by Will Durant
The population of the city was mainly Roman at the top, and for the rest overwhelmingly Greek. All alike called themselves Roman. While the language of the state was Latin, Greek remained the speech of the people, and, by the seventh century, displaced Latin even in government. Below the great officials and the senators was an aristocracy of landowners dwelling now in the city, now on their country estates. Scorned by these, but rivaling them in wealth, were the merchants who exchanged the goods of Constantinople and its hinterland for those of the world; below these, a swelling bureaucracy of governmental employees; below these the shopkeepers and master workmen of a hundred trades; below these a mass of formally free labor, voteless and riotous, normally disciplined by hunger and police, and bribed to peace by races, games, and a daily dole totaling 80,000 measures of grain or loaves of bread. At the bottom, as everywhere in the Empire, were slaves, less numerous than in Caesar’s Rome, and more humanely treated through the legislation of Constantine and the mitigating influence of the Church.6
Periodically the free population rose from its toil to crowd the Hippodrome. There, in an amphitheater 560 feet long and 380 wide, seats accommodated from 30,000 to 70,000 spectators;7 these were protected from the arena by an elliptical moat; and between the games they might walk under a shaded and marble-railed promenade 2766 feet long.8 Statuary lined the spina or backbone of the course—a low wall that ran along the middle length of the arena from goal to goal. At the center of the spina stood an obelisk of Thothmes III, brought from Egypt; to the south rose a pillar of three intertwined bronze serpents, originally raised at Delphi to commemorate the victory of Plataea (479 B.C.); these two monuments still stand. The emperor’s box, the Kathisma, was adorned in the fifth century with four horses in gilded bronze, an ancient work of Lysippus. In this Hippodrome the great national festivals were celebrated with processions, athletic contests, acrobatics, animal hunts and fights, and exhibitions of exotic beasts and birds. Greek tradition and Christian sentiment combined to make the amusements of Constantinople less cruel than those of Rome; we hear of no gladiatorial combats in the new capital. Nevertheless, the twenty-four horse and chariot races that usually dominated the program provided all the excitement that had marked a Roman holiday. Jockeys and charioteers were divided into Blues, Greens, Reds, and Whites, according to their employers and their garb; the spectators—and indeed the whole population of the city—divided likewise; and the principal fashions—the Blues and Greens—fought with throats in the Hippodrome and occasionally with knives in the streets. Only at the games could the populace voice its feelings; there it claimed the right to ask favors of the ruler, to demand reforms, to denounce oppressive officials, sometimes to berate the emperor himself as he sat secure in his exalted seat, from which he had a guarded exit to his palace.
Otherwise the populace was politically impotent. The Constantinian Constitution, continuing Diocletian’s, was frankly monarchical. The two senates—at Constantinople and at Rome—could deliberate, legislate, adjudicate; but always subject to the imperial veto; their legislative functions were largely appropriated by the ruler’s advisory council, the sacrum consistorium principis. The emperor himself could legislate by simple decree, and his will was the supreme law. In the view of the emperors, democracy had failed; it had been destroyed by the Empire that it had helped to win; it could rule a city, perhaps, but not a hundred varied states; it