handing over the Christians to indescribable and unspeakable sufferings, since in every place the proponents of paganism subjected them to every kind of injury, to new sorts of torture, and to the most painful modes of death.1
1a [AP 48]. Julian had long harbored in his soul the birth pangs of the paganism conceived from his intercourse in Ionia with the philosophers of Maximus’s circle,2 but as long as his brother was still alive, and after him
Constantius, he dared reveal nothing for fear of them.3 Once they had passed
away, however, and he was in power, he cast off all pretence and immediately
embraced paganism with all his heart.
1b [AP 22]. When Julian had become master of the Roman Empire, as was said, his keenest desire was to restore paganism. He therefore sent letters
to every place ordering that all haste and zeal should be applied to rebuild- ing the pagan temples and altars.4
1. On pagan attacks on Christians in Julian’s time, see A7.33; 7.33a–h. Julian him- self mentions them: Misopogon 357C and 361A; Ep. 41.438B (ed. Wright, LCL). See also Sozomen 7.21.1; chron. pasch. P295C–D. For a survey of the ancient Christian sources, see Robert J. Penella, “Julian the Persecutor in Fifth Century Church Histori- ans,” The Ancient World 24 (1993): 31–43.
2. On Julian’s indebtedness to Iamblichus for his philosophy, see his or. 4.146A. On his relationship to Maximus of Ephesus, cf. Libanius, or. 18.155–156; Eunapius,
Vit. soph. 475; Rowland Smith, Julian’s Gods: religion and Philosophy in the Thought and Action of Julian the Apostate (London: Routledge, 1995), 29 and 186–87. He sum-
moned him to court after becoming sole emperor (Vit. soph. 476–478). 3. On Gallus’s attempts to keep Julian Christian, see 3.27.
4. On Julian’s restoration of the pagan temples, see Libanius, or. 18.126; John Chrysostom, Bab. Jul. 76 (ed. Schatkin, SC); Sozomen 5.3.1; Smith, Julian’s Gods, xiv– xv; 207–18. Julian was a convinced polytheist, his Neoplatonism notwithstanding; he did not plan to establish a sort of pagan monotheist church, but he did aim from the outset to eliminate Christians from positions of influence.
1c [AP 35: Artemius speaks to Julian]. know therefore that the strength and power of Christ is invincible and unconquerable. You yourself are cer- tainly convinced of this from the oracles that the physician and quaestor
Oribasius recently brought you from the Apollo in Delphi.5 But I will repeat
the oracle to you, whether you wish to hear it or not. It runs as follows:
Go tell the king the wondrous hall is fallen to the ground. Now Phoebus has a cell no more, no laurel that foretells, No talking spring; the water that once spoke is heard no more.6
5. Oribasius attended Julian at his death (see 7.15). 7.1c here confirms the notice in suda, Δ 543 that he was Julian’s quaestor sacri palatii, so the question about this in PLrE 1:653 may be regarded as answered. Cf. Silvano Faro, “Oribasio medico, quaestor di Giuliano l’Apostata,” studi in onore di cesare sanfilippo 7 (1987): 261–68.
6. The oracle is marked as spurious by Herbert W. Parke and Donald E. W. Wormell, The Delphic oracle (2 vols.; Oxford: Blackwell, 1956), 2:194–95; and Joseph
E. Fontenrose, The Delphic oracle: its responses and operations, with a catalogue of
responses (Berkeley and Los Angeles: university of California Press, 1978), 56 and
353. The verses are also found in Cedrenus 304A. C. Maurice Bowra regards it as a “Christian fabrication” composed between 397 and 426 “to show the futility of Julian’s belief in the Oracle” (“ΕΙΠΑΤΕ ΤΩΙ ΒΑΣΙΛΗΙ,” hermes 87 [1959]: 426–35, esp. 430, repr. with modifications in his on Greek Margins [Oxford: Clarendon, 1970], 233– 52). Bernadette Cabouret agrees in “Julien et Delphes,” revue des études anciennes 99 (1997): 141–58. Timothy E. Gregory (“Julian and the Last Oracle at Delphi,” GrBs 24 (1983): 355–66) thinks rather that the verses are a plea for help given to Oribasius by the priests at Delphi, if one supposes that the words “fallen to the ground” need not be taken literally. Georgios Fatouros (“ΕΙΠΑΤΕ ΤΩΙ ΒΑΣΙΛΗΙ,” hermes 124 [1996]: 367–74) says that the style of the verses differs so widely from that typical of an oracle that they cannot be regarded as even a forgery. He considers them to be rather an epigram composed by Oribasius to inform Julian that some oracle in Greece (perhaps at Delphi) was no longer functioning, Julian having sent him to report on its condi- tion. The description of the ruin of the shrine was not meant literally but as a figure of its idle state. Philostorgius, Fatouros conjectures, was probably the Christian who hit upon the idea of transforming the epigram into an oracle.
