadrian had destroyed.

For sheer novelty value Against the Galileans must have been a sensation. Emperors just didn't do that kind of thing. And for the powerful Christian faction to be so openly attacked, mocked even, must have stunned adherents, opponents and the uncommitted alike. It was a radical text in more ways than one. The Romans had always been notably tolerant of religious diversity. Julian gives this tolerance a solid justification. He does this by interpreting all religions in a Platonic framework. But this was very new - previous generations of pagans had felt no need to justify their behaviour. It also written in such away that explicitly invites contrary views to be expressed. Julian is seeking to win an argument by reason, not laying down the law. Reading it, it is easy to forget that he was an absolute ruler. Maybe he had a vision of an empire where people were free to debate. Maybe one of his motivations was to open up this discussion and others as well.

The full text of Against the Galileans has not survived: it would be great to have more. . The Church was soon to have an almost total monopoly on the reproduction of manuscripts and nothing so scandalous had any chance of being kept in circulation. My review is of the little of it has been reconstructed from a rebuttal written by some otherwise worthless bishop (Cyril of Alexandria if you really want to know) and a few other fragments. It would be wonderful to have the whole thing.

But we have enough to give us an insight into the mind of one of the most original figures in history. Julian failed to save paganism, but it wasn't for lack of good arguments.

.

References

Colossians 2:8.

http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/julian_apostate_galileans_1_text.htm

Julian the Apostate - Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Chapter 23 Part 1

2011-10-30T22:32:00.000Z

Religion is often accused of causing most of the wars in history. This is hardly fair. People are quite capable of picking fights without any divine inspiration, even if religion is a handy justification to cover your true motives. And religious leaders sometimes take a role in solving problems, which evens up the balance sheet a bit. But the charge is not totally groundless. Religion itself can be the problem, and the religious trauma of the late Roman Empire is the textbook case.

The pattern is one that is familiar from looking at the news today. One group commits an outrage against another in order to provoke a reaction. The reaction is then used to justify the other group's case and to strengthen the authority of its leadership. All political leaders know how to use a good enemy. The cliches appear. 'There is a war on.' 'If you are not for us you are against us.' Nowadays we say that people are radicalised. The process takes on a life of its own with the cycle of crimes, martyrdom and repression being retold and reinterpreted. It can take centuries to work itself out to a final conclusion, by which time hardly anyone has any idea of why they were fighting in the first place.

Using violence to promote their religion was the major innovation of the early Christians, and one that worked very well for them. As it usually does, it led to a cycle of violence from other groups which probably peaked at about the time Julian became emperor. But it changed Christianity as well. It had originated as a group of friends of a charismatic leader. It had developed into a handy scam run by frauds and hucksters. Now it was changing again into an organised cult of thugs and fanatics. When they acquired power under Constantine they changed again and started attracting the ambitious and the politically ruthless. We'll be hearing less and less about female pastors and bishops being elected and more about their appointments and their intrigues.

Although Christians remained an overall minority in the empire, they were now centre stage and making the running. But there was plenty of opposition, at least potentially. The pagans were suffering from the destruction of their temples. Both pagans and Jews were being harassed by regulations explicitly designed to make their lives difficult. The possibility of full scale civil war was very real. The fighting so far was limited to the struggles amongst the Christians themselves. The Donatists in North Africa were in open rebellion. The orthodox were being persecuted by the Arians. Blood was flowing freely. An empire with enemies on the Rhine, the Danube and the Euphrates had opened up a fourth internal war. The world had gone crazy. Someone had to bring it back to its senses.

What were Julian's options? He could continue the policy of favouring the Arians and trying to impose their creed on everyone else. This was the most straight forward, but it meant continuing to devote military resources to violent repression. The least difficult policy politically would have been to switch support to the orthodox Christians. This would have got him the support of the strongest single faction and I think this can be considered to be the 'default' position. This would have been the surest way of achieving stability, though it meant conceding a lot of power to the church hierarchy.

The hardest thing to achieve was the most desirable. The long term health of the empire would most benefit by bringing an immediate end to the faction fighting between the groups. Was there any way to do this? The ideal would have been an official separation of church and state keeping politics and religion apart and leaving every citizen to genuinely chose their own belief system, much like the admirably secular constitution of the United States. Advanced as Roman civilisation was, it wasn't ready for that. But there was an option that wasn't too far off it. How about a tolerant paganism that recognised and supported diversity of belief?

Julian's initial proclamation was ideal. He gave all subjects of the empire full freedom of religious expression. This sounded promising and could have been the basis for a realistic settlement. The pagans could restore their temples, and the banned Christian heretics could return to their posts. The Christians lost their right to torment each other, which actually made a considerable number of Christians beneficiaries of Julian's policy. Handled well, it could have marked the beginning of a new era of peace and mutual tolerance. But to do this, in an age of intolerance and fanaticism, Julian would have had to rise above faction fighting.

Unfortunately, Julian for all his virtues was not that man. And when you look at what he had come to believe, and how he had come to believe it, it isn't hard to see why. Although he is best remembered as being the last pagan emperor, he was not a traditional pagan with beliefs inherited from his ancestors. He was called an apostate as an insult by his enemies, but an apostate he was according to the dictionary definition. He was brought up as a Christian but consciously rejected that religion. This is pretty inflammatory behaviour, as Sir Salman Rushdie could confirm.

You can of course reject a religion - many people do it every day - but you can't reject your upbringing. He had been brought up in the typical fanaticism of the time. When he converted to paganism he took the fanaticism he had been trained in over to his new religion. Basically, he was as crazy as the rest of them.

Maybe he would have been able to cure himself of this with time. He was a resourceful and intelligent man and seemed to have remarkable self control, and above all he was always willing to learn. But time was the thing he never had. But as it was the empire was now run by a man for whom the religious controversies of his time were not a problem to be managed, they were his chief preoccupation and he had chosen the side he was going to support.

People who actually act on their religious impulses are rare. True believers are scarce enough to begin with, and they tend not make a huge impact on the world. Following the actual teachings of most religions would more or less guarantee you a blameless but obscure life. History is generally made by people for whom this world rather than the next is what is on their mind. But there are one or two rare exceptions. St Paul springs to mind. He seems to be both sincere and worldly enough to understand how things work. Actually as an aside for non-Christian listeners - which I imagine is all of you by now - St Paul is well worth a read. He isn't anything like the impression you get of him from the people who like to quote him a lot. Neither man would welcome the comparison, but Julian shows the same genuine devotion to his beliefs combined with a shrewd practical appreciation of how the world actually works.

Julian's paganism was acquired not inherited but by the time he became the emperor was deep rooted. He had been to obliged to study the Bible as a child. I think it was simply the shortcomings of that book that put him off. This is a common enough experience. Many atheists say that the Bible is the book that they would most recommend to someone they wished to dissuade. I don't think any further explanation is really necessary.

There was probably no particular point at which he rejected Christianity, but we can say precisely when he aligned him clearly with paganism. At the age of 20 he was initiated, in deep secret, into the Eleusinian mysteries.

The mysteries were a secret initiation rite into a cult based in Eleusis. The origins are lost in prehistory and by the time of Julian were over a thousand, maybe two thousand years old. The rites were secret. Betraying the secrets was punishable by death so not surprisingly, not much is known about them. But this doesn't stop Gibbon from speculating.

I shall not presume to describe the horrid sounds, and fiery apparitions, which were presented to the senses, or the imagination, of the credulous aspirant, till the visions of comfort and knowledge broke upon him in a blaze of celestial light.

Despite the secrecy the mysteries had been quite respectable. The temple had been under the protection of the emperors and the emperor Hadrian had been initiated. Marcus Aurelius had rebuilt it when it was damaged in a barbarian raid. But with the rise of Christianity they had fallen from favour and Julian was taking a huge risk by getting involved. Who knows, maybe the Christian hierarchy did get wind of it. That might explain why they were so keen to get rid of him.

One modern theory about the Eluesinian initiation rites is that there may have been psychoactive substances involved. If so, this might explain why Julian was to spend the rest of his life literally talking to the Gods themselves. He knew them well enough to be able to recognise them as individuals, and often sought their advice. This is one of those things makes Julian closer to the Christian emperors that he despised than the traditional pagan predecessors of an earlier age. It is hard to imagine Augustus or Vespasian chatting intimately to Zeus. It sounds much more like Constantine who knew Christ well enough to get direct personal messages. As conservatives throughout history have found, you can never really escape the times you actually live in.

I have speculated that it was reading the Bible that put the intellectual Julian off of Christianity. But that doesn't explain why he turned to paganism. Paganism wasn't really one religion, it was a patchwork of gods, concepts, practices and superstitions accumulated over many centuries and absorbed from many cultures. It didn't really have a theology, more a haphazard menu of options you could pick and chose from. At first sight it is hard to imagine how this chaotic jumble would appeal to an intellectually rigorous philosopher. Even if Christianity was philosophically a bit rubbish at this stage in its development, how was this any better?

But there was a strand in paganism that fitted the bill perfectly. Julian attached himself to the school of the Platonists. Their version was based on the work of Plato but with a lot of refinements. Paganism, in its Platonic form, makes a lot more sense than Christianity does.

If you have a notion of paganism like the one I was taught at school, where the Jews were pioneers of monotheism as some kind of unique innovation which Christianity built on, prepare for a shock. Platonic Paganism was monotheistic. The universe was the creation of a single entity - the One. The One was the prime mover and creator of everything. However he - or more properly it, the One is beyond gender - chose to operate through lesser beings that he endowed with free will, most important amongst which were the Celestial Gods. There were seven of these, corresponding to the seven objects in the sky that can be seen to move against the solid background of the fixed stars, the five planets visible to the naked eye plus the Sun and the Moon. In fact the ancients referred to all seven as planets - the word literally means wanderers. Even today, each of the seven days of the week has its corresponding planet and deity.

The Greek philosopher Ptolemy had worked out a very beautiful cosmology based on each of the planets occupying its own sphere that rotated above the Earth. His calculations allowed the movements of the planets to be predicted with great accuracy. This is now looked back on as an early triumph of science, which indeed it is. But it also fascinated the Platonists. Porphyry, one of its leading thinkers, wrote a review of Ptolemy's work. Down here on Earth everything is change and decay. The next sphere up is the Moon which is unchanging but whose face still looks a bit random. Further up the Sun is a more splendid being but one who still interacts a lot with the Earth, drawing up the water to create the rain etc. Moving up the spheres get slower moving and more ethereal until you end up in the seventh heaven next to the unchanging eternal stars.

The movements of the planets, if the sun and moon are included, do have a correlation with events on earth such as the seasons and tides. It isn't so far fetched a notion then to suppose that a careful study of the skies might predict what was to happen on earth. Now that Ptolemy could tell you what was going to happen in the sky, the way was open to divining the future here on Earth. This idea is still to some extent alive in the horoscopes that daily papers still publish.

The fact that the seven heavens all had their own god gave a plausible way to use this information to sway things your way. Maintaining good relations with the gods was clearly key, and so it was crucial to keep the temples up and running and sacrifices regularly made.

The system of the Platonists has an appealing elegance to it. The free will accorded to the Gods and their ability to act independently neatly overcomes the many logical problems you get with an omnipotent being. Take the existence of evil for instance - always a tough question for a believer in a debate. How do you square all the bad things that happen with an all powerful loving God? The Platonists could take this in their stride. Sure, the One is perfect, but that doesn't stop Jupiter from cocking up from time to time. He's only a powerful immortal god after all - he can't be expected to know everything. And the different deities have different areas of expertise and agendas, so although they are all working to fulfil the vision of the One, some conflicts and misunderstandings between them is inevitable.

It also makes prayers a lot more sensible. Praying is psychologically a very satisfying process, but one that flies in the face of logic if you are either an atheist or a believer in an omnipotent being. In the first case, nobody is listening. In the second, He knows already so why bother? For the pagan it is simply good sense. If you can contact a being that is in a position to help you, why wouldn't you give it a go?

So four hundred years or more after the death of Plato his followers were coming up with new and creative interpretations of his work, and modern ways of looking at religion. In retrospect modern academics have coined the term Neoplatonism to describe it. Gibbon doesn't use this term and it wouldn't have had any meaning at the time so I am not going to use it either - I just mention it because if you want to look into it further that is probably the best term to stick into Google to get started.

That the thinking going on around paganism was both original enough to justify a name to distinguish itself from traditional Platonism, and even that paganism at this stage had intellectual developments associated with it in the first place are completely at odds with the notion that the pagans were a moribund bunch bereft of ideas that were easy meat for the new Christian religion to replace. The Platonists were in fact the cutting edge of the philosophy of the time and the Ptolemeic system was the most advanced science.

In fact it was Christianity that was lacking in coherence. In the third century a lot of the work of trying to make Christianity make some kind of sense was still in the future. When Julian was on the throne, Saint Augustine was still a toddler and very little work had been yet been done on exactly what framework Christianity fitted into. Much later, when Christianity no longer had any rivals to fear a lot of the ideas from the Platonists would end up getting incorporated into the faith, but for now they were enemies.

Julian had found himself right at the heart of the Neoplatonist project. The leading figure in the reworking of Platonism was Plotinus who had died about a century before Julian's reign. He placed the emphasis on the One as the source of everything and was uninterested in anything about this world except in how it would help lead to a truer experience of the One. He was big on the nature of the soul. His view was that the soul played a large part in creating the material of the world in which it lives. The soul was made up of a higher spiritual part and a lower earthly part. The passions and vices of the lower world were to be avoided as distractions, and which could lead to forgetting our true spiritual home in union with the One. This was the philosophical basis of Julian's enthusiasm for self denial and spartan living. One of the leading pupils of Plotinus was Porhyry who made many contributions including preserving and publicising the work of Plotinus.

Porphyry may well have been a Christian early in his life. There is no reference to this in his own writing but it has the ring of truth about it. A later account has it that he had been put off Christianity when he was attacked by a group of Christian thugs. He certainly wrote a treatise against them later. This was destroyed on the orders of Constantine. Both Plotinus and Porphyry used philosophy as a way of interpreting the universe and were not keen on the arts of theurgy. But Porphyry's pupil Iamblichus took the opposite view and regarded the matter of the world as spiritual in itself. This gave him a more practical frame of mind and allowed him to freely use the framework of Platonism to practice divination and magic. Iamblichus enjoyed a phenomenal reputation in his own day and basically for as long as his magic powers were still believable. He is usually referred to as the divine Iamblichus.

Julian had studied under Aedesius, himself a pupil of Iamblichus . The Platonists had been persecuted by Constantine, another sign that paganism was far from moribund, but they were still writing and teaching discretely. Julian had found a group that was secret, intelligent, opposed to Christianity and which must have offered the camaraderie of shared beliefs and shared danger. He must have been in his element.

Although pagans were the majority, the committed Platonists were a very small grouping within them albeit an influential one. Julian's conversion was potentially their big break and word of it spread to the votaries in every province. I don't see any reason to doubt Julian's sincerity - he was running a huge risk by associating with them at all let alone signing up - but it did give him an empire wide network of contacts and potential supporters. It was nowhere near as efficient as one of the Churches would have been, but it was something.

So the adoption of Platonic paganism gave Julian a coherent set of beliefs that guided his actions and shaped his lifestyle. It also gave him a programme and a goal for his reign. And it gave him a cadre of supporters to draw on in governing the empire. He could also call on the support of the gods, which would have been handy had they existed. Its hard to know to what extent his beliefs clouded his judgement, but it is a tragedy that such an able man should let phantoms influence him.

I get the impression that Julian also felt it gave him the support of the majority of his subjects. In this he was deluding himself. His experience in Gaul where there was no opposition to his paganism might have misled him. He seems to have been surprised by the level of support for Christianity in the eastern half of the empire and by how solid that support was. He was also to be disappointed at the low levels of motivation of the pagan in the street. The pagans were appalled by the destruction of their temples and worried that policies likely to offend the heavens would be dangerous. But except in the east they didn't show any particular animosity towards the Christians. But we'll get onto all that in the next episode.

Guest Post: Nick Shipley Explains www.explaininghistory.com (warning - UK Bias)

2011-10-24T15:49:00.002+01:00

The brief for this post was 'write about five hundred words explaining what you're trying to do'. How could that be difficult I thought, my website is called www.explaininghistory.com surely the clue is in the title?

As with all such endeavours, it's far from simple however, if explaining history were a straight forward business, there would be one standard text and we'd all read it.

I'm a history teacher and I love my job, I like (mostly) the kids I work with and it is such a great honour to be able to guide them through the process by which they make up their own minds about the world (I try not to 'tell' them about history, because there is not one singular history to tell them about, but many). I started to worry a few years ago that the main problem with historical learning was that it was confined to the classroom and what with history GCSE being made non compulsory, people were living their lives after their school years with a very limited and distorted knowledge of our shared past, if any knowledge at all.

Obsessing in a prurient way over Hitler may have become a national pastime for us here in Britain (I suspect he has probably sold more books that Harry Potter), and indeed there are many important lessons about power, race, national myths and the fallout of economic crises to be learned from such studies. The over emphasis on the Third Reich has now reached such ludicrous proportions that the rest of the century needs to be understood in a meaningful and detailed context.

I am attempting to create a series of short ebooks, nothing over 20,000 words so that people who might not feel like pulling a vast tome off the shelves in the library can access some fundamental aspect of the 20th Century like the Wall Street Crash or Stalin's Five Year Plans. Admittedly whilst altruism guides me, the laws of the market do too and part (but only part) of my agenda is acquisitive.