On the oracle’s site, see Pierre Amandry, “La ruine du temple d’Apollon à Del- phes,” Académie royale de Belgique: Bulletin de la classe des lettres et des sciences
morales et politiques 75 (1989): 26–47. On the laurel and the water, see Auguste
Bouché-Leclercq, histoire de la divination dans l’antiquité (4 vols.; Paris: Leroux, 1879–82), 1:350 and 3:100–101. The spring water and the laurel (bay leaf) might “speak” in various ways, perhaps by putting the medium into a trance out of which the oracular spirit gave utterance. In one instance at least the oracle appeared written on the bay leaf after it was dipped in the water.
2. While George of Alexandria was presiding at a synod, he says, and compelling his co-religionists to subscribe the document against Aetius, the pagans burst in, seized him, inflicted gross mistreatment upon his body, and then handed him over to be burned.7 Our heretical author even says that
Athanasius was behind the deed.8 Once George was slain, however, Athana-
sius resumed his own throne, the Alexandrians for their part welcoming him gladly.9
3. Concerning the image of our Savior that the faith of the woman with a hemorrhage had erected in thanksgiving to her benefactor: he relates that this monument was put up by the fountain inside the city together with other statues in order to furnish a pleasant sight to visitors.10 Now an herb grew up
7. On George’s lynching, see A7.33.1; 7.33a,b,d; Julian, Ep. 21 (ed Wright, LCL); Ammianus 22.11.8–10 (on Ammianus’s source[s] for this episode, see Hans Christof Brennecke, “Christliche Quellen des Ammianus Marcellinus?” Journal of Ancient
christianity 1 [1997]: 226–50); Athanasius, hA 8; Epiphanius, Pan. 76.1.1–2; Greg-
ory of Nazianzus, or. 21.24; Socrates 3.2.10; Sozomen 5.7.2–3; Theophylact 13 (PG 126:169A); Matilde Caltabiano, “L’assassinio di Giorgio di Cappadocia (Alessandria, 361 d.C.),” Quaderni catanesi 7 (1985): 17–59. On the chronology, see 39 n. 6 and 50 n. 45. After finally taking possession of his see under military escort on 24 February 357, a year after Athanasius had been forced to go into hiding and years after he had been elected to it, he was driven out again by the populace on 20 October 358, his indiscriminate rapaciousness having earned him the bitter hatred of Christian and pagan alike. He managed to return on 26 November 361, before news of Constan- tius’s death had reached his city. The announcement of his death was made four days later, together with that of Julian’s accession, and the populace at once seized George and hurried him off to prison. From there the pagans dragged him forth again on 24 December, butchered him, paraded him through the city on a camel, and then burned his body, mixing his ashes with those of animals lest the Christians recover them for use in instituting his cult as a martyr.
8. Philostorgius’s connection of George’s death with his condemnation of Aetius should be treated with reserve; his fondness for cautionary deaths is evident enough throughout his history. Socrates (3.3.1) and Sozomen (5.7.4) treat the story of the involvement of Athanasius’s partisans in George’s death as an unfounded rumor. The history of the incentives behind his execution is complex, however fervent the resent- ment that led to it; see Caltabiano, “L’assassinio di Giorgio,” 31–59.
9. On the joy with which Athanasius was welcomed back, see Socrates 3.4.1; Sozomen 5.7.1.
10. On the image of “Christ” and the woman, see Ernst von Dobschütz, chris-
tusbilder: untersuchungen zur christlichen Legende (Tu 18; Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1899),
197–205, 250*–73*. The story of the woman is in Mark 5:25–34; Matt 9:20–22; and Luke 8:43–48. Eusebius of Caesarea is the first to report the connection of the story with the image, without committing himself to the truth of the tradition (hist. eccl.
by the feet of our Savior’s image that was a remedy for all illnesses, especially consumption, and the reason for this was sought (for in the passage of time both the person portrayed and the reason for the monument had been forgot- ten; it stood in the open with nothing to cover it, and much of the body was buried in the dirt that kept falling upon it from higher ground especially in times of rain, the dirt covering the writing that explained each of the mat- ters).11 An inquiry was therefore instituted, the buried part was dug out, and
the writing was found that told the whole story. But of the plant there was nothing to be seen after all that time, neither there nor elsewhere. The statue they moved to the sacristy of the church and paid it due honor; they neither worshiped nor adored it at all (it would have been unlawful to adore bronze or any other material). They rather showed their devotion to the One it repre- sented by the sacred place in which they put it and the pleasure they took in visiting the place in order to see the sight it contained.
The pagans who lived in Paneas, when they were roused to impiety in Julian’s time, tore the statue from its base, tied ropes to its feet, and dragged it down the main thoroughfare. While they were breaking up and scattering the rest of the body, some people who were grieved at what was happening managed secretly to take away the head, which had separated from the neck while being dragged along, and rescued it as best they could. He says that he himself saw the head.
It happens that Paneas was originally called Dan, a name it got from Dan, the son of Jacob, the phylarch of those who then inhabited the city.12 It was
7.18). He speaks of bronze figures, in relief, of a woman and man (said to be Jesus), the woman in the pose of a suppliant, the man stretching out his hand to her. His description of the plant leaves it unclear whether it was real or part of the representa- tion, but since he speaks of it as an antidote, it seems to have been real; otherwise, its medicinal virtue could hardly have been recognized, Eusebius speaking of it as a “strange kind of plant” (Dobschütz, christusbilder, 201, thinks otherwise). He says the image stood at the gate of the woman’s house. The sculpture is thought to have been meant to portray some pagan god of healing, not necessarily Asclepius (Dobschütz,
christusbilder, 198).
11. The development of the tradition can be seen in Rufinus’s translation of Euse- bius (hist. eccl. 7.18.2): here the plant (obviously quite natural) acquires its healing powers if allowed to grow up from the bottom of the sculpture until it touches the hem of the robe. See also Giovan Domenico Mansi, ed. sacrorum conciliorum nova
et amplissima collectio (35 vols.; Florence: Zatta, 1759–98), 13:93D; Malalas 10.11–12;
Sozomen 5.21.1–3.
12. Judges 18 tells how the Danites migrated to seek an inheritance for them- selves, finally took and destroyed Laish, and, after rebuilding it, named it Dan.
later surnamed Caesarea Philippi. But the proponents of paganism erected a statue of Pan in it, and so it changed its name to Paneas.13
3a [AP 57]. There was also the statue of the Savior in the city of Paneas, a work of magnificent execution put up by the woman with the hemorrhage whom Christ healed, and erected on a notable site in the city; it was later rec- ognized from the miraculous herb that grew there, so the Christians removed it and put it in the sacristy of the church. The pagans pulled it down, fas- tened ropes to the feet, and dragged it through the public square until it was broken up bit by bit and so destroyed. Only the head was left; that was seized by someone while the pagans were raising their clamor and speaking blasphe- mies and utterly disgraceful words against our Lord Jesus Christ, words such as no one had ever heard.
3b [Codex Vaticanus Gr. 96, f. 102r margin]. Concerning the Jordan, from Philostorgius’s history: Right on the border of Palestine, just before the point where Phoenicia begins, lies the city formerly called Dan, from the tribe of Dan; this stems from the time when they alone of the whole people spent a long time wandering about, finally took possession of the regions there, and after difficulties settled there and built a city on the tops of their mountains that they called after their phylarch.14 It was just within the boundary of Judea
where it borders upon Phoenicia. Herod the Great later built it and renamed it Caesarea Philippi. It is now called Paneas; having erected the image of Pan in it, they changed the name of the city accordingly. There in Paneas is found one of the sources of the Jordan; there are two of them, and this one is still called Dan after the older name.15 The other source, which is called Ior and
Eusebius says that Dan is a village four miles from Paneas on the road to Tyre and on the border of Judaea, where the Jordan appears (onomasticon 76.6).
13. “Paneas” comes from Paneion, the shrine to Pan in the grotto at the source of the Jordan. The region was hellenized in the third century b.c.e. Augustus gave it to Herod in 20 b.c.e., and Herod in turn built a temple to Augustus there, the location taking on the name Paneas, which had been applied to the region as a whole. In 3 or 2 b.c.e. the tetrarch Philip built it into a city called Caesarea. From the second cen- tury its name was Caesarea Paneas, but from the fourth century we find it once again called simply Paneas (Emil Schürer, The history of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus
christ (175 B.c.–A.D. 135): A New English Version (rev. and ed. Géza Vermès and
Fergus Millar; 3 vols.; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1973–87], 2:169–71).
14. “Built a city on the tops of their mountains” translates πόλιν ἐπὶ τοῖς ἄκροις αὐτῶν ὄρεσι δειμάμενοι. It may be noted that πόλις means both an urban area enclosed by a wall and the territory it controls. The city of Caesarea Philippi itself was at the southwest foot of Mount Hermon.
15. On the tradition of the two sources of the Jordan, named Ior and Dan, see
is about 160 stades distant from the first, springs from one of the peaks of the same mountain.16 A river issues from each source, one of them called the
Jorates, the other the Danites. Having made their way through the mountain, once they descend to the plain they join together and form one mighty river, the Jordan, in which both their waters and their names become mingled. It passes through the Lake of Tiberias, dividing it in two and flowing down its entire length with its own current until it passes out into the land on the other side, remaining always the same as it was; from there it flows through Palestine, and then the entire river empties into what is called the Dead Sea and vanishes.17
4. During the time when the proponents of paganism were everywhere behaving most wickedly against Christians, the following dastardly deed was done in Palestine by impious folk. They took the bones of the prophet Elisha
and of John the Baptist from their tombs (both were buried there), mixed
them together with the bones of dumb animals, burned them together to
ashes, and scattered them into the air.18 It also happened at times that when
they arrested the proponents of Christianity, they placed them as sacrificial victims on the altars where fire had been kindled, and in their madness they proceeded to many other unspeakable deeds. Julian, when he learned of them, not only was not grieved but was especially gratified, since the ignominy of what was done attached to others, even though his was the will at work in their acts.19
Realizing, though, that this madness was furthering none of his plans (for the resolve of the Christian people was simply stiffening when it was under
opera omnia quae exstant [13 vols.; Paris: Gaume, 1835–39], 10:778A); Jerome, com- mentariorum in Ezechielem libri XVi 8.27.19. The Jordan actually has four sources,
which become two streams, called in more recent times the Jordan and the Turan, before emptying into what was once Lake Huleh (mostly drained in the 1950s); see Henry O. Thompson, “Jordan River,” ABD 3:955.
16. The phrase “[…springs from one of the peaks] of the same mountain” trans- lates τοῦ αὐτοῦ … ὄρους. The word αὐτοῦ might simply mean “there,” in which case the translation would be: “[one of the peaks] of the mountain there.”
17. Josephus has the same account of the Lake of Tiberias being divided in two by the Jordan (Bellum judaicum 3.509, 515).
18. On pagan mistreatment of Christians, see A7.33.2–3, 7.33.c–h; Gregory of Nazianzus, or. 5.29; Rufinus, hist. eccl. 11.28; chron. pasch. P295C; Theodoret, hist.
eccl. 3.7.2. Philostorgius (7.4, 7.4a) is the only author to mention the exhumation of
Elisha.
19. On Julian’s attitude toward the mistreatment, see Gregory of Nazianzus, or. 4.61: he issued no order for the pagan attacks, but simply by not restraining them he made them public policy.
siege), he thought up the idea of kindling war between those bishops who had been banished on various charges and those who had replaced them in their sees. And so he gave either side full permission to do whatever it could to regroup and strengthen its position.20 As a result, they fell upon each other,
bringing great disgrace and criticism upon the faith, which was just what the Apostate wanted.
But his mischief did not end there. He also returned the clergy to the rolls of the city councils,21 distributed the churches’ allowances to those who
served demons,22 and persisted in doing everything he could to advance
the cause of the demons and to ensure the destruction of the faith, or so he thought.
4a [AP 57]. In Sebaste, which was once called Samaria but is now a foun- dation of Herod surnamed Sebaste, they took the bones of the prophet Elisha
and of John the Baptist from their tombs, mixed them together with the bones of dumb and unclean beings, burned them, and scattered the ashes into the air. [58]. As for Julian, that most lawless man, of all impious folk the
most impious, when he heard of this he was glad and in his exultation at these events gave orders … [continued in 7.9a].
4b [AP 31: Julian speaks]. You see … how much nonsense … he [the martyr] babbles against our religion from what he has gotten from pagan
learning? By the golden-hued sun of this whole world, who is most dear to
me, I will no longer stand for that most godless folk, the Christians, being educated in pagan disciplines. Just look at the great and unhappy nonsense that this dog has spouted in his account of the sacred men of philosophy from the education he got in the sacred disciplines, however lacking in system and method one may think it.23
20. Philostorgius by no means misrepresents either the intention behind, or the results of, Julian’s amnesty of bishops in exile; see Ammianus 22.5.3–4; chron. pasch. P296A–B; Sozomen 5.5.7.
21. On the restoration of Christian clergy to the city councils, see cod. theod. 12.1.50, 13.1.4; Julian, Ep. 39 (ed. Wright, LCL); Libanius, or. 18.148; Ammianus 25.4.21; Sozomen 5.5.2; Theodoret, hist. eccl. 3.6.5. Service on the city councils was