By presenting a series of self contained, well explained and highly detailed modules, the plan is that readers will become knowledgeable in one area and move on to the next.

The titles I have produced are meant only to be a starting point, a beginning to understanding about a particular aspect of history, not an end in themselves.

In the end, when I've written a hundred ebook titles, hopefully I will have covered the bulk of the century, but I suspect (and rather hope) that this is a task that actually has no end point.

I am rather hoping that there will be other people out there who will want to contribute in some way to the telling of the story of the century, and to contribute to the wider job of making a thorough education in history accessible to everyone.

Learning about our shared past, our shared humanity and sometimes inhumanity is in itself one of the great meaningful and humanistic acts anyone can engage in; it can be as liberating and as enlivening as any of the most aesthetic experiences we can have, it is the birthright of everyone and all to often the preserve of a few.

www.explaininghistory.com

History of Stoicism Youtube Documentary

2011-10-13T13:52:00.002+01:00

I have just come across a great documentary on Youtube that explains stoicism clearly and succinctly. There is a lot more that could be said on the subject, but this covers all the essentials in only seven minutes. If you just want to know what stoicism is, you'll know when you have finished watching it. If you want to know more, this would make a good starting point.

Julian the Reformer - Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Chapter 22 Part 3

2011-10-11T22:12:00.001+01:00

Unlike previous emperors, Julian did not spend much time in the Hippodrome

Julian managed to get a lot done in his short life. It's a shame he didn't write a book on time management, I'd love to know how he was so productive, but he did write a lot. Its a shame that more of his writings haven't survived. They aren't as well written as the works of Caesar or Marcus Aurelius and his choice of subject matter isn't particularly compelling. But nonetheless you can still pick up his intelligence and perceptiveness. I get the feeling that he would have been pretty successful at anything to which he turned his mind. Getting to be the emperor of Rome was a bit of a lottery, but it was the kind of level that Julian was quite capable of handling.

He seems to have had remarkable abilities. It is reported that he could simultaneously read one thing, dictate another and listen to a third. I have never come across anyone who can come even close to doing this so I doubt this is the literal truth, but it isn't hard to see why such a story would arise and be believed. When you consider how much he achieved in the mere 16 months he was in Constantinople actively running the empire there is no doubt that he was pretty effective. He certainly worked long hours and ran a team of secretaries working in a relay around him trying to keep up.

Above all he was focused. Apart from the period he was married it is reported he never shared his bed with a woman. And given the political nature of his marriage you could probably count that as work. This was typical. He permitted very few distractions. He disliked chariot racing which was the fashionable diversion in Constantinople at the time. As emperor he had to show his face at the games but he cleared off as soon as he could, staying for only five or six races. His predecessors had cheerfully whiled away the whole day sitting through the whole card of 24.

His dislike of sport sounds a bit geeky, as does his interest in philosophy and religion. He was also not impressed by the more superficial trappings of power such as fancy clothes. He considered dispensing with the diadem - heavy, expensive and impractical. He didn't get that far, but he certainly dispensed with the more ridiculous make up and fancy clothes. He also rejected being called Dominus.

His focus was helped by his spartan lifestyle. He ate small amounts of plain food. Some people describe him as a vegetarian, and he may well have been though it isn't entirely clear that he was. If he was a strict vegetarian he would have had difficulty taking part in the sacrifices that were a big part of his approach to religion. Basically he lived to work and contrived his life to allow him to meet his goals. He either had huge innate ability, or more likely had trained his brain to perform how he wanted it to. We have already seen how he was able to make decisions quickly, respond to a changing situation and come up with creative solutions to the problems facing him.

His ability to transform himself to meet changing situations is in many ways the most impressive thing about him. Looking at his actions now he is on the throne it is hard to imagine that only a few years before he had been a junior emperor obediently following orders and hiding his own inclinations to avoid giving offence.

So how did this austere, able and disciplined man fit in with the customary way things were done in the protocol ridden and elaborate court of Constantinople? Frankly not very well. Since Diocletian the emperors had become increasingly distant figures surrounded with courtiers and gatekeepers. This was the opposite of the way Julian wanted to work. It didn't take long for Julian to run into practices he didn't approve off. On his arrival in Constantinople he started working more or less straight away. After a while, he called for a barber. Julian was amazed at the sight of the foppishly dressed poltroon who arrived in front of him. He instantly cried that it was a barber he wanted, not the chancellor of the exchequer.

But it was a fruitful encounter nonetheless. Julian quizzed him about his remuneration. It turned out that the emperor's barber was on quite a tidy package including 20 servants and 20 horses. Nice work if you can get it. Julian of course was well aware of the excesses of the court. He was already familiar with the sumptuous palaces built by Constantine and his successors. They made liberal use of gold and marble. Barbers and cup bearers weren't even the half of it. Numerous functionaries with obscure duties abounded. Eunuchs were plentiful and ran many of the key functions.

Huge efforts went into gratifying the luxurious lifestyles of the emperors. In their marble lined palaces they could enjoy exotic foods brought from around the world, fruits out of season, ice brought from distant mountain tops. All in all, it sounds a bit like the kind of lifestyle that a modern commercial traveler could enjoy at the Marriott.

That so many people were employed in the service of one family would have been enough to offensive enough. But there was outright corruption as well. Some of the posts were simply purchased as a source of income. As the abuses grew the numbers of people maintained at the public expense grew. The household expenses of Constantine had equaled those of the legions. And now this whole elaborate apparatus was under the control of a man who did not regard luxury as a priority. He didn't even sleep in a bed all that often.

But Julian's contempt for the Constantinople establishment had plenty of sources besides philosophical puritanism. He regarded himself as the champion of the people against the court.

Gibbon quotes a letter from Julian to a friend that encapsulates it. "We are now surprisingly delivered from the voracious jaws of the Hydra. I do not mean to apply the epithet to my brother Constantius. He is no more; may the earth lie light on his head! But his artful and cruel favorites studied to deceive and exasperate a prince, whose natural mildness cannot be praised without some efforts of adulation. It is not, however, my intention, that even those men should be oppressed: they are accused, and they shall enjoy the benefit of a fair and impartial trial."

Julian had many objections to the way the court had developed under Diocletian and Constantine. To the follower of Plato it was wrong in principle. The ruler should be a servant and steward to the people, not a burden to them. And to the soldier and man of action it was wrong in practice. He knew only too well how interference from the favourites in Constantinople had hindered effective military operations on the borders. And on top of these objections Julian also had personal issues with the specific personnel in post in the administration. It was chock full of his own personal enemies. Men who had plotted against him, undermined his military actions threatening his life and the lives of his comrades, and who had connived at and profited from the destruction of the temples of his gods.

And now here they were, in his power. There must have been some uneasy nights sleep in the palace once he took over.

But as his letter revealed, Julian had to live by his principles, and so the scoundrels would not be simply executed. They would get a fair and impartial trial as he put it. In a manner of speaking, anyway. Roman justice never had been a truly impartial judicial system like we have today and by Julian's time it was well past its peak. Over its history, the empire had maintained the outward forms of a republic while being first an absolute monarchy, then a military dictatorship before sliding into a proto-fascist police state. The legal system had followed a similar trajectory with more and more lawyers and less and less justice. But Julian did what he could.

He set up a commission of a few legal bigwigs and some military top brass to investigate the behaviour of key members of the Constantius administration. It sat at Chalcedon, just over the Bosphoros from Constantinople. The rules were simple. The commission had complete authority to mete out punishments including death and confiscation. It was rough justice. Sentences were imposed immediately and there was no appeal. And proceedings were 'guarded' by troops who followed the cases and expressed their opinions about the merits of the accused. This must have made it a bit of a bear garden. The attitude of the men who had followed Julian from underdeveloped Gaul to the excesses of the men who had been spending their taxes can be imagined. And while Julian may not have wished to appear to influence the judgements, it was pretty inevitable that he would do exactly that.

So it was rough justice, but mainly justice nonetheless. The eunuch Eusebius appeared and was sentenced to death. We have all come across schemers and plotters. They usually get away with it. I find that a moment's reflection on the fate of Eusebius is a good antidote to the injustice of everyday life. Backstabbing toadies rarely end up having to face up to the consequences of their actions, but Julian at least and completely unexpectedly had the chance to have revenge on the killer of his brother. My inner need for justice and fairness can still be assuaged by remembering this story.

Others were condemned as well. Some were dispatched with popular approval. Many of the favourites of Constantius were a long way from being favourites of the public over whom they had lorded it. Others managed to attract some sympathy - Julian might have wanted to distance himself from the proceedings but it might have been better if he had been a bit more involved to prevent basic PR errors. Florentius who had been up to his neck in the plot against Julian was given a highly deserved death sentence. In this case justice was foiled when Florentius managed to escape. This must have been frustrating. After Eusebius, I imagine he was the top name of Julian's list of people that the commission of Chalcedon was supposed to get rid of.

There was an illuminating foot note to this case. An informer arrived with information on his location. But much as Julian must have wanted the traitor caught, he refused to use such means to capture him.

Julian could not easily re-establish the republic, but he could at least demolish the police state that Constantine had created. The army of informers and spies was an innovation that the conservative Julian must have most objected to. It was a million miles from the philosopher king ideal of Julian's hero Plato. But the world of the late empire was far from an ideal world. It would have been very understandable if Julian had felt the necessity of behaving in the same way as his predecessors. But that was not the Julian way. In his reform of the palace the spooks were the first to go. And he didn't bring them back even after there were attempts against his life. A group of palace guards plotted to kill him. The plot was discovered. Constantius would have had them tortured to death. Julian gave them a stern lecture, then punished only the ring leaders. And even they were only exiled.

A lone youth with a sword who tried to kill Julian was treated less leniently and was executed. This was the son of Marcellus, who had incurred Julian's displeasure years before in Gaul. If you have listened to the podcast on Julian in Gaul you'll remember that he was the guy who had taken so long to relieve Julian from being besieged by the Allemani that by the time he got there they had given up and gone home. Did Julian let this cloud his judgement? It may well have done because afterwards Julian tried to make amends by returning some property that had been confiscated from the estate of Marcellus.

But it showed that Julian's life was under genuine threat so it was an act of real courage to lower his own personal security. And this was just the start. He also got rid of huge swathes of the palace staff. This was done so quickly and brutally that Julian was criticised for failing to show compassion to the long standing servants who had worked loyally but who were now out of a job. This habit of behaving according to his principles rather than what was politically acceptable is at once both the most infuriating and the most admirable about Julian. You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs and you can't reform an empire without creating winners and losers. But maybe a bit of humanity in the process could have been afforded without losing sight of the long term objective.

The state of the empire was such that is wasn't always easy to even spot what the path of virtue should be. One of the consequences of the demolition of the court was that people who had bribed officials had wasted their money. A large group of them turned up from Egypt looking for a refund. It is hard to say whether they were entitled to one or not. Were they equally corrupt for participating, or were they simply doing what had to be done in good faith from their point of view. It looks like Julian himself could not decide as he sent them to Chalcedon to await his judgement. He then ordered the watermen not to bring them back. Eventually their money ran out and they had to go home. This was not exactly noble behaviour on Julian's part.

But Julian was on a mission. He was very well aware that the empire had a weakness that could easily prove fatal. Everything revolved around the person of the emperor. Put the wrong man on the throne and things could go hideously wrong. Look at the way Constantine had wrecked the state's religion for example. And even that wasn't the worst that could be imagined. Suppose a simultaneous attack from the barbarians and the Persians. There was only one emperor available and he could not be in more than one place. Diocletian's solution of having multiple emperors hadn't really worked. Julian's fertile but conservative mind had hit on the notion of decentralising power again. If the self reliance and individual initiative that had characterised the republic could be restored, the need for an over mighty emperor would diminish.

Dispensing with the pomp and mystery of the throne was just the start. Julian started acting in ways reminiscent of the earliest emperors. When the consuls that he had appointed came to Constantinople to take up their posts, he greeted them personally and without any ceremony walked with them to the Senate. This was radical behaviour compared to Diocletian and his successors who would rarely deem to even appear in public. He went out of his way to undermine the absolute power of the office he held. It was consciously done. He inadvertently, or more likely deliberately, performed the ceremonial release of a slave when a consul was present. It was pointed out to him that it was a consul's perogative to do so. He instantly fined himself 10 pounds of gold and declared that he, as much as anyone else, was subject to the law.

Read this story carefully and you also spot another of Julian's characteristics. He was happy to be corrected by subordinates and actively encouraged feedback. Again, it was a long time since any emperor had been willing to listen to direct criticism.

Gibbon is a bit condescending about Julian's nods to the past. This has set the tone for later historians who have often seen him in the light of an anachronistic throw back to a former era who was hopelessly out of touch with the world he lived in. He was trying to behave like Hadrian or even Augustus long after the times had moved on. I'm not so sure. The centralised imperial system instigated by Diocletian and continued by all his successors, with the notable exception of Julian, was basically a really bad idea. The running costs were outrageous and were sapping the strength out of the empire setting it up for long run decay. And without a good strategist at the top it was pretty vulnerable to short term crises as well. We know with the benefit of hindsight that it didn't work and that the empire was indeed doomed without reform. Julian's radical reform programme might not have worked, but frankly it couldn't have made things any worse than what actually happened.

But Julian was intelligent, knew the system well and had overcome many obstacles to achieve absolute power. I think we should give him some credit. Is it not possible that he could see a way forward for the empire. His track record is, after all, impressive. When he was sent to Gaul it was all but lost. The barbarians were well on their way to carving out substantial kingdoms of their own. Julian's response was original, creative and successful.

One of his innovations was that he formed local militias to fight to protect their own locality. If it could work in Gaul it could work elsewhere. This was a major break with the past. The emperors' authority had rested on their monopoly of armed strength. Arming the provincials would inevitably lead to a weakening of the centre and would need institutions dispersed throughout the empire. What better model than the now very ancient republic? But I don't think Julian ever meant to literally bring back the institutions of the past. I suspect that he had much more original reforms in mind.

Looked at in these terms, one of Julian's otherwise rather random actions begins to make sense. He created a legal fiction that half the Senate of Rome had moved to Constantinople. Was he thinking in terms of developing an empire wide parliament that sat half the time in the two halves of the empire? And was his esteem for consuls an indication that he intended some greater role for them in the future? Imagine a set of elected consuls with military experience. Wouldn't these provide just the pool of able and experienced men needed to fill the vacant throne when the need arose?

Another reform was to widen eligibility for military service - another way of loosening the monopoly on armed strength that the legions had. It always seems one of the most amazing features of Roman history that at the same time that there was a shortage of manpower for the army a great many citizens were simply not allowed to join up. It makes no sense, except from the point of view of maintaining the superiority of the emperors.

The western empire was not going to survive much longer, as we watch it disintegrate it will often be easy to imagine how differently things could have gone if local militias and more officers had been available.

If Julian does get portrayed as having some kind of romantic yearning for past times that is partially because that is how he painted himself. But that was a good cover and justification for someone whose real goal was creating a new kind of republic. Julian portrayed himself as a conservative and may well have been one by inclination. But in reality he was a radical reformer. Radical reforms have a poor track record of success, but if anyone could have pulled it off it was the heroic genius Julian. If he had pulled it off he would have saved the Western empire.

His abilities were certainly not lost on his contemporaries, who universally acknowledged them. I can't beat Gibbon's summing up.

Julian sustained adversity with firmness, and prosperity with moderation. After an interval of one hundred and twenty years from the death of Alexander Severus, the Romans beheld an emperor who made no distinction between his duties and his pleasures; who labored to relieve the distress, and to revive the spirit, of his subjects; and who endeavored always to connect authority with merit, and happiness with virtue. Even faction, and religious faction, was constrained to acknowledge the superiority of his genius, in peace as well as in war, and to confess, with a sigh, that the apostate Julian was a lover of his country, and that he deserved the empire of the world.

Thanks to Wikipedia for the image.

Julian the Emperor - Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Chapter 22 Part 2

2011-10-02T16:17:00.002+01:00

In the late summer of 360 Julian marched across the Rhine near modern day Basel and out of the empire with a mere 3,000 hand picked volunteers. He penetrated the Black Forest just north of the Alps. Travelling light and crossing mountains and morasses by obscure and rarely used routes he was soon out of contact with the civilised world.

The empire was on the brink of a civil war. Constantius had rejected the overtures for peace from his cousin. He was not going to accept Julian's elevation to the rank of Augustus of the West by a spontaneous rebellion of his troops. With a bigger army and plenty of cash, Constantius could simply march against Julian and depose him. The prudent course of action would have been to do his best to build up his defences in the hope of holding Constantius off long enough to negotiate some kind of deal.

So what was Julian up to setting out into enemy territory with a force barely big enough to engage in a skirmish?

When you are faced with a game you can't win by the normal rules, the only option is to change the rules. He had been cautious and prudent for a decade, loyally following the dictates of the senior emperor and hiding his true feelings and convictions. This policy had not paid dividends. In fact it looked like it had lost him everything when Constantius had moved to remove him as Caeser anyway. Julian was young and idealistic. Having to keep up appearances was an affront to his notions of courage and nobility as well as proving ineffective. Now he had broken free he was prepared to risk everything to keep his freedom.

The main Roman field army was directly under the control of Constantius and was more than a match for the forces available to Julian. If it weren't at that moment engaged with the Persians thousands of miles away Julian would have had no chance at all. As it was, the situation did allow him some time. But the reach of the emperor was long. Although he couldn't attack Julian himself straight away he was able to engage allies among the German barbarians to fight the upstart for him. This possibility was anticipated by the rebels and Julian's men succeeded in intercepting the letters to the potential allies. They also captured supplies, lavish supplies, intended to maintain the hired enemies. Two huge stocks of provisions were captured enough to sustain a substantial campaign in at the least a two pronged attack. Clearly the intention was to overwhelm the province of Gaul and put an end to the rebellion. The danger was averted for now thanks to these intelligence operations, but it is easy to imagine how the provincials of Gaul would have felt about these revelations. Julian's personal popularity rose even higher.

They had chosen him as their leader and no doubt hoped he had a plan. And they wouldn't be disappointed. The active intelligence that was Julian's hallmark did not fail him at this ultimate test,

But Julian's plan was more audacious than anyone could have anticipated. Even for someone whose career was so full of the bizarre and the unexpected, this still stands out as his most surprising move of all. He reappeared not back on the Rhine but on the upper reaches of the Danube in what is now Austria. There he commandeered a small fleet of boats, and propelled by a favourable wind and the enthusiasm of his oarsmen travelled some 700 miles down the river to arrive at Sirmium, the capital of Illyricum in only 11 days.

The Danube border was lightly defended. With surprise and speed Julian was able to take control of it and its troops. The leader of the border divisions was Lucillian, who seems to have had trouble keeping up with the situation. Julian sent some light infantry to locate him and apprehend him. He doesn't seem to have realised that he was being made a prisoner. He offered the young prince some advice about how unwise it was for him to have risked his life so recklessly with such a small force. Julian made things clear for him.

"Reserve for your master Constantius these timid remonstrances, when I gave you my purple to kiss, I received you not as a counsellor, but as a suppliant."

The citizens of Sirmium were a bit quicker on the uptake. On his arrival at the city they welcomed Julian with open arms. They adorned themselves with flowers, an old custom on feast days that honoured the goddess Flora and lit tapers to welcome him. If Julian's motive had simply been to go out in style and with some honour then his objective was achieved already. But he was in earnest. This was no stunt. It was part of a strategy that aimed to give him control of the empire. Frankly, its chances of success weren't very good, but given the hand he was playing with it it was the best that could be contrived.

The plan had been revealed at a meeting of Julian's councillors in Paris earlier in the year. Passions ran high. The one minister who advised against open conflict with Constantius was attacked by troops loyal to Julian and ended up with his hand cut off. He was only saved from death when Julian himslef protected him with his cloak. The soldiers who had rebelled rather than obey the orders to go to the east, where now eager to follow Julian in the same direction. They met the plan with uproarious approval, banging their shields together and drawing their blades across their throats to show that they would support Julian to the death.

While Julian was carrying out the riskiest task, two other columns of 10,000 each were proceeding with the rest of the plan. They moved quickly into Italy and the western areas of Illyricum, overawing local populations and creating the impression of greater numbers than they actually possessed by covering a lot of ground and never pausing anywhere for long. The tactic worked, and the amazed population of Italy found themselves with a new Augustus. The pro-Constantius consuls in Rome fled. (Julian was later to have some fun at their expense by adding fugitive in the sense of 'scarpered' or 'fled' to their names in official records.)

The Senate still sat in Rome and could be used by Julian to bolster his legitimacy. He asked them to ratify his election. The Senate played along, albeit with a deft bit of wording that allowed them to wriggle out of their support for Julian in the event of his power grab failing. But nonetheless, Julian controlled Rome and could claim the full right to rule by virtue of the Senate's support. And he also controlled Illyricum, giving him about half the total area of the empire.

Illyricum at this stage comprised the whole of the Balkans and Greece except for Thrace, the area directly around Constantinople. Occupying it strengthened the position of Julian considerably. Constantius could no longer easily communicate with potential allies among the barbarians of Germany. It also made supplying them very difficult. This reduced the risk of having to face a war on two fronts. It also gave him control of gold and silver mines, making it possible to actually finance his war.

So with very little fighting Julian had transformed his position. He also had the initiative and the momentum - always important in any conflict. His courageous actions made for great propaganda to enhance his growing popularity and support. When he had crossed the Rhine in the summer his situation had looked hopeless. It was still pretty poor on paper, but he had created the perception that he was winning. And in fact, winning was no longer totally inconceivable.

His next move was to engage in a war of words from his new base in Sirmium, sending letters to the cities of Greece and the Balkans justifying his actions and requesting their support. He released secret papers from Constantius to discredit him. He contrasted the way Constantius did deals with the barbarians with his own policy of defeating them. Negative campaigning has a long history. But I think that there was a serious purpose behind all this - it wasn't just thumbing his nose at his rival. I don't think Julian ever intended to face Constantius in a pitched battle. I think the plan was to run him around forcing him to disperse his forces and turn the struggle into a series of hit and run battles where he could accumulate a series of showcase victories to rob the official government of its legitimacy. In a guerilla war the support of the population is crucial, and I think Julian was trying to lay the groundwork for a popular struggle.

I imagine that people were not very different in Roman times from today. No doubt there were a few partisans for the imperial contenders. There are always some people who like to take sides. But the vast majority were probably mainly concerned with working out how to make sure that they didn't offend whoever was likely to win. There isn't any evidence that the general population had any preference for one side or the other. Julian may have been personally popular in Gaul, where the fear of the barbarians gave them good reason to be grateful to him. But in parts of the empire that hadn't seen invasions since the distant reign of Aurelian, they don't seem to have been so bothered.

But if Julian's PR offensive wasn't producing results his military activities were still going to plan. A body of troops were sent to hold the key pass that Constantius would have to pass through when he made is inevitable counter-attack. Julian forces had increased by incorporating troops from the newly occupied provinces. But there were a couple of units that had received particular praise from Constantius himself. These were suspect and couldn't be relied on in a pitched battle with their former commander. Prudently, Julian sent them to Gaul.

Aquileia with its strategic position for Julian

They justified his suspicions as soon as they were out of sight by delivering his first upset. Once in Italy they rebelled, or I suppose derebelled, and seized the important city of Aquileia in the name of Constantius. This was a huge blow. It was located exactly on the line of communications between Julian and his base. Troops had to be dispatched to lay siege to it, diluting Julian's effort when he was already short of frontline soldiers. It was also politically embarrassing as it showed that Julian did not automatically have the support of everybody.

Meanwhile Constantius was pulling together a peace settlement with the Persians so he could concentrate his forces on his internal difficulties. Once had could focus, his superiority in numbers made his victory all but inevitable, so much so that he referred to it not as a campaign but as a hunting expedition. As he prepared to march, he assured his troops that there was little chance of the legions of the West even giving battle. And on top of the events in Aqueleia, there was good news from Africa too. A pro-Constantius notary called Gaudentius had taken control of the African provinces and had cut off the grain supply to Rome. Julian's position was now looking highly precarious.

Constantius had never shown the flare of Julian for military matters, but was not a fool. He had seen off the rebel Magnentius in the battle of Mursa by leaving professional generals to do the actual fighting while he prayed nearby. He had fought several campaigns since then with respectable results. He was now 45 with a lot more experience than Julian, as well as a lot more troops. He had to be the favourite to win the war. And yet it is still tempting to think that Julian might have pulled it off. He had surprised everyone already after all. Ancient battles could often produce unexpected results and often turned on issues of individual leadership.

But in the end, it was never put to the test. Constantius fell ill not long after setting out on his march. His health went rapidly went downhill and just outside Tarsus he died. Before his death he named Julian as his successor.

This seems a little surprising at first. He knew Julian was a pagan now, and given that Constantius had devoted a lot of his time and effort to the destruction of pagan temples and actively persecuting the wrong kind of Christian you might have thought Julian was the last person Constantius would pick. He was clearly intent on killing Julian to punish him for a rebellion that he obviously considered unforgivable. Handing his throne to him doesn't seem to be the most logical of moves. But it did make sense. Julian was the only remaining member of the house of Constantine, and was still childless. Under the circumstances Julian was the best hope for the new bride and infant child of Constantius. Anyone else would certainly have killed them as a threat to their own position. Julian was also the only candidate who would not have instantly inherited the civil war against Julian. He really was the only sensible choice.

Constantius has had a bad press from history. Gibbon described him as inheriting the vices of Constantine without the virtues. Julian's charm that was so evident in his own lifetime has continued to affect not just Gibbon but many other historians who have tended to be dismissive of his enemy. Constantius hasn't been helped much by his Arian convictions either. Arianism was to be defeated and its adherents are now viewed by Christian historians as heretics. So from an orthodox point of view, despite all his efforts Constantius must be in Hell with his cousin.

But the judgement of history would not be recognised by his contemporaries. His reign was a long one by the standards of his time, and simply staying on the throne he inherited for the full length of his natural life was no mean achievement. And being brought up as an imperial heir was a crazy start to life, managing to stay sane through that was more than a lot of people would manage.

As an emperor he was just about successful enough militarily to hold his head up. Admittedly he hadn't exactly shone against the Persians, but he had defeated the rebellion of Magnentius albeit mainly through prayer. But he had been pretty young then. Later he had given the Germans good reason to respect his name showing he had managed to learn how to command troops well enough. And morally deplorable as the campaigns against heretic Christians in Africa and elsewhere were, they were at least carried out efficiently. The active persecution of the catholics was the biggest blot on his name. The pagans were lucky for this distraction - the plans he had to deal with them were never put into action. He seems to have been popular enough with the people, certainly in the East. And when the war against Julian started he was able to count on the support of his soldiers.

Sandwiched between his father Constantine and his cousin Julian, two of the most remarkable emperors in the history of the empire, he inevitably fails to get that much attention. But he could look back on a pretty solid rule. Plenty of much worse men got to wear the imperial purple. His biggest errors were failing to get control of the imperial machine and getting caught up in faction fighting amongst the Christians. But both of those issues would have tried the patience of a saint. And unlike his Dad, he wasn't one.

There was an attempt at a palace coup to prevent Julian taking up the throne. This was Constantinople - that was the way things worked there. Many people had good reason to dread Julian as an emperor. Take Eusebius for example. He had plotted against Julian and killed his brother. That has got to be awkward. But there was no stomach to oppose Julian amongst the soldiers, whose opinions were the important ones.

Julian was still pursuing his goal with the same determination and energy he had shown all along. He was planning a three pronged attack on Thrace to bring him to the walls of the capital when the delegation from the city arrived assuring him that every sword was for him.

He marched for the city and was met with crowds from sixty miles out. They may have been a bit non-plussed. He probably didn't cut the grandiose kind of figure the Romans had got used to in their emperors since Diocletian. He was short, dressed in simple garb and he had just travelled all the way across Europe camping most of the way, he must have been pretty weather beaten. Nonetheless he entered the city in triumph to the acclaim of the people, the army and the Senate. Few emperors had worked so hard to get the job or shown so much flair in the process.

His cousin's coffin arrived a few days later. Julian accompanied the body to doors of the Church of the Holy Apostles dressed in mourning and was seen to weep. We can't know what he was thinking but I think his grief was genuine. The two men went back a long way and were as much victims of the imperial system as anyone. They were the last survivors of the house of Constantine and had a lot in common with each other. They had only been divided by politics and religion, things that seem important but in the end are trivial matters for all the passion they generate. They were relatives and could have been friends. They would have been happier if they could have been just that.

We won't ever know what was really going through his head that day, but at the age of 32 Julian was now the ruler of the Roman world. His rise to supreme power must have surprised everyone, and the surprises weren't over yet.

Julian the Rebel - Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Chapter 22 Part 1

2011-09-26T07:22:00.001+01:00

Julian raised up on shield and hailed Augustus

In an absolute monarchy much hangs on the personality of the man on top, and the events covered in this podcast are pretty much the result of the emperor's management style. Constantius seems to have been the kind of boss that corridor warriors thrive under. He was far from ineffective as an emperor and I'll be looking at his balance sheet a bit later, but he does seem to have had a bit of a weakness in delegation skills. Time and again we see him letting highly unsuitable people get into positions where they follow their own agendas rather than the empire's best interests. The way things played out with Julian illustrates this. The two men could well have formed a great team that could have done great things. But somehow the intrigues in the court of Constantius always stopped this happening.

Julian based in Paris as a junior emperor in the western half of the empire worked very well. Julian was genuinely loyal. He was, as we shall see, extremely reluctant to go against the wishes of Constantius. A stickler for protocol he kept Constantius well informed via regular letters. When he had a problem, like his disputes over taxation with the minister imposed on him, he raised it directly rather than plotting. And when he was beating off the enemies of the empire he was diligent he was about sending captives back to Constantinople as a tribute and to make it clear it was an imperial victory. It looked like a great arrangement.

But Julian was not popular with the circle surrounding Constantius from the start. His simplicity was considered to be a pose - as it probably was. His learning was old fashioned and he was not interested in the latest theological controversies. Basically he just wasn't one of them and if he were ever to get the top job it was pretty obvious that a lot of them would be out of a job. Early on he was the subject of mockery and ridicule. He was a short and rather hairy individual who it was easy to portray as an ape. His plainly written reports of his activities were made a figure of fun for their dated style and for the uninspiring content.

It seems a bit unlikely that Constantius himself was conniving with the enemies of his own empire, but looking at the events of Julian's early reign in Gaul it looks very much like someone or some people in Constantinople were actively ensuring a tough time for Julian and even going to the lengths of sabotaging military operations to make him look bad. It is not easy to shine when reporting on a gloomy situation with little good news.

But as his success grew it became harder to mock. As he changed from a young inexperienced figurehead into a youthful hero he ceased to be a figure of fun and started to become a threat. The contrast between the resounding defeats inflicted on the barbarians by Julian and the indifferent progress of Constantius against the Persians must have been galling, but was a superb opportunity for the gossips and the makers of mischief. A figure of fun is a lot less frightening than a darling of the people with the support of adoring troops. The enemies of Julian started playing up the growing popularity of Julian so as to play on the fears of Constantius.

They seem to have succeeded in planting the idea that it was time to get rid of a dangerous threat. And once the emperor was won over they must have been confident that their objective could soon be achieved. Julian's brother had been eased out his throne without too much difficulty, so the same tactics could be deployed again. The plan went into operation. First Julian's name was deleted from the notices from the emperor to the provinces, in effect claiming for Constantius the credit for the victories of Julian. Then key personnel were moved. Finally the order came. Two delegates arrived from Constantius with instructions for the troops most loyal to Julian in person to be redeployed to the Persian frontier. Julian must have recognised the pattern.

But unlike his brother he was actively involved in the government of his region, so he could also see the consequences of the political games being played thousands of miles away. Gaul had not long ago been overrun by the barbarians and had been close to sliding into anarchy. Julian had saved the situation, but only by the most energetic activity. One of the ways he had turned round the seemingly hopeless situation was the raising of levies from the population of the province. These troops had been motivated by a desire to protect their families, friends and property. They hadn't signed up to serve far away against distant enemies of the empire. Their own very real enemies were just over the border.

The new deployment would deprive Julian of the bulk of his forces, leaving him defenceless if Constantius then chose to redeploy Julian himself, or even to redeploy his head from his body as he had done his brother. But it also left the provinces vulnerable to the barbarians over the border.

The situation was obvious to everyone not just to Julian. If the army was withdrawn from Gaul, Gaul would once again be attacked. As they marched away the troops would know that they were leaving behind unprotected friends, family and property.

The history of the empire is full of plots, revolts and rebellions. What makes this one particularly interesting is that we have several detailed accounts, so we can piece together exactly how it happened and get an idea of the motivations of the people involved. One of the accounts is that of Julian himself. The order to send the troops east threw him into despondency. He foresaw all the potential problems. It wasn't just the high probability that the provinces he was in charge of would be invaded. It was also quite likely there would be trouble from the troops themselves. And he would be going back on his previous word that the men he had recruited would not be required to serve beyond the Alps.

He argued his case with the envoys. He tried to get Florentius, his chief minister, back to help him make his points and give him some back up. Florentius, who had been appointed by the central government, was almost certainly in on the plot. That he had managed to be both out of town when the delegates arrived, and eluded all attempts to get in touch shouts out that scheming was afoot. Julian was in a bind, with no good options. He threatened the unprecedented action of resigning his post. But ultimately his philosophy won out. The first duty of a subject is obedience. Ultimately, to someone of Julian's high ideals, it was the supreme sovereign who was responsible for the overall wellbeing of the empire and was entitled to take whatever actions he saw fit.

So Julian regretfully complied with the orders making as much effort as he was able to mitigate the inevitable suffering they would cause. Word was out, and as preparations for the long march to the east proceeded, the women of the troops made it clear that they dreaded being left behind. Julian laid on wagons so they could leave with their men. The army was ordered to assemble at various points, including a large muster in Paris itself. Julian advised against this. He anticipated trouble. But he was no longer in charge of the situation.

When the forces had gathered in the provincial capital, they assembled for a last speech from Julian before their departure. He praised their valour, picking out particular individuals who had distinguished themselves in the campaigns he had led them in. He expected great things from them in the service of a great prince and urged them to obey their orders dutifully and cheerfully. The oration was met with silence.

As Julian had predicted, overnight there were disorders. The men started drinking. With the alcohol weakening their discipline, and their numbers encouraging their boldness the idea of getting Julian to lead them in rebellion took hold and spread. A group hammered on his door to involve him in the plot, but Julian bolted it against them. There was no way of knowing what their mood would be by the next morning.

We can only imagine what the men were thinking as they waited for the dawn to break. The most active ones had already done enough to lose their lives. They must have been extremely interested in what Julian himself was thinking. But what they could only speculate about, we know. He was consulting Jupiter. And the chief of the gods was, as were the men outside, urging him to overcome his timidity.

As dawn broke on the fateful day, he was now convinced that he had been chosen by Heaven to restore the worship of the ancient gods. It was fortunate that he had made up his mind. With the light breaking, the troops forced their way into his palace and led him through the streets with swords drawn. Julian was, as he was to prove time and again, no coward. Even though he had now resolved to accept, he made the men wait three hours before confirming it. It was important to him not to appear a rebel and that it was clear that he was overpowered by the crowd rather than leading it. Then after this dutiful delay he accepted the diadem - some regimental colours that were to hand that could be used to symbolise one - and was carried through the crowd of soldiers on shields. This traditional form of election with its echos of republican simplicity must have appealed to Julian. It was over 50 years since Constantine himself had been proclaimed in somewhat similar circumstances, so this must have felt to everyone concerned like a big event.

He had gained his new rank without bloodshed and in a way that left him blameless - at least in his own eyes. But how would it be viewed by the official Augustus? There was no getting round that the events were not going to be easily accepted and a violent reaction was likely. But maybe trouble was not inevitable. A civil war was not to be entered into lightly, and maybe could be avoided. We don't have to doubt that someone like Julian would genuinely hate to spill a fellow Roman's blood. There was also the inconvenient fact that Constantius had considerably greater forces and the resources of a much bigger economy to draw on. Not only would a civil war be a calamity for the empire, Julian would in all probability lose it.

So from everyway you might look at it, an agreement with Constantius was far and away the best solution if it could be achieved. He sent an offer of friendship and basically asked for no more than a recognition of the situation as it already existed. There was a telling line where Julian refers to the fact that some courtiers benefit from the discord of princes. He was clearly well aware that his biggest problem was getting round the people that surrounded the emperor rather than the man himself. But Julian was in Paris at one end of the huge empire and Constantius was at that time in Antioch at the other. Negotiations had to be carried by envoys who had 2500 miles to travel.

Communication between Julian and Constanius was hamstrung by the distance from Paris to Antioch

With so much time involved in communication there was ample scope for both intentional and unintentional mischief. In fact the anti-Julian faction had already got at Constantius before his men arrived with their side of the story. This was made easier by the deaths of both the wives of the emperors. Helena, the sister of Constantius had died during childbirth as had the child leaving Julian both wifeless and childless. Eusebia, the wife of Constantius and a long time supporter of Julian had also died. Either might have successfully interceded on his behalf, but it was not to be.

While hoping for peace, Julian prepared for war, and his preparations were both meticulous and skillful. As little as possible was left to chance. The supporters of Magnentius were still numerous and making a living by banditry. Left undisturbed they posed a threat. Offered a pardon and employment, they became an opportunity. Julian eased his security problems and hired some reliably anti-Constantius forces.

The Germans were the other serious threat to Gaul, and were not so easily dealt with. But Julian did what he could. For instance, he kidnapped the most important German tribal leader and bundled him off to Spain. As modern counter insurgency experts will tell you, disrupting the leadership structure is generally only a temporary setback but that was all Julian needed at this stage in the crisis.

His preparations paid off. The reply from Constantius, as delivered by the men sent to deliver it, was cold and haughty. Julian contrived that their message should be delivered in front of a large crowd of his supporters. Julian must have wanted peace and was prepared to make a lot of concessions to get it. He had offered acknowledgement of the superiority of Constantius, gifts of horses and recruits and accepting the appointment of a praetorian prefect directly from Constantinople. But he would not give up his newly found rank. Playing to the gallery, he informed the envoys that he would only withdraw from his Augustus role with the consent of the men who had given it to him. The roar from the crowd made it clear that this consent was not forthcoming.

Who'd be a diplomat? Protocol demanded that they continue with the unpalatable message from their leader even in the face of a hostile crowd. The list of demands and disparaging statements was a long one. One particular insult struck a nerve. Amongst other reasons why Julian should submit to his cousin's authority, they pointed out Julian's ingratitude to the man who had looked after him when he was made an orphan. He reacted with fury. "An orphan!" interrupted Julian "does the assassin of my family reproach me that I was left an orphan? He urges me to revenge those injuries which I have long
studied to forget." His mood infected the crowd.

The envoys had to be protected from their anger by the drawn swords of the troops. They then had to face the 2,500 mile journey to the other side of the empire to report the failure of their mission. And they took with them a letter from Julian where he poured out all the bottled up resentment from 10 years of having to keep his opinions to himself.

Julian must have realised that there was now no choice but to fight and that there was now no going back. He must conquer or he must die. And the odds against him succeeding were high. But he was prepared to be bold, and he was prepared to take chances. And he did so immediately.

Only five or six weeks before Julian had been attending a service of Epiphany in Paris. Epiphany still figures on our calendars every January. The Christianity of Julian's time was very much the same as the one we know now. The institutions that Julian knew and grew up with are still intact and still form a part of the patchwork that makes up our lives. But that Christianity was about to face the biggest challenge it would ever receive in its entire history. In addition to rejecting the authority of Constantius, Julian rejected his religion as well. He openly placed himself under the protection of the immortal gods. This twist would have come as a shock to everyone. Although no direct action had yet been taken against the pagan majority, they must have felt distinctly second class citizens. Their temples were being seized by Christians with official approval. Their priests were no longer maintained at civil expense and rites were no longer practiced in official occasions. To have someone of the rank of Julian turn back to the old ways would have been a profound shock.

So momentous an event couldn't have passed without a ceremony. Julian was later to get a reputation for his love of sacrifices - his enthusiasm was enough for people to joke that he might actually make horned animals extinct. I don't doubt a sacrifice was given for such a momentous event. Probably at least one bull lost his life. Days are short in February so the light was probably fading as the smoke of the sacred incense rose into the sky as the animal was consumed.

Julian had been in turn a helpless orphan, a political prisoner, a devoted scholar, and an imperial puppet. By his own efforts and talent he had transformed himself into a formidable military figure and a popular hero. Circumstances and the machinations of his enemies had forced him to become a rebel. He now chose of his own free will to become how he is still remembered. He rejected the religion forced on him from birth. He returned to the ancient Gods of his ancestors and his country. He was now Julian the Apostate.

Thanks to Wikipedia for the image.

Heretics - Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Chapter 21

2011-09-15T07:52:00.000+01:00

Athanasius - thanks to Wikipedia for the image

Imagine a large chunk of the population suddenly adopted a strange set of beliefs that you couldn't understand, and that they themselves couldn't explain. Then imagine that they started arguing with each other over seemingly insignificant details. And they are very serious about it all. Deadly serious. They are prepared to die for their beliefs. And to kill for them. Then they get control of the state, and start fighting each other. Armies are deployed and full scale pitched battles fought over minor points of doctrine. This was the nightmare the pagans of the late Roman Empire had to face with the rise of Christianity.

With the backing of Constantine Christianity was triumphant. For now, pagans were tolerated. The emperor was still Pontifex Maximus so on paper was the leader of the pagans. As he no longer had any interest in the ancient beliefs this effectively robbed the pagan faction of a leader. But he was very interested in the issues that consumed the Christians. The main issue that vexed them was other Christians. The arguments, particularly the ones coming out of Alexandria in Egypt, were what led Constantine to summon the council of Nicea. His objective was to get agreement between the different strands of Christianity around which everyone could unite. As planned, an agreement was duly reached, but the unity that this was supposed to create did not follow. The result was the precise opposite.

The Council of Nicea is really the start of Christianity as we know it today, making 325 one of those dates that mark a turning point. The Church, uniquely, has a continuous institutional history stretching from the Roman Empire until now and continues to use the language of the empire. There was a lot on the agenda and many important decisions were made. The Bible was regularised into the form we know today. The Christian calendar was arranged creating the cycle of feasts and holidays we are still familiar with. Tolerance was not on the agenda. The council established an orthodox creed which all right thinking men should agree, and anyone not willing to sign up to it became a heretic.

And it turned out there were plenty of heretics. The biggest group was the followers of Arius, the troublesome Egyptians who had triggered the whole thing off. They had been present at the council and had unsuccessfully argued their case. But they weren't the only ones the council ruled on. There were also the Paulists, the Montanists and the Navatians. These were groups who up until then had been members of the Christian republic but who now found that they were no longer mainstream. Then there were the various flavours of the Gnostics who had probably regarded the whole event in Nicea as no doubt interesting, but nothing to do with them. They were soon to find out that rival forms of Christianity were no longer tolerated.

There were also people who didn't have a problem with the Church's doctrine, but did have issues with its personnel. The classic example here was the Donatists of North Africa. They were in open revolt against anyone who had collaborated with the authorities during the persecutions. This, it turned out, was quite a lot of the top hierarchy of the Church. The battle between the Donatists and the former backsliders who now represented the establishment was to continue for centuries, in fact for as long as Christianity survived in Africa. It soon turned into a violent battle. And in a period of conflicts that generated strong passions it seems to have been the struggle with the highest emotions and the biggest body count.

The split in Africa began with a disputed election for the bishop of Carthage, but soon grew into a full scale guerilla war with regular troops deployed in an attempt to maintain order. It isn't hard to sympathise with the Donatists basic gripe. It must have been galling to see a bunch of toadies hoovering up the new found benefits of royal favour. But their fanaticism soon becomes repellent. Their horror of their co-religionists went way beyond the reasonable. Converts had to be rebaptised. The Donatists would treat any Church that they regained from the authorities as polluted and would purify it with as much energy as they would have expended on a place of idolatry, burning the alter and washing down the walls.

They were reckless of their own lives. They would take on the legions in full scale battle armed only with farm implements. They often simply killed themselves in their eagerness for martyrdom, or even more gruesomely ordered passers by to kill them (or be killed themselves). This deep seated insanity was passed from generation to generation and led to death on a horrific scale. This single dispute in a handful of provinces between people who agreed on every point of doctrine and who claimed to be followers of a peaceful and simple preacher was to kill vastly more Christians than all the prior persecution of the Christians by the pagans.

But despite their extreme behaviour, the Donatists were orthodox Christians. There were also groups that did not accept the new Nicean creed in the first place. The measures taken against them by the newly empowered orthodox church were pretty severe. In fact, the edicts of Diocletian proved a useful model. It is more than a little ironic that for some Christians the elevation of Constantine led to the return of the persecution that they had been free from for over thirty years.

Lets look at the beliefs of the groups the Church found so objectionable. The followers of the long dead Paul of Samosata believed that Christ was born as just a normal man and later was infused with the spirit of God.   This seems harmless enough but I suppose it would make children's nativity plays at Christmas a bit dull. But whatever, they had to go.

The Montanists of Phrygia were pretty standard Christians but insisted that directions should come directly from God via continually renewed prophecies rather than from the Church hierarchy. I don't think we need to discuss what exactly the problem was there. Letting God speak for himself? How could that possibly work.

The Novatians were similar to the Donatists in that they denied the right of Christians who had lapsed during the persecution to return to it. They also added an extra twist by denying the Church had the authority to absolve them. So they had to go too.

You might remember the Gnostics from a few podcasts back. They had mixed too much philosophy and mysticism into their brand of Christianity and so they too were declared heretics. Given that the Gnostics were all over the shop with their doctrines they weren't in a good position to mount an effective defence and were rapidly wiped out.

It is a shame to say goodbye to the Gnostics. Their interest in other ideas enriched Christianity and they seem to have been a lot less trouble than most of the sects going - as the fact that they didn't put up a violent resistance shows. I doubt many Christians are still listening, but if you are and you are looking for anyone in the Christian camp whose actions actually match the words of Jesus himself, the Gnostics are your best bet. They at least seem to have followed the turning the other cheek bit, even if they were open to ideas from sources other than the saviour himself. But they weren't the only ones to dabble in Greek philosophy, as we'll see a bit later.

But the big heresy was Arianism, the reason for the calling of the council in the first place. The followers of Ariaus were comprehensively trounced at the Council of Nicea by the artful Athanasius. He did pull a few stunts which ensured that his views predominated, but the bulk of the Bishops were behind the Athanasius position to begin with anyway. And his views on the nature of Christ to this day all still subscribed to by the mainstream Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant churches. Arius even managed to alienate some of the low level of support he did have when he spoke at the council.

As a result, Arius was exiled. His works were burned and possession of them was made punishable by death.

But the Arians didn't give up. Despite their rout at the council of Nicea they managed to get back into favour with Constantine. Constantine on the whole, or at least at first, did not care too much about the details of doctrine, he just wanted everyone to sing from the same hymn sheet.   (In this case both literally as well as metaphorically.) He attended the opening sessions to give his seal of approval. He attended some debates but did not take part in them, then left with the proceedings in full flow. Everything about his actions implied that he was behind the council, but that the council itself was free to decide. This was the behaviour of a statesman trusting the experts to sort out the issues and respecting the judgement that they reached.

But unhappily, after the council had concluded he seems to have started to take an interest in the actual controversy. Rather than drawing a line under the issue, he gave a further hearing to the Arians and then came to support their cause.

With the top man behind them, the Arians might well have succeeded were it not for the efforts of Athanasius, who devoted his whole life to the defence of the Nicene creed, as the creed established at the Council of Nicea is still known. Followers of this creed - which is all mainstream Christians - are even today from time to time referred to as Athanasians.

Athanasius had attended the Council Nicea as the representative of the bishop of Alexandria. He had been born in that city of merchant Christian parents who invested in his education. He seems to have been a good student. His learning and erudition were highly developed and he was a skilled communicator. He also had an amazing memory which in pre-Google times was a huge advantage.   At one point in his life he was able to carry on a debate about some point of scripture via letters quoting extensively from the Bible even though he didn't have access to one where he was hiding.

He put this huge talent behind his conflict with the Arians. Their dispute about the nature of God and Jesus was as deep and bitter as any in history and was to rock the empire and shape the history of their time and the ramifications of it have still not completely worked themselves out even in our modern world. I have put off talking in detail about the theology behind the dispute as long as possible, but much as I would rather ignore it I can do so no longer. It does have some significance for the rest of the story. I hope I can do it justice.

The orthodox conception is of a trinity where the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost are equal, distinct but the same being. The Arians denied that Christ was fully God and had no need for a Holy Spirit.

Or at least that is what I think they said. Arianism was comprehensively beaten and few records from the Arian side of the controversy have survived. This has meant that we don't really have a precise definition of what they believed.   But we do know very well what the winners believed, and you can pop into your local church if you want to find out more. It is called Christianity because it gives a central position to Jesus, about whom we have all probably heard as much as we need to get the idea. God is also a pretty well defined concept and one that we all understand. But if you are like me you may have sometimes wondered what exactly the Holy Ghost is all about. Despite being nominally given equal billing in the Trinity, what it is and how it fits in is far from obvious. But it seems to be the being who exercises God's will on Earth. (The Arians gave this role to an angel of some kind.)

But both the Holy Ghost and the concept of Jesus as an embodiment of God owe quite a debt to a most surprising source. Both seem to be analogous to the concept of the 'logos' developed by the followers of Plato from some ideas in Plato's writings. Plato had suggested that God had three basic components - a role as the prime mover, as an organising principle that brought order from the chaos and as a soul that pervades the universe and maintains its order. This idea was picked up on by Philo and developed into three individual personifications of God, a form we can recognise as the same as the Trinity.

Philo was a highly Hellenic Jew who lived and studied philosophy and religion in Alexandria, where else, in the 1st Century and who fused Platonic thought with the Hebrew traditions. He came up with the idea of the logos as a sort of creative divine force that imposed God's will on the world. It is a great shame that this mingling of Hellenism and Judaism in Alexandria and the equally eclectic experiments of the Gnostics did not continue. I like to imagine that a hybrid culture could have emerged not unlike the previous polytheism where people could mix, match and take their place on a spectrum of beliefs without having to align themselves with a particular group. If nothing else, a lot of later misery caused by inter-faith conflicts could have been avoided.

But it was not to be. The concept of the trinity was to be the last innovation introduced into what was now crystallising into a rigid dogma. This concept that Athanasius thought so important and fundamental was lifted from the work of Philo (with no acknowledgement of its origin incidentally) and bolted on, so the Arian heretics were probably closer to the original beliefs of the disciples. Next time you hear 'in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost' you can mentally substitute 'in the name of the Father, the Son and an abstract philosophical concept we picked up from some pagans.'

But from now on maintaining ideological purity was to be the order of the day. And the project to keep the doctrine pure has been enormously successful. I have a feeling that Athanasius could have officiated without too much trouble at any Catholic service up until the 1960s with very little difficulty.

But did have difficulties in his own lifetime. Shortly after the Council of Nicea he got the job I imagine he had always wanted of Archbishop of Alexandria. He was only thirty, and it was only three years after the Council of Nicea had endorsed his view of the trinity for the whole empire. Things must have seemed peachy. He set about touring his diocese and getting some flesh pressed. Although he was in a strong position, he still had to reckon with opposition from the party of Arius. Throughout his life he was always a skilled and energetic politician. Strangely he is remembered as a theologian. In fact, as he himself confessed, he didn't really get the depths of that subject. He writes that the more he thought about the trinity, the less he understood it. He's not the only one there.

Athanasius wasn't alone in not really understanding the major issue of the day. The disputes about the nature of God rolled on and around. Frequent councils were held to which bishops travelled from everywhere in the empire to argue about it. Factions formed around particular shades of belief and particular interpretations.

But despite the extensive discussion did not bring agreement any closer. As is often the way, creeds multiplied. At one stage someone worked out that there were 18 available to choose from.   And with Constantine now open to being swayed, there was everything to play for. He had initially been indifferent to which creed was adopted so long as one was agreed. Hear, hear! And had he stuck by the conclusion of the council he himself had called there would at least have been one official doctrine that everyone not greatly troubled by theological details could have subscribed to.

He doesn't seem to have actually wanted the argument to get out of hand in the way it later did. At one stage he sent a letter asking the contenders to follow the example of the Greek philosophers who could dispute without animosity. But it was to no avail. The parties were intent on disputing and the animosity was deep seated. Arius and his followers seem to have made little headway with fellow churchmen, but by turning their attention to the emperor himself were able to progress their cause by other means.

The problems really began when Constantine finally came around to the Arian position. Arius was recalled and the persecution of his followers halted. And then the persecution of the Athanasians started, with their bishops being removed on various pretexts. The bishops were still at this time elected, so it wasn't straight forward to simply remove them. Athanasius himself was one of the first victims. He found himself summoned to a council of bishops at Tyre to face charges of cruelty to the Arians including whipping six of their bishops and killing a seventh, which sounds quite serious, and breaking a chalice in one of their churches which somehow seems a bit below the pay grade for a conclave of bishops.

In the event Athanasius turned up well prepared. He took fifty prelates with him to show the level of his support. He also took the supposedly murdered bishop, who he produced to general surprise at a dramatic moment the middle of proceedings. As memorable defences go that must be up there with O.J.Simpson. If you are worried about the chalice, he had evidence to show that the church it was supposed to be in didn't exist.

But the holy men gathered at Tyre weren't really looking for justice, and after a bit of wriggling Athanasius ended up out of a job anyway. Having sorted out their rival they proceeded on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Whether when they got there they reflected on their blatant breach of the ninth commandment hasn't been recorded.

Athanasius was now in the wilderness, both literally and figuratively. He ended up in the Libyan desert hiding in distant monasteries. The Arians were in charge and just before Constantine died he was baptised by an Arian bishop. That the first Christian emperor died as a heretic is a fact rarely mentioned. Arius himself did not get to enjoy much of the triumph of his party. On his return to the court he suddenly died of strange symptoms. We'll never know if he was actually poisoned by the supporters of Athanasius. Successfully poisoning somebody is far from straight forward so it seems unlikely. But that it was suspected is a pretty clear indication of how far they were prepared to go in pursuit of their cause.

But with the death of Constantine the fortunes of Athanasius changed again and he was back as Archbishop of Alexandria. The frequent changes in emperor and the confused state of affairs led to several more exiles for Athanasius. But matters settled down with the final triumph of Constantius. Constantius was an Arian, and used his position to promote that version of Christianity. This was now a problem, because the rank and file of the clergy was now firmly orthodox and the congregations who had elected them tended to support them. Constantius had to impose the Arian doctrine from the top down in the face of determined opposition.

Every appointment of a new Arian bishop risked fresh disorder. One occasion in Constantinople illustrates the situation well. Constantius deposed the sitting orthodox bishop by the roundabout means of inviting him to a meeting at the palace and then bundling him onto a waiting vessel and shipping him off to Thessalonica before any of his supporters knew what was going on. When word got out crowds attempted to prevent the consecration of the arian, and fighting broke out. The death toll was in the thousands. A well outside one of the churches was described as overflowing with blood, and not as a metaphor.

Athanasius was marked out as the number one enemy of the regime. Once again he was deposed from his seat - this was to happen 5 times in his career - with large numbers of troops deployed to track him down. He evaded capture with lots of colourful stories of lucky escapes. On one occasion the stately church father avoided the men out to take him dead or alive by slipping down a sewer. He also holed up in the house of a well known 20 year old beauty. Apparently a vision had instructed him that this would be a good hiding place, and he duly turned up in the middle of the night and asked her to hide him. He stayed there quite a while. Handy things, visions.

Athanasius had many supporters and could slip in and out of Alexandria to send and receive messages to supporters throughout the empire, even though there was an outstanding death sentence pronounced against him by Constantius. So he was able to keep up the struggle against heresy even under these difficult circumstances. Religion had taken centre stage in politics in a way it had never done before, but in which we are very familiar with from news bulletins today.

The behaviour of the Christians of this period was a scandal, and indeed it still is. We aren't talking about isolated fanatics removed from the mainstream here. These are the founding fathers of the modern religion in every sense. Even Christian writers of the time were appalled by what was happening. The pagans were contemptuous and mocked the holy men's disputes in plays and wrote bitterly complaining of the outrages committed by the sectaries. Gibbon finds a pagan and a Christian agreeing on the ferocity of inter-Christian violence. Quote.

The experience of Ammianus had convinced him, that the enmity of the Christians towards each other, surpassed the fury of savage beasts against man; and Gregory Nazianzen most pathetically laments,that the kingdom of heaven was converted, by discord, into the image of chaos, of a nocturnal tempest, and of hell itself.

Quite apart from anything else, the obsession of the various emperors of the period, and Constantius in particular, must have distracted them from the more important duty of defending the borders from the inroads of the Persians and the barbarians.

The pagans did not suffer direct persecution at this point. They must have been disheartened at the lack of favour from the emperors who were nominally their leaders. Constantine himself had at least skirted around his partiality with some political awareness. His sons, particularly Constantius, seem to have been used as tools of the factions in their courts. But having said that, it is worth remembering that ideological dictatorships often use disputes about dogma and doctrine as a justification for internal repression. Recall Hitler's Night of the Long Knives and Stalin's purges. Maintaining the purity of the cause is often a smokescreen for bullying potential rivals and opponents. So it might not have been simple stupidity.

But there was one member of the imperial dynasty with his priorities in the right place. The victories of the young prince in Gaul against the Franks and Alemanni resounded around the empire. And he showed no interest in the faction fighting of the Church. For now he kept secret his true beliefs but it may well have been suspected by the pagan majority that with Julian's known liberal tendencies and love of ancient philosophy, he would look with more favour on the adherents of the gods of his ancestors. If so, they didn't yet know the half of it.

The Conversion of Constantine - Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Chapter 20

2011-09-08T00:00:00.001+01:00

Considering that the establishment of Christianity was the most lasting effect of his reign, it is a bit surprising that we don't know exactly when Constantine became a Christian.

It is entirely possible that he was a Christian from birth. His mother Helena seems to have been a Christian and may well have brought her son up that way. This isn't as much fun as the story I was taught as a child about seeing a cross in the sky on the eve of the battle of the Milvian Bridge - I'll get to that widely known story a bit later. Another suggestion comes from a contemporary historian who put Constantine's conversion shortly after his murder of his son and his wife. The priests of the ancient gods wouldn't forgive this crime so Constantine switched to a religion that would.

Being able to select a moral framework to match ones actions does sound convenient, but the timing doesn't really work. At the same time Constantine was killing his family he was heavily involved in Church politics and any appeal to the pagan heirarchy would not have been remotely credible. In any case, despite his inclinations Constantine held the post of Pontifex Maximus. This put him in charge of the official cult so he wouldn't have had to seek forgiveness, he could have simply ordered it.

If you are a stickler for procedure, the official conversion came very late in life. It wasn't until he was on his deathbed that he actually got baptised. This seems a bit odd to us, but it wasn't that unusual at the time. It was normal to at least let children get to the age of understanding what was happening before they were baptised and in a growing religion adult converts were common. I can't help wondering what is supposed to be achieved by baptising an infant too young to appreciate the significance of the ceremony, but I suppose it helps build social bonds for the other attendees.

There has always been a school of thought that has held that in fact Constantine never did become a Christian in the sense of actually believing it. In this view he was simply a cynical politician who swam with a tide for no other reason than it suited his purposes. He certainly did a lot of things that are not congruent with Biblical instructions. The bit about thou shalt not kill springs to mind straight away. The ban on bearing false witness is a tough one to comply with as anyone who has tried putting together a history podcast will tell you, but the extent of Constantine's propaganda against his enemies went well beyond any interpretation of scripture. In fact modern scholars are very much of the opinion that far from being an anti-Christian tyrant Licinius was at least as indulgent to Christianity as Constantine himself was. He may even have been a believer himself. So it is possible that Constantine was not the first Christian emperor after all.

Personally, I don't think there is much need to select one particular version. If you could go back in time and interview the elderly Constantine it is quite likely that he would not remember when, how or why he adopted Christianity. How many of us really know the reasons why we do anything? And adopting, or indeed abandoning a religion is something that usually takes place imperceptibly over a period of time and takes place way beyond the day to day concerns our prefrontal cortex is preoccupied with.

As to the charge of cynicism, most of us can easily cope with holding contradictory opinions and incompatible beliefs simultaneously. Constantine might be the first Christian we know about whose actions bear not the slightest relationship to the precepts of the faith he sincerely held. But he wasn't going to be the last. And just to make it clear - this is is not by any means a unique feature of Christianity. It is true of other faiths and political ideas as well - let's face it history would be a dull business if everyone behaved well and you could trust every word that they said.

Looking at what Constantine's career it isn't hard to imagine him as a man who basically wanted to be a Christian all along, but who was prepared to compromise his behaviour when it suited him. As time goes on his affiliation becomes steadily clearer and in all likelihood his faith grew stronger the more he practised it, and his commitment grew greater the more effort he invested in. The sunk cost fallacy is one of the reasons for the persistence of religious belief in many people and is one of the reasons regular attendance at Church is considered such a high priority for the faithful. But his growing piety did not extend to any particular modification of his policies or behaviour. He continued to centralise power, make the role of the emperor more absolute, torture and kill opponents and tax his subjects to within an inch of their lives throughout his reign.

At first, he prudently kept to the old ways of doing things. Coins from early in his reign depict him as a disciple of Apollo. The triumphal arch to mark the victory of the Milvian Bridge has no Christian symbolism at all, but does have several pagan Gods featuring. He also initiated the weekend, by issuing instructions that from now on Sunday was to be observed as a day of worship. This sounds pretty Christian but it was originally referenced to the eastern god of the Sun. And he funded the repair and building of pagan temples and accepted the title of Pontifex Maximus, which made him the official head of the state's pagan cult.   (Incidentally, this title is now claimed by the Pope. I am not sure what he wants it for,)

But while he showed sufficient favour and respect to paganism, he helped the Christians far more. The Edict of Milan was one of his earliest actions as sole Augustus in the west. Granting freedom of worship to everyone was actually only an advantage to the Christians. Everyone else had freedom of worship already. He also returned confiscated property to them. This was straight forward enough in the cases where former church lands were still in the hands of the state. Where they had been sold off, the purchasers were compensated. This meant that they got their stuff back without creating bad feeling. He also allowed the Church to run its own court system for keeping its clergy in order - a very significant concession from a controlling personality like Constantine. And finally, he even paid people to convert. He dished out twenty pieces of gold and a white garment per baptism. Given that this was coming on top of forgiveness of your sins and eternal life, it does sound like a good deal.

Those who doubt his sincerity don't have to look far for an ulterior motive. The Church was potentially a very powerful ally. Apart from the army and the emperor's own administration it was the only empire wide network. In fact its network stretched farther than the empire itself, with congregations in existence in Persia and missionaries already operating as far away as India. And it was a strong and cohesive network with a lot of intercommunication. There were 1800 bishops operating in the empire itself. They were in regular contact with each other and with their supporting priests. Bishops were democratically elected which guaranteed that they must have been reasonably competent. In fact given the steadily decreasing prestige of municipal institutions under Constantine it is quite likely that this was one of the few openings for men of talent.

The church provided its followers with a lot more than just spiritual guidance. It was also a social support mechanism in an age when public welfare programmes hadn't even occurred to anyone as an idea. They also provided a ready made community of people you could trust in a state that liberally employed spies and informers. And in an age when there was no printing press the Church had an unrivaled ability to spread news and information. Although Christians were still a tiny minority of the population, their support was of real value to a busy monarch with a big empire to manage.

And there was another opportunity offered by Christianity. Constantine was always interested in securing his position. To a man running a police state the idea of a God who could keep an eye on his subjects even when they were sleeping must have appealed enormously.   Christians had a good record for behaving themselves. Spread that around a bit and you have a much more compliant population. Constantine already had the hardware to run a totalitarian state. Christianity provided him with the ideology. Of course it would need a few changes. For example the injunction not to kill was a problem for the army. But the church authorities were happy to iron out these kinds of wrinkles in return for the support of the emperor. It wasn't long before the rule that had previously prevented Christians serving in the forces was changed to one that made desertion punishable by eteranal damnation.

Constantine the pious Christian would have been interested in church doctrine from the point of view of saving his own soul. As a lover of the good news and the community of Christians he would have been keen to see harmony amongst the faithful. There is no reason to doubt his sincerity. But it has to be said to be of any use in holding together a disparate empire the church had to be united and coherent. So it is little wonder to see Constantine intervening to smooth over internal disputes. He did this quite early when he convened a council at Arles in Gaul to sort out the problem of the Donatists in Africa. This was a tricky problem of the purists versus pragmatists variety. A lot of Christians during periods of persecution had chosen to give martyrdom a miss, but now it was back in fashion wanted their old positions back. The ones that had stuck to their guns and risked everything for their faith were reluctant to accept their old brothers back into the fold on equal terms. They appealed directly to Constantine who had got some bishops together to rule on the matter. They ruled in favour of the faint hearts and against the zealots. We'll be hearing more about the Donatists. While they were at it they also decided that Easter should be celebrated on the same day by everyone, but didn't come up with a suitable way of identifying Easter.

The council of Arles showed Constantine's willingness to get involved in religious affairs. But he was to get a lot deeper in. In 325 he called the council of Nicea. This really was the big one. It was attended directly by over 300 bishops, with legates sent by most of the others. It involved a lot of talking and covered a lot of ground and went on for two months. Constantine himself participated. But he was very humble about his status as a layman and simply observed what was going on.

The immediate cause for the council was a dispute that had broken out in Egypt about the precise nature of the divinity of Christ. A priest called Arius had proposed that as Christ had not always existed he must have been created by God and was therefore to some extent inferior to God. The orthodox line was that Christ was in fact God and the Father and the Son were both equally divine. I have struggled to understand this point. And having understood it, I have struggled to care. I am afraid theological disputes don't really resonate with atheists. But as I've written elsewhere, I never got past the reference to the sky being solid in Genesis Chapter 1 verse 6.

The ideas of Arius were opposed, and opposed with great success by Athanasius. Arius ended up getting exiled. But his followers thrived and for a while Arianism was a contender for the standard version of Christianity. It was quite a struggle and next time you hear the Christmas carol Oh Come All Ye Faithful have a listen for the second verse. It goes "Very God, begotten, not created". This sounds to me like an echo of that third century dispute. Like a lot of arguments, it doesn't make much sense to people who aren't actually involved but that doesn't take the heat out of it.

The gathering at Nicea argued about quite a lot of other things. A formal creed that all Christians should accept was drawn up and is still basically in use today. Once there was a generally accepted creed it was possible to deviate from it and officially be a heretic. So Arius and his followers were now heretics, and Athanasius and the people who followed the party line were now the orthodox. Orthodox literally means the 'correct opinion'. When Gibbon uses this word he is referring to people who accept the rulings of the Council of Nicea. The church was supposed to be all embracing and if you were a Christian you had to join it. It was all embracing, so it was a catholic church. The word catholic in its sense of covering everything was easily confused by a reader of the time to refer to the actual Catholic Church. This was handy for Gibbon's purpose. He could be critical of the behaviour of the Christians, and quite accurately refer to them as catholics. This made it sound like he was referring to the Catholic Church which at that time would have instinctively been treated as an enemy by any patriotic Briton. This was a neat trick, but it didn't fool many. But at least the book got published in Britain. In Catholic France it was promptly banned.

The subject of Easter was addressed. They argued about that as well, but that at least was resolved. Nowadays the date at which Easter is celebrated is pretty universal though the eastern churches are working on a different calendar. In nearly 2000 years Christians have never managed to reach agreement on key features of their belief or succeeded in coming up with a single organisation suitable for them all to join. But at least they managed to sort out when to celebrate the main event of the faith reasonably early in their history. Quite why the formula for it has to be so complicated I haven't worked out, but I am not going to complain. I don't want to set the argument off again.

Constantine did not stay for the whole council. He was a busy man. He had an empire to run, a family to murder, that sort of thing. But the Church had a lot to thank him for nonetheless. He had put their finances on a firm footing and secured their property base. They had income from direct contributions from the congregations. They also got grants from Constantine himself for various purposes. They were also now able to receive bequests in the wills of their followers. This had always gone on but there was always the risk of a legal challenge from the family of the deceased. So it is really from this stage that the church starts to acquire considerable quantities of wealth. This has continued to the present day of course and they've still got a lot of it. One of the many theories to explain the fall of the empire is that the economy was stifled by the amount of purchasing power continually being withdrawn by donations to the religious sector.

Whether or not they had an effect on total spending power empire wide, bishops became the holders of considerable quantities of wealth. Later regulations make it clear that it was felt necessary to monitor their handling of the cash to make sure it was being used for the purposes intended. Bishops became figures of considerable significance and we'll see them popping up regularly from now on as the history of the empire progresses. They were probably a net benefit to the empire in the early years. Being elected by their peers and speaking on behalf of God, what they said carried a lot of authority. They could oppose bad decisions coming down from the court and organise local responses to particular crises in a way that had become very difficult for the highly centralised and increasingly out of touch imperial apparatus.

It was useful to the emperor as well. The Church gave the empire a reason for being, a mission and an ideology. The emperor was styled as God's vicegerent on Earth and the equal of the Apostles. Given the material help the emperors lavished on their new religion merely being an equal of the Apostles seems like an understatement. And it was a very flexible ideology. It left room for a cult of personality as well.

Constantine was the first person to get the treatment.   Eusebius, a bishop who worked closely with and must have known Constantine well wrote a hagiographic biography after his death. This seems to be the origin of the Milvian Bridge story. The night before the battle Constantine dreamed that Jesus Christ commanded him to put the Christian emblem on his shields. Then when he was marching along he saw a gold cross in the sky annotated helpfully with the words, 'by this conquer'. He got the shields marked up and duly won. This divine intervention at the crucial point in his career wasn't made public until after Constantine was dead, and it was disowned by his family. But with historical records in the hands of the Church it was this version that was, and continues to be, propagated. Another version had ethereal beings dropping from Heaven to actually fight in the battle, but that was too far fetched even for the third century.

Constantine did use Christian symbols. The Labarum was a piece of fabric stretched across a pole with the Chi Rho symbol on it. This was supposed to strike fear into the hearts of enemies and to inspire to new heights of efforts the troops following it. No doubt it did. This at least seems to be true. No such thing is known to exist prior to the Milvian Bridge, but there are several images and references to it subsequently including a frieze of one that has the 'by this conquer' line graved on it.

So although the new religion didn't actually provide supernatural support it was certainly a very handy thing for Constantine. Communications, propaganda, moral support and an extra source of legitimacy were all benefits well worth having. I have a feeling there was another intangible benefit as well. By being the first Christian emperor Constantine was something new. This break with the past meant he could ditch the problems of the past. Whereas every other dynasty had collapsed into confusion and civil war, with the new dispensation from the one true God everyone could look forward to a new era of peace and prosperity. The concept of Christendom came into being.

But none of this came without cost. It is always important to remember that an agrarian economy of a fixed size is a zero sum game. There was a lot of industry and specialisation in the empire, but it only had one energy source. Deploying resources into one area inevitably pulled them away from others. This was true throughout history until coal and oil started to be used, so it was something that Gibbon who still lived in a pre-industrial world would not have given a second thought to. With official approval churches grew and took more and more from the productive. As usual, Gibbon phrases it beautifully.

Constantine too easily believed that he should purchase the favor of Heaven, if he maintained the idle at the expense of the industrious; and distributed among the saints the wealth of the republic.

No doubt Roman farmers did manage to steadily increase agricultural productivity over time but without extra energy inputs it would have been a slow process. The economy could not grow at anything like the rate we are used to. So a new class of priests with their support staff and infrastructure must have created a new burden for those at the bottom to bear. Someone had to build the new churches. Someone had to feed the new priests. On top of the demands of the army - now bigger than ever - and the court and the administration the empire now had to find the resources to keep thousands engaged in worship full time.

This itself would have been hard enough in itself. But despite the mild teachings of its founder, Christianity was not to prove able to bring peace to the empire. In fact it did the exact opposite, as we'll hear in the next episode.

Julian in Gaul - Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Chapter 19 Part 2

2011-09-01T08:00:00.001+01:00

Julian set off to Gaul with a guard of 300 men and without any idea of military matters. The plan was simply to give an air of concern to a neglected theatre. The Alemanni were well established and imperial forces were disorganised. The actual running of the campaign was in the hands of Sallust, an experienced general. Sallust and Julian, despite coming from totally different backgrounds, hit it off personally. Throughout his life Julian was to show himself capable of charming people, but this particular friendship was to be crucial because it got Julian into an active role in the army. I have a feeling that this was the exact opposite of what Constantius intended, and there must have been plenty of subtle barriers erected to prevent it happening.

But Julian set about becoming a soldier. He didn't find it easy. He was heard to sigh 'Plato, Plato, what a job for a philosopher' during strenuous exercises.

Spending the winter in Vienne he must have learned just how dismal the situation in Gaul was. Autun was under siege. The Alemanni were spread across the countryside raiding at will. They were only being resisted at Autun. And this was only because some veterans had taken up their arms again and were holding out in the city with difficulty because the walls were in a poor state of repair. Julian marched to its relief and raised the siege.

From there he marched to Rheims where such forces as were available had been ordered to gather. The low spirits of the men were lifted by the presence of the young Caesar. With a small force he set out. perhaps with more courage than wisdom, to seek combat with the enemy.

The Alemanni were in a strong position. They occupied a position that roughly corresponded to Alsace Lorraine. They had fortified this area by makeshift fortresses made from fallen trees. They were to the West of the Rhine and there were no natural barriers to hinder them from raiding across the rest of Gaul. And they had done exactly that with 45 towns being devastated. They also blocked communication between the Rhine and Danube legions.

Julian's attempt at an aggressive approach was courageous and decisive, but on the face of it not particularly wise. His small force was attacked by a much larger force with the loss of two whole legions. Julian counter attacked shortly afterwards and claimed a technical victory. This was probably important for morale, but he didn't have the strength to follow it up. He was not off to a great start but he did manage to advance to the Rhine and survey the ruins of Cologne.

This was a long way north of the Alemanni incursion and I am not at all sure what he was trying to achieve by this.

As winter came on he retreated to Sens to plan his next move and to reflect on what he had learned. There he was besieged by a large force of the Alemanni. He was holed up for 30 days but succeeded in fighting off his attackers.

He can't have been particularly happy with his own performance in the campaign so far. But he was a quick learner and studied hard to learn the lessons to be drawn from his experience. But he was furious with Marcellus, the Master General of the Horse and the senior commander in the area. He had made no attempt to relieve the Caesar when he was at risk of being overrun in his camp. This smacked of treachery. Julian complained to Constantius, who replaced him with a more compliant commander called Severus.

With the replacement of Marcellus the whole approach became a lot more serious, on paper at any rate. A very sound plan was put together for the next season's campaign. Julian was to advance into the area occupied by the Alemanni from the West, fortify and hold Saverne. Meanwhile a general called Barbatio would advance from Italy with a strong force of 30,000 and attack the Alemanni from the South. Under threat from West and South they would be forced to withdraw across the Rhine.

It ought to have worked. But Barbatio did not seem to inspire much fear in the Alemanni. On one occasion a large group of barbarians was allowed to get past his camp unimpeded. He also destroyed boats and supplies that Julian badly needed. And worst of all, the Alemanni felt confident enough that they could concentrate all their strength on attacking Julian.

When he realised the situation, Julian advanced to meet them. He had some 13,000 men and he faced at least 35,000. The Alemanni were led by a chieftan called Chnodomar, a man well known to Constantius. They had been allies in the fight against Magnentius.

The armies met at Strassbourg. The battle started late in the day, with his men urging Julian to fight straight away and not to rest for the night as he had wanted to do. Julian commanded the cavalry on the right and was horrified when they broke and started to flee the field. Julian personally intercepted them and persuaded them to return to the fight. This swung the battle the Roman's way and incredibly, the Romans won. Chnodomar was sent as a prize to Constantius.

This victory transformed the image of Julian. He now had a track record to point to. From now on he would be taken seriously and could start to push his own ideas with more conviction. He showed his growing confidence by meting out some old style military discipline. The cavalrymen who had so nearly let the side down were punished by having to parade around the camp in women's clothing. Firm, but fair.

The Franks had done much the same as the Alemanni in Belgium, and were occupying a large chunk of the empire. Straight from Strassbourg, Julian moved against them laying siege to a fortress on an island occupied by 600 Franks. He won, but they put up a ferocious resistance before surrendering. Surrending up until then hadn't really been something Franks did. Their philosophy had been conquer or die. Julian sent the prisoners off to Constantius who put them into his guard.

But the difficulty Julian had in subdueing this relatively small group of Franks showed him the danger of letting them gather in large numbers. So without giving his men or the enemy time to breath he engaged in an early form of blitzkrieg and rapidly overran the Frankish enclave. He used to good advantage the superior training and discipline of his soldiers and also the age old Roman custom of divide and rule, offering good terms to anyone who surrendered early.

Julian consciously modelled his approach in Gaul on that of the original Caesar, i.e, Julius Caesar, and sent back reports of his exploits. He must have read the Gallic Wars with great interest. Who wouldn't if they were in the same position. It might even have been Caesar's example that inspired his next strategic move. He advanced across the Rhine into Germany itself.

Once there he set about destroying villages, destroying or comandeering supplies and recovering Roman prisoners. He was in a position to dictate terms and was soon organising the frontier in ways that suited the empire's needs. In particular he made sure that the Rhine was freely navigable for Romans. Constantius had negotiated this already in return for a payment of 20,000 pounds of silver. Julian tried to get this paid to his troops instead, but Constantius refused. Julian's popularity with his troops was already a threat and he wasn't about to help him with this. In fact pay for the soldiers was blocked. This was not a shrewd move on the part of Constantius because it only made the legions all the more likely to rebel. On at least one occasion Julian had to refuse his troops attempt to declare him Augustus.

Meanwhile Julian having shown himself to be a highly effective military leader who had won over the men to his side, proceeded to give every sign of a great civil leader in the making as well. In his settlements with the Germans he extracted supplies and materials necessary for a large rebuilding programme. He started straight away building fortresses and repairing towns in the border region to block further barbarian inroads. He had 600 barques built in the Ardennes which set out to Britain and returned loaded with grain supplies badly needed in the areas where crops had been disrupted by the fighting.

None of this had been part of the plan hatched by Eusebia and Constatius. As Julian knew very well, he had been sent to add a lustre of imperial prestige to the military operations in the area. He wasn't supposed to actually take over command of the forces. He also wasn't supposed to be an actual head of the civil government either, but in that relief and rebuilding programme we see a clear aspiration to be a proper ruler.

Constantine's constitution had established a very clear distinction between civil and military administration. Even with the army behind him Julian had no particularly effective constitutional role other than as a final arbiter of disputes that couldn't be settled in the courts. As soon as he had dealt with the barbarians Julian was in Paris taking a lot of interest in the way Gaul was run. He showed himself to have a lenient streak when it came to justice. In one case he pardoned a local official accused of tax evasion. The exasperated prosecutor asked how anyone could be convicted if it was simply a matter of asserting innocence. To which Julian replied that how could anyone avoid conviction if it was simply a matter of affirming guilt.

But as we all know the serious business of government is taxing and spending. This was in the hands of the Praetorian Prefect Florentius. Florentius was charged with extracting cash from his province and passing it on to the central government in the person of Constantius.

Florentius was a courtier and was mainly concerned with extracting the maximum amount of cash out of his province for the emperor. This was what enhanced his status in the administration. Julian was a lot more concerned with the well being of the subjects and the long term health of the economy. He liked the Gauls. Admittedly they drank a lot, which was contrary to the austere principles of Julian himself. But to set against that they were honest, hard working and knew how to fight. Julian had raised local levies to bulk up his forces and these were to prove to be his most loyal troops.

Julian's removal of the barbarian threat and his rebuilding programme stimulated the economy of the region. The influx of resources from across the border was helpful too. Stimulus programmes have a mixed press overall but in straight economic terms you can't beat one that is funded by someone else. The effects didn't take long to show. This meant that potentially there were more taxes to be had. But as any reading of history shows, excessive taxes tend to reduce economic activity.

Julian who seems to have been motivated by genuine concern for the citizens, opposed the imposition of a new tax which would have made everyone poorer. This was a courageous act on his part. Complaining about the appointment of a general was bad enough. Arguing to deprive the court of hard cash was a much tougher and potentially much more dangerous course of action.

A letter from Julian to a friend on the matter has survived and it shows Julian well aware that he was putting his neck on the line, and claiming that his motivation was simply that he felt it was his duty to stand up for what he believed in. It is hard to see any other motivation so we must take him at his word.

He succeeded in blocking the tax and the Gauls continued to prosper. Julian set himself up in Paris, then a fairly small and a fairly new settlement. This is the first time this city enters the history of Europe. Julian had achieved a huge amount in a short period of time. It is hard to think of another figure in Roman history whose career got off to such a great start. But before we investigate what he did next, we need to get back to the history of the progress of the Church.

Constantius and Julian -Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Chapter 19 Part 2

2011-08-25T08:00:00.006+01:00

Blackadder: Where is the prisoner.
Baldrick: He's dead.
Blackadder: Dead? Are you sure?
Baldrick: Well I cut his head off. That usually does the trick.

In that episode of Blackadder 2, Edmund Blackadder had been put in charge of the Tower of London and had brought all the scheduled executions forward so he could enjoy a long weekend. Unfortunately Queen Elizabeth had changed her mind about killing one of her favourites. When the change of instructions got through, it was too late. With, needless to say, hilarious consequences.

I was reminded of that scene when I read that in some accounts of the death of Gallus, Constantius had second thoughts and sent a message to the prison sparing his cousin from execution.  The message arrived in plenty of time to save his life, but the artful eunuch Eusebius who saw Gallus as a threat to his influential position in the court delayed its delivery until it was too late. As even the easily confused Baldrick could work out, beheading is a pretty final process.

Whether or not this version is true, it is easy to understand why Constantius would be in two minds about whether or not killing Gallus was a wise move. Was it really such a good idea to get rid of one of the last people with a legitimate claim on the inheritance of Constantine? We'll a look in more detail at reasons why not a bit later. First lets look at the immediate repercussions.

With Gallus out of the way all eyes turned to Gallus' younger and much more charming brother Julian. He was now the last male relative of Constantine. Potentially Julian was just as threatening to the positions of some courtiers. In some ways even more so. Plotting started instantly. The story was put about that Julian had been in league with Gallus to overthrow Constantius. That would be a very good excuse to get rid of him.

Julian had charmed the court of Constantinople with his good looks, intelligence and wit. And he still has the power to charm even today. We can get to know him from his own writings and also from accounts by close acquaintances. And it is easy to like him. He won friends early on, and was socially successful enough to provoke some jealousy from the emperor himself, enough for him to be advised to distance himself from the court so as not to overshadow his illustrious cousin. That at any rate is one story. I can't help thinking that the jealousy might well have been in the minds of the men around Constantius seeking his attention rather than Constantius himself.

His passion in life was philosophy and he went about sporting a philosopher's beard. He must have cut a slightly odd figure in the court where most of the inhabitants were the ambitious or the servile. Julian by contrast had no particular need to impress or flatter anyone and not really much power to make him worth courting.

But once his brother was killed he became the focus of the attention of the most worldly and calculating elements in the court. I am talking about the eunuchs. This is when we see the grit and determination in the otherwise aimable character of Julian emerging for the first time. He was watched closely and everything he said was monitored. There were two risks. If he spoke out against his brother's killing that was a treasonous act. Eusebius and the other eunuchs no doubt would have been only to happy for this to be his downfall.

But to condemn his brother would have shown a weakness. An understandable weakness - he was at risk of losing his head after all. But to buy his survival by slandering his kinsman would have been a highly dishonourable thing to do, and Julian valued his honour. That Julian could show loyalty to both his sovereign and his brother under the circumstances is a great testament to both his intelligence and his integrity.

Constantius must have been under subtle pressure from Eusebius to get rid of the potential threat that Julian posed to Constantius, and of course to the position of Eusebius himself. But Julian had made friends. And one of those friends was the wife of the Constantius, Eusebia. And she could plot to get her own way as well. Somehow the contrasting plots of Eusebius and Eusebia cancelled each other out, and Julian ended up neither dead nor pardoned, but being internally exiled. But the exile was to Athens.

Athens was the place Julian would have chosen to be exiled to had he been given the choice. He could indulge his bent for philosophy in the very epicentre of what he loved. The schools of philosophy were still in operation and he could learn from the top scholars. He loved Athens, and would always have done so. It was his sort of place. But it must have seemed all the sweeter to him out of the febrile atmosphere where one word wrong could have been deadly. Instead of the wiles of the eunuchs he could enjoy the groves of academia.

Julian's first language was Greek and he had a passion for Greek culture and with it for Greek religion. And it was the religion that caught his imagination. He had been brought up a Christian. He knew his Bible well, and had even been a functionary in Church services. He was a member of the family that had done more than any other to establish Christianity as the faith of the Roman Empire. But this also gave him the inside view. He knew where the bodies were buried. Possibly literally. Given his situation - a murdered father and an executed brother - it was not surprising that he was no lover of Constantine. But the form his rejection would take would shock the world. For now, his inner beliefs were kept to himself. But he already attributed his deliverance not to God but to the Gods.

The actual agent of his deliverance, as he also acknowledged, was the empress Eusebia. Like many others she had taken a shine to Julian and promoted his cause directly to Constantius. She knew her Julian and was no doubt well aware of the appeal of Athens to him. Having avoided him getting the chop, she worked on a more ambitious project still. While Julian was enjoying the culture of Athens, Eusebia had more ambitious plans for him. The elevation of Gallus hadn't worked, but the problem was the character of Gallus not the basic idea. Julian was a very different character to Gallus. And Gallus had been given the plum provinces while Constantius had kept the troublesome western ones. Why not try the idea again, but this time the other way around. Let Julian have the slog of fighting off the barbarians in inglorious border fighting, while Constantius got the glory of sorting out the long standing grudge match against the Persians.

So after only six months in exile in Athens, Julian was rehabilitated. He was summoned to the palace in Milan to be given his new role. Constantius probably congratulated himself on his open mindedness. Despite his previous problems with Gallus, he was prepared to give Julian a chance. He would need to take precautions of course, but basically this was a generous act to share his power with his kinsman. It would also strengthen the empire and solve some problems.

That wasn't how Julian saw it. He was happy in Athens and had made many friends - he seemed to be good at making friends. He did not regard Constantius as in any way a potential benefactor. He was the remaining representative of the clan that had murdered his family - including recently his brother - and who had usurped his country's gods. And they were not to be trusted. The memory of the deceit used to trick his brother into handing himself over to humiliation and death was fresh in his mind. The treatment he was getting now must have looked like he was about to go the same way.

He considered flight or suicide, and referred to Minerva the goddess who he had a particular affinity with. But the augers were that the gods would protect him. Minerva had borrowed angels from the Sun and Moon to guide his steps and keep him out of danger. He would gather his courage and travel to the court of his enemy and the personification of evil.

His supernatural protection was not needed. He was welcomed with open arms and embraced by the royal couple. He was to be elevated to the rank of Caesar. Julian has left an account of how he found himself suddenly in a strange world where even previously familiar objects seemed odd, as if being encountered for the first time. He shaved his philosopher's beard off and took on the military garb of a Roman Emperor. His bemusement was a source of amusement for the rest of the court.

But in reality it was a serious, even a deadly business. The idea was for Julian to be a figurehead for military operations in Gaul. The border had been overrun. Former mercenaries, having been discharged but who had not gone home, were a menace. In particular the Alamanni were intent on carving out a kingdom for themselves in the south east of Gaul. The presence of a bona fide emperor and relative of the great Constantine would be a huge fillet for morale.

The first stage was to show Julian to the troops. He joined Constantius on a platform elevated above a huge assembly of the army in Milan. Constantius recommended to them the nephew of Constantine. Although his only experience of soldiers was being guarded by them, and his only experience of politics was reading Plato's Republic Julian was acclaimed by the troops. To mark their approval they banged their shields on their knees. Julian was now an emperor. Constantius in his speech had talked of how they were now colleagues

But he still hadn't escaped the suspicion and danger of his position. He was watched continually and closely. His mail was intercepted and read. His household was staffed with informers. He was only allowed to keep four of his domestics: his physician, a couple of footmen and his librarian. That last one was a concession to his bookish nature. Eusebia had recognised his intellectual inclinations and presented him with a library of books. This was thoughtful and a kind and generous gesture. It also probably reflected the notion that Julian was going to have time on his hands in his new role. His new household was tightly regulated, even down to what meals were to be served to him. In fact Julian being the austere lover of plain living was revolted by the extravagant dishes suitable to his new rank. And his dinner wasn't the only thing he didn't get a say in and probably wouldn't have chosen.   He was married to the remaining daughter of Constantine, Helena. When I said in the last podcast that Constantina was the last daughter of Constantine I was wrong. Sorry about that.

Helena mathematically speaking cannot have been less than 30, and in all probability was in her forties.   It was no whimsical matter to put these two together. Gibbon hints at the motive and in an age of hereditary monarchs did not have to spell it out for his readers. In our more democratic age it may not be so obvious, so let me spare you the trouble of working out the dynastic implications. Constantius and Eusebia at this stage did not have any children. This made Julian the lawful successor to Constantius. On one level this made him a threat because he could mount a challenge to Constantius. But as Julian did not have an army at his disposal he was not in a strong position to push this. In any case, his claim would not be a strong one since Constantius was clearly more closely related to Constantine.

But Julian's claim did have another effect. If someone wanted to overthrow Constantius, they would have to overcome the problem that Julian would be the legitimate successor. Kill Constantius and you get Julian. So a live Julian was in fact a protective shield for Constantius. This worked still better if the shield was a Caesar. The last minute attempt to save Gallus may not have happened, but it makes a lot of sense if it did.

Any son of Constantius and Eusebia had prior claim. This meant Julian shouldn't be a long term threat, but even so there was still a risk. Any son of Helena would have had a claim on the throne. In the event of Julian having a son, he would also be a contender. Putting them together kept the succession under some measure of control and at least reduced the supply of alternative emperors to a single stream. Hopefully the young Julian and the mature Helena would be at a reproductive disadvantage to Constantina and Eusebia.

Whatever the precise calculations, Julian was soon on his way to his new posting in Gaul, and took his new wife with him. She was to produce at least one and possibly more children with him but none survived. Their deaths have been attributed to a cunning plot by Eusebia who artfully poisoned them. This would have been a perfectly logical thing for her to have done, but the practicalities make it unlikely.

Constantius was still preparing a major campaign against the Persians but ended up staying in Italy for the eighteen months after the departure of Julian. He had some border issues to deal with, a bit of persecution and also decided to visit Rome for the first time. This was the first visit of an emperor since his father some 32 years before, so it was quite a big event. He was greeted rapturously by the crowds.

Constantius behaved the total emperor throughout. On arriving in the city he acted the part by never looking to either left or right while walking slowly through the streets. He presided over games, met the senators and behaved like a supreme being. The days when the Romans felt able to chum up to their emperor as if he was simply one of them were long gone.

Constantius had behaved as the consumate and polite guest in his visit to Rome and obviously enjoyed the reception he got. To say thank you he decided to give the city a present. And he hit on a great gift idea. Who could fail to be bowled over by an obelisk from Egypt? There happened to be a particularly large one that Constantine had already started moving with the intention of shipping it to Constantinople. This project had been abandoned on his death, so the obelisk was going spare. It was put in a particularly large boat and shipped to Rome where it was erected in the Circus Maximus. It is still in Rome, though now it has been moved to the Lateran Palace. The Romans liked obelisks and had pinched loads of them over the years. Today there are more obelisks in Rome than anywhere else, even Egypt. The one that Constantius gave to the city is the tallest. So that was a nice token of appreciation.

Having had some fun in Rome, Constantius now had some serious business to conduct with the Persians and the Quadi. The effects of the bloodthirsty battle of Mursa were still being felt in the form of poorly defended borders. This allowed the lightly armed but very mobile Quadi to raid deep into the empire and carry off goods and citizens. The Quadi were however no match for the legions. Constantius crossed the Danube in strength and cut them and the other troublesome tribes to pieces. He then made peace with some and set up some inter-tribe conflicts to facilitate the centuries old highly effective tactic of dividing and ruling. The tribe of the Limigantes were particularly troublesome and in several episodes showed themselves to be untrustworthy and unwilling to respect diplomatic practices. When they tried to seize Constantius himself during peace talks they had gone too far. The order was given for their extinction, and the order was carried out. Genocide would not have particularly shocked the Romans, and several genocidal projects were contemplated during the empire's history. But I think this is the only one that was ever actually carried out.

But it showed how strong the empire was even at this late stage in its history. This was Rome in its characteristic position of dictating the terms to the barbarians and holding the initiative.

The Persians were never such easy meat and chose to take advantage of the distraction to make trouble. A haughty message arrived from Sapor. The King of Kings and brother of the Sun and Moon condescended to offer terms to the supplicant emperor. He would limit his demands to the provinces of Mesopotamia and Armenia as a show of his moderation and leniency, even though as the rightful successor of Darius he was entitled to ask for much more.

Sapor may have received some encouragement in his arrogance from within the empire. In another example of byzantine behaviour the local officials had opened negotiations with the Persians without any authority from Constantius himself. This was to prove to be a bit of a pattern of his reign. He was competent enough when he was in direct control, but projecting his power via the imperial bureaucracy defeated him. He doesn't seem to have even been able to keep control of it. So while he was triumphing over the Quadi he was being let down against the Persians.

But now the channels were open he made an attempt to establish a lasting peace. He sent a delegation of three. They were a count, a notary and sophist in Gibbon's phrase. I suppose we'd call them a politcian. a lawyer and a PR man. This sounds like just the team for the job but they were unsuccessful and came back with the news that Sapor intended war.

He was encouraged in this by a Roman deserter called Antoninus who offered inside information on the defences. With this advantage Sapor marched into Roman territory. But it turned out that the Romans were better prepared than expected and the land in the anticipated attack route had been cleared of anything useful. Time was lost as a different longer path had to be taken. Once they had got back into Roman territory they bypassed the strong position of Nisibis and fell on less well defended Amida.

But even Amida was no pushover. Its walls had been rebuilt and tall towers added. It had recently been renamed after the emperor and was equipped with the latest dart throwing technology. It was defended by 7 regular legions and a corp of barbarians. Sapor attempted to overawe them with his presence alone but a missile fired hit him. He was only protected from injury by his diadem. I wonder if someone was trying out their new toy. The defenders must have been well armed with missiles, because in another incident the son of one of the allies of Sapor was killed during an attempt to parlay.

This enraged the attackers and they set about an aggressive siege. It was a hard fought battle. The barbarian contingent attacked the Persians in a strong sortie. The Persians counterattacked and captured a tower enabling them to shower the defenders with arrows. In the end the attackers got some advice from Roman deserters and constructed mobile attacking towers. Trenches were dug that allowed the attackers to get near enough to undermine the walls. Battering rams were brought into service to reduce the defences.

The defenders fought on with desperate courage, but in the end they could hold out no longer. Everyone the Persians caught in the city was massacred. Incredibly, some of them escaped.

It was a victory for Sapor, but one that he had paid far too high a price for. The spirited defence had reduced his army of 100,000 by 30,000. And the fighting season had been used up. He returned to Persia and made the most of the PR opportunity, but basically he had expended a huge portion of his resources for very little in the way of advantage.

The high morale and dogged determination of the defenders of Amida commands respect and admiration, but also begs a question. They must have fought under the impression that they were going to be relieved. So why didn't a relief column appear?

The answer is that secure behind the lines the eunuchs had other priorities. An invasion on the scale of Sapor's was not an insignificant threat and required a response from a good general, And luckily one was to hand in the form of Ursinicus. It was him that had prepared the defences that had so effectively delayed Sapor in the early stages of his campaign. But just as the crisis broke he was replaced by Sabinian, an effete courtier rather than a soldier. Then Ursinicus was recalled, but was obliged to report ot Sabinian who vetoed any aggressive course of action and remained in his camp at Edessa.

Incredibly, Sabinian had the escapees from Amida executed. Presumably the story of the defence was embarrassing to those who had not moved to rescue them. An enquiry was undertaken into what had gone wrong which concluded by blaming Ursinicus. With not much more to lose, Ursinicus finally blurted out that if they carried on waging war the way they were doing, the emperor himself would not be able to defend the empire.

In the end this was put to the test. Constantius himself took over to try to avenge the loss of Amida. He led his army out and laid siege to Becabde - a Persian fortress. But the weather turned against the expedition and he ended up returning to Antioch empty handed.

It was a miserable campaign from the Roman point of view. Much blood had been shed but little had been achieved. Meanwhile, a stream of straight forward accounts from Julian reported success after success against the Germans for the young Caesar.

Here is the Blackadder episode referenced at the beginning. The line quoted is at 12:20

Constantius and Gallus - Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Chapter 19 Part 1

2011-08-18T08:00:00.001+01:00

When the sons of Constantine massacred all their close relatives, they spared a couple of their cousins. Gallus and Julian were too young to pose any immediate threat so they didn't have to be killed straight away. But as their parents had been killed something needed to be done with them, so they were held captive. Was there a long term plan for them? It is hard to say. Given that they had an empire to run, probably their captors forgot all about them. They were safely out of the picture and there were plenty of other things going on.

So all the while the sons of Constantine were fighting each other and the enemies of the empire, their closest living relatives were growing up in quite obscurity. At the time of the uprising of Magnentius they were being held together in a castle in Cappadocia. Gallus the older of the two boys - who were half brothers - was 25. Not much is known about their early life together but I imagine they were close. Neither had anyone else much in the world to turn to and their grim situation must have made them comrades in adversity. They were treated well apart from the lack of freedom, but that was poor compensation for the permanent risk of being executed without warning.

But all of a sudden their fortunes changed. Constantius, struggling to manage a vast empire alone, decided he needed them and summoned them to the court. Gallus was the main focus as he was old enough to be of use. He was elevated to the rank of Caesar and given charge of the provinces of the East. To cement the arrangement he was married to Constantina. I breathed a sigh of relief at this point. She has been showing up regularly in the story so far and was obviously an ambitious woman. At last the daughter of Constantine has managed to get to be the empress she so desperately wanted to be. Julian was also released and taken to the court of Constantius in Constantinople.

The court at Constantinople must have been a nightmare to manage. Everything now revolved around the emperor. His was the last word, so if you wanted something done that was where you had to go. And as the administrative centre that was where all the money was spent. This inevitably made it the destination of choice for the ambitious and the talented, and also for chancers and hucksters. It wouldn't always be easy to tell which category a particular person fell into - indeed the difference is often a matter of perspective - but there must have been a legion of people trying whatever means they could to get attention for their pet project.

Inevitably the emperor had to surround himself with gatekeepers to stop himself from being overwhelmed. Having the ear of the emperor gave a favourite or an official enormous power. No doubt the favourites had favourites, so knowing where to turn for a particular function would have been an impossibility for an outsider. Or an insider come to that.

The problem was staffing it. If you are the guy right at the middle of this, how do you pick people who have your interests at heart? This was what had motivated Constantius to turn to his family. They at least had some common ground and interest. Another solution to the shortcomings of the average subject was the extensive use of eunuchs. A eunuch was not susceptible to a lot of the temptations of a regular official. In particular they had no chance of founding a dynasty so that removed the biggest problem - the risk that they would replace the emperor altogether. The bare minimum qualification for the role of emperor was having all your bits intact.

Castration does seem like an extreme response to time management issues to modern ways of thinking. But when you think about it, the advantages were not to be despised. It isn't hard to think of modern politicians who could have simplified their career challenges if they had dispensed with their reproductive organs prior to running for office. Reducing the total testosterone level around the emperor was probably a good idea and may well have increased the stability of the regime.

But it didn't get rid of intrigue and plotting - far from it. Eunuchs may not have been capable of the full range of human mischief, but they were still perfectly capable of jostling for power and position. Gibbon expresses the prejudice of his time by assuming that eunuchs were effeminate, greedy and cowardly. I don't think that there is in reality any reason to believe that they behaved any worse than human beings in general. But lets face it, that is bad enough.

So it isn't hard to see the appeal to Constantius of setting up Gallus to help deflect some of the pressures landing on his desk. Not everyone would have been pleased to see Constantius have more time and attention for day to day business. The eunuchs were well aware of the source of their power. One of them was particularly influential. His name was Eusebius and he seems to have held particular sway over Constantius. Gibbon records a joke from the time that mocks the pride and haughtiness of Eusebius by sarcastically observing that Constantius stood high in the approval of Eusebius. Eusebius, from reasonably obvious motives, was an enemy of Gallus.

Gallus did not show immediate promise in his role as a Caesar. Set up with his own court in Antioch, he immediately instigated a regime of extreme repression. He set up torture chambers in his palace and recruited spies to keep an eye on his new subjects. The Roman Empire wasn't a cuddly place and the mildest of emperors transferred to our era would no doubt be dragged off to the court of human rights in the Hague within a fortnight, so to get a reputation for excessive cruelty in this era was something of an achievement.

But you can at least respect his willingness to walk the walk. He undertook some spying activities himself personally, dressing up as a plebian to walk the streets hunting out sedition against, well against himself. You don't have to be a great psychology fan to wonder if his upbringing had something to do with this. It is hard to know how living your life expecting death at any moment would affect you. But it isn't hard to imagine that it may have played some part in this enthusiasm for tight security measures.

Constantina also gets a bad press. She is portrayed as both blood thirsty and avaricious. She combined these two vices by accepting money in return for getting specified victims killed. This isn't particularly endearing behaviour at the best of times, but was made even worse by the relatively low tariff she charged. Prices started at a pearl necklace for a nobleman's life. We all like a bargain, but for the victims it was just insulting.

The population of the east was soon crying out against their new leader. On top of that, the overall situation in the region was getting a bit fraught. There was a revolt in Palestine and preparations for the next stage of the war in Persia had led to an increase in grain prices. Gallus had intervened in the food market - never an easy thing to pull off successfully - but had done so in such a way as to infuriate both buyers and sellers.

The eunuchs in the palace at Constantinople were studying the situation with interest. The revenues diverted to the new court at Antioch were coming straight out of the pot they habitually used to play their games, so they had a vested interest in undermining this experiment in political pluralism. Plots against Gallus were soon afoot. And you can't beat the court of an absolute monarch who happens to be fully occupied elsewhere if you are looking for a breeding ground for a conspiracy. Eusebius was, no doubt, in his element.

But Constantius was too pre-occupied to do much about it at first. He was busy finishing off the revolt in Gaul and dealing with some trouble being posed by the Alemanni. Freeing up time to deal with other matters was after all, the whole point of bringing Gallus into the administration in the first place.

But when things calmed down he had time to have his ear bent by advisors who no doubt had their own agendas. His reaction was to send a praetorian prefect Domitian, and the palace quaestor, Montius, to bring Gallus back on track. You can see what Constantius was thinking and it was sound enough reasoning. The appointment of Gallus was working in the sense of relieving him of some of the pressures of ruling alone. If he could just be brought in line with imperial best practice it could still become a successful partnership. And it could well have done so if things had turned out a bit different.

In the event the delegation from the emperor didn't handle things particularly wisely. What should have been a quiet behind the scenes chat followed by some solid practical advice turned into a showdown. Domitian played it hard from the beginning by threatening to withhold the allowance for the running of the palace. Gallus took the view that he was an emperor and Domitian was a subject and so should not be talking to him like that. So he proved his point by throwing him in prison.

This wasn't a good start. But things could still have been resolved if Montius had shown a bit of good judgement and persuaded Gallus to calm down and talk. Instead he showed bad judgement. He pointed out that as Caesar Gallus wasn't even entitled to dismiss a municipal magistrate, let alone bang up a direct representative of the Augustus.

One might have supposed that two such top ranking dignitaries would be well aware that threats and insults were unlikely to achieve what Constantius had mandated them to do. Stupidity can never be totally eliminated as an explanation of human behaviour, but I wonder if we are seeing the hand of Eusebius behind this. The last thing he wanted was a reconciliation between Gallus and Constantius. Did he get at the envoys to ensure their mission was a failure? We'll never know, but if that was the case they overdid it. In a final confrontation in the Senate the praefect attempted to assert his authority. The response of Gallus was to call on his people to defend him. And boy did they do so. The emperor's men were torn to pieces by an angry mob and their dismembered bodies were thrown into the river.

On the whole, you don't really endear yourself to an emperor by killing his emissaries. If you are going to, at the least you need to be a bit discreet about it. Doing it in public, indeed using the public, makes it that much worse. Gallus had gone too far. Constantius was going to sort him out. The smart move would have been to simply declared himself an Augustus and hope to save himself by fighting. But he didn't realise this and carried on as before.

Constantius again showed that while he was never a match for his father in military matters, he did know how to implement a crafty political manoeuvre. He quietly removed units from the East to weaken any rebellion should it arise. He then invited Gallus and Constantina to a meeting with him in Milan, hinting strongly that it was time that he raised Gallus to the rank of Augustus.

And Gallus fell for it. He set out from Antioch with a large retinue oblivious of the danger he was in. At Constantinople he halted in his journey and put on some extravagant horse racing and sat in the imperial box as if he was already an Augustus. Word of this would have got to Constantius who would have taken it as a gross insult. Once again, are we seeing the result of some subtle manipulation going on here? On the one hand, telling Gallus he was as good as an Augustus already is the kind of thing that he would have wanted to believe. On the other, what better scare story for Constantius than 'you should have heard how popular he was with the crowd at the games, sitting in your box and all.'

As he progressed towards his meeting with his cousin he found that the guards were starting to behave less like his retinue and more like his captors. At Adrianople he received instructions to leave the bulk of his company behind him and to progress at speed to his meeting in Milan. By now, even the poor political antennae of Gallus must have worked out that something was amiss. But he must have been comforted by the thought that his wife Constantina was making her way separately to the meeting with her brother as well. That ought to count for something. He probably didn't learn until he arrived that she had died unexpectedly on the journey. This left Constantius as the last remaining direct descendant of Constantine.

The meeting in Milan did not go well. On his arrival at court Gallus was imprisoned, and fell into the hands of Eusebius. He was interrogated by the subtle courtier who succeeded in getting him to blame everything that had gone wrong on Constantina.

This was hardly noble behaviour on the part of Gallus, and in addition was extremely unwise. Pointing the finger at his sister was going to enrage Constantius still further. After a short captivity, the order came for his execution. With his hands tied behind his back he was beheaded. It was probably the end he always dreaded, but it was ironic that he should have gone to it with such initial high hopes. And although he must have mentally prepared himself for death, he can't have imagined that before he died he would himself kill his own reputation so effectively.

The wretched career of Gallus was not particularly significant in itself, but it does show how the empire now operated. It was a despotism with all that that entailed. Nobody, not even the grandson of an emperor and the nephew of another was safe. All rested on the whims of the main at the top, and a huge crowd around him devoted their whole lives to influencing him. Courtiers, chamberlains, and palace dignitaries with bizarre titles can now be as important as generals and ministers. Gallus had fallen foul not so much of the emperor himself but of the group of favourites around him. Constantius lived in a bubble removed from reality. This was a dangerous situation for an empire with enemies, but was the inevitable result of absolutism with any but the most able of rulers.

It is also worth remembering the stages in the downfall of Gallus. Nobody can have been more interested in this episode than the one remaining member of the Constantine family aside from Constantius himself. Julian was cut from a very different cloth to that of Gallus, but he was nonetheless his half brother and they had grown up together. He was probably the only person Julian felt he could trust. His death at the hands of his cousin must have been a bitter ending.

And Julian himself must have realised that his own fate was now on everyone's lips. With the death of Gallus, what would become of Julian? The character and personality of Julian must have been the water cooler topic of choice in the courts. In the next episode we'll go back to Constantinople and pick up the story of Julian. We'll see that Eusebius was not the only person capable of plotting successfully.

Constantius - Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Chapter 18 Part 3

2011-08-14T22:30:00.000+01:00

Constantius was the middle of the three sons Constantine had with Fausta. Of the three he was the one that showed the most promise.

Those who occasionally mention the education or talents of
Constantius, allow that he excelled in the gymnastic arts of leaping and
running that he was a dexterous archer, a skilful horseman, and a master
of all the different weapons used in the service either of the cavalry
or of the infantry.

But like his brothers he was brought up as a royal surrounded by flatterers and subordinates. Where Constantine himself had needed to get a good grip on the realities of human nature simply to survive growing up in the court of Diocletian, the princes of the blood had no such education. But Constantius was lucky in one way in that he was sent at an early age to the East where conflict with the Persians was probably already underway. It may well have been this early grounding in the reality of war that made him relatively speaking the most successful of the sons of Constantine. He managed to rule reasonably effectively for twenty four years, died a natural death and had some successes. His reign did very nearly end in the chaos of a civil war, but on the whole he seems to have done okay although he never really got a grip on the empire in the way his father did.

Lets look at the situation with the Persians where Constantius cut his teeth as Caesar. He was officially appointed to that post at the age of 6 but seems to have been actively involved in the campaign on the borders at the age of 20 when his father died.

While Constantine was still alive and running a strong and united empire, the Persians had little hope of making any impression on the Romans. They had fewer resources and could only make progress if the Romans were disorganised or distracted. During the reign of Constantine, the balance of power was so much in favour of the Romans that the Persians basically kept their heads down.

The death of the long serving Tiridates of Armenia might have encouraged them to have a go. My reading of the situation is that Constantine had Armenia pretty firmly within the sphere of influence of Rome all the time Tiridates was on the throne, and he was on the throne a very long time (385-330). When he died the Persians tried to turn the situation more to their advantage. Constantine's response was to use force to restore the status quo.

This was bad news on paper for the Persians, but they did have the advantage of having a highly effective monarch in the shape of Sapor. Sapor like Tiridates and Constantine had had an exceptionally long reign. But unlike them he was still young and vigorous. This was because he had got off to a very early thanks to the rather remarkable distinction of having been crowned before he was born. The Persians had the same problems picking chief executives that the Romans did, and he had happened to be conceived during a particularly troublesome patch of dynastic history and there was a pressing need to get a monarch in place to prevent a civil war.

Previous peace settlements had left the Romans in a strong position with an easy to defend border. Being Romans they had used their engineering skills and had improved their defensive position still further by the creation of some powerful fortresses and walled cities. So the Persians were faced with a powerful potential enemy who could attack at will but who would in turn be hard to attack. The Persians had a strong motive for trying to push the Romans back.

What is less clear is the precise chronology of the conflict. If you were in Sapor's shoes you might well calculate that waiting for the death of Constantine and then pouncing quickly before the new regime was established would be a good plan. But the sources seem to indicate that war had already broken out when Constantine died.

Gibbon at this point becomes uncharacteristically ambiguous. I have a feeling that for once he couldn't actually get a consistent narrative thread out of his sources. He was the first historian to make use of Armenian sources and they may have been difficult to interpret. But while it is a bit vague when things happened, what actually happened is a lot clearer. And what happened makes a lot of sense when you consider the relative positions of the two empires. The Romans were motivated to maintain the status quo. This was just one of their borders and one that they were pretty happy with, and they had bigger threats on the Danube and the Rhine to worry about. The Persians by contrast needed to hit hard and quickly to have any chance of making any impression.

There were seven pitched battles all won by the Persians. This must have embarrassed the Romans. But sieges of the fortresses by the Persians were unsuccessful. The key one was Nisibis, which the Persians laid siege to three times. In the third siege Sapor ordered a river to be diverted and flooded the plain outside the city, with the level of the water reaching the level of the top of the walls. The Persians then attacked by boat. It was creative, but it didn't work.

So the victories of Sapor were empty because he got no real advantage from them. Nobody enjoys a public humiliation and lack of success in arms could turn into political problems at home, but you have to wonder if the Romans were simply doing the logical thing. Send enough troops to disrupt Sapor's movements and hamper his logistics. But don't risk a big force that would be hard to supply and make sure the defensive pinch points are strong enough to withstand any assault.

So the events of the war could represent a cool and rational approach by the Roman high command. Or maybe, the succession of defeats was not the result of Sapor's genius but a clever attempt to discredit Constantius in order to benefit somebody else's ambition. That may sound a bit byzantine, but we are talking about the Byzantine empire now.

But whatever the truth of the matter, when the rebellion of Magnentius in the West broke Constantius was in the East with inadequate forces, a somewhat poor reputation for generalship and worst of all, a live and active enemy to deal with. Magnentius must have been very well aware that it was he that held all the cards. He must have calculated that Constantius had no option but to recognise his fait accompli and acknowledge his position as emperor of the West. That Constantius was not prepared to deal with him must have come as a suprise.

When Constantius succeeded in overcoming the admittedly somewhat half hearted rebellion of Vetranio by force of character and not much else, the match was suddenly a lot more even. Magnentius still had more and better troops, but Constantius had legitimacy and had also succeeded in gaining the initiative.

The empire now faced the worst case scenario. Thanks to the policies of Constantine there were huge forces available - it is quite probable that this would have marked the highest point of men under arms in its history. And these forces were now divided very roughly in two and were going to fight each other.

Magnentius took the initiative. He invaded the territory of Constantius and in early fighting came off best. Both sides sought a large engagement to settle the matter.

The big clash came at Mursa where over 100,000 troops were involved. This may not have quite been the largest battle in Roman history in terms of numbers of actual participants but it is the one with the highest recorded death toll. The fighting took place on a level plain. The army of Constantius was in a better position with a river guarding its flank and with a superiority of cavalry. This enabled them to outflank and apparently surround the army of Magnentius.

In the days when fighting was hand to hand large numbers of deaths in a single battle are not a common occurrence. But if one side can succeed in trapping the other in a small area they have the option of completely wiping them out. Hannibal succeeded in doing this at Cannae. Uncontrolled panic in retreat was another situation where deaths could be very high. There was an example in the English wars of the Roses at Towton where 28,000 were killed in a single day. The military technology of the pre-modern world was primitive but that didn't mean that large numbers could not be killed. It is best not to think about the details - the deaths would be both very numerous and very gruesome. I just say all this to point out that the 54,000 killed at Mursa sounds very high and it might be put down to exaggeration. But there is no reason in principle to doubt it.

Constantius was not actually leading the troops in battle. He was nearby in a church praying for victory. I like the politics of that. He was effectively sharing the danger since he was signalling his whereabouts. If the day went badly the enemy would certainly find him and kill him. But he showed that he had faith in his generals by letting them handle the actual battle. His prayers were answered with a decisive victory, but it was an extremely costly one. In one day the Romans had lost enough men to form a large army. The borders were going to be short of men for some time to come.

Even now Magnentius did not give up - and it took another battle the following year to finish him off finally and leave Constantius as the undisputed ruler of the Roman world. And it was a major operation involving a wide scale of operations in Africa, Italy and Gaul before finally Magnentius paid with his head. Both sides had hired barbarian mercenaries who continued to be a problem after the death of Magnentius, and the frontiers were not guarded properly for a couple of years allowing inroads particularly into Gaul. The revolt of Magnentius was to scar the west for some time yet.

We have just got to the end of the eighteenth chapter of this work and although we have seen a lot of declining of political institutions, an economy turning into a train wreck and the establishment of a rigid totalitarian state with an absolute ruler we haven't yet seen much in the way of decline in the size of the actual empire. The area under the control of Constantius was still larger than it was under Augustus when Gibbon started his story. It had only lost one province since the reign of Hadrian.

But things are starting to change on this. Watch out for the mobility of the emperors from now on. The story of Constantius takes us all over the map. He is as likely to turn up in Milan, Rome or on the borders facing the Persians or the Germans. His immediate successor, Julian, likewise will be actively taking part in events in Gaul, Italy and projecting the empire's power across the border into Persia.

But the time is rapidly approaching when the empire will lose its capability to make the running anywhere it chose to deploy its forces. Constantius ruled the empire alone and made a reasonably good fist of it. But it was proving to be a strain for one man. Despotism always put a strain on the despot. The empire was a big thing for one man to handle.

Diocletian's reforms had been swept away by Constantine and he had not left any other model than rule by one man. Even brothers were prepared to fight one another. But that one man could not be everywhere. Delegating is something a lot of us find hard to do successfully, but it was an excruciatingly difficult business in the post-Constantine empire. There were so few people that you could actually trust. Able and ambitious people could turn into another Magnentius. The unambitious and the untalented brought other problems.

Family members posed another risk, but Constantius must have decided that they were the best option. Unfortunately most of them had been killed. But there were still a couple of young royals still on two legs - Gallus and Julian. In the next couple of episodes we'll see how Constantius got on with bringing them onto the main political stage.

Red Nails, an early Conan story by Robert.E.Howard

2011-08-08T10:35:00.003+01:00

Conan the Barbarian (Thanks to Wikipedia)

With the financial crisis back on the agenda I decided I had better get planning for a worldwide economic meltdown. There won't be much call for development chemists in any financial armageddon so I'll be needing an alternative career path. I have decided to become a barbarian. Steel is the currency of the warrior, and even Goldman Sachs can't do anything to get a rake off from that so it seems like a good choice.

As part of my planning for this back up option, I read one of the early Conan the Barbarian stories by Robert.E.Howard. It seemed like a good starting point for tips for the barbarian lifestyle. These stories weren't by any means the first sword and sorcery writings, but for my money it was Conan that really created the genre for a mass market. Originally written for pulp magazines they tend to be short and self contained, with characters that you can get to know pretty quickly.

It would be pushing it to call them great literature, but if you bear in mind what the objective was it isn't hard to admire the skill with which they are are crafted. Red Nails is a fine example. The plot is simple, but not idiotically so. Conan overcomes problems by his great muscular strength, but he also has recourse to brain power as well. He also has a worthy enough character. He is a bit more than one dimensional, though maybe doesn't quite get to two dimensions.

The imaginary world in which the adventures take place isn't really a believable alternative reality, it is more of a stage on which interesting things can be explored. Dragons, wizards and long lost cities appear as props. A bit of not that well disguised sado-masochistic titillation gets thrown into the mix. Howard's greatest ability is to say quite a bit without too many words, and that works particuarly well for that last bit. Although sex is hinted at (quite heavy hints) sexism isn't. Valeria, the female interest, is tall, blond and available for hot girl on girl action. But as a pirate she is not a stereotyped little woman. She is just as able as any male character, and more so than most. If you have seen the film, you will have the idea. For books written in the twenties, this was pretty progressive.

In the end Red Nails is pretty forgettable, but it holds your attention while you are reading it and you do want to get to the end of it. Most of Howard's work is freely available on the net nowadays. If you are looking for some entertainment to fill up your Kindle or smart phone for when your brain isn't up to tougher stuff, you could do a lot worse.

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/32759

The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope

2011-08-06T17:35:00.001+01:00

The Way We Live now isn't the best known of Trollope's works nowadays. His novels about politicking churchmen are a lot more familiar. But in his own day he was as well known for being one of the few novelists who really understood money. And this one is the one that is really worth reading if you want an insight into what goes on in board rooms among the people who read the numbers. At this time of financial meltdown, this is more true than ever. The plot is too complicated to summarise and as I urge you to read it I don't want to spoil it anyway. But it is a cracking read.

The bit I wanted to draw your attention to is a tiny part of the whole, but which is included by Trollope by way of an illustration of what else is going on. One of the main characters is Sir Felix Carbury, a pretty worthless penniless aristocrat. He doesn't have many redeeming features as a man. One of his many vices is gambling. He gambles in a club with a group of his contemporaries who are equally disreputable and dislikable characters. The card games distribute wealth around the members of the group fairly randomly. But none of the group has much in the way of ready money. So debts are settled with IOUs. The IOUs are rarely redeemed for cash but can be used as stakes in future games.

At one stage in the novel Sir Felix has a run of good luck on the cards and becomes quite wealthy on paper. But he can't turn his impressive looking assets into hard cash.

The creditworthiness and willingness to pay affects the value and everyone knows that in reality some of the stakes are worthless. But that doesn't stop the game carrying on.

In the meantime in the real world, much the same thing is going on in a more subtle way. Sir Toby gambles in that as well with equally unprofitable results.

The Way We Live Now has no need to be renamed The Way We Live Then. The fraudulent nature of high finance it portrays is bang up to date and explains the current financial crisis better than a lot of the news reports.

It is out of copyright so you can find a free electronic version at Project Gutenburg and there is a full audio version on Librivox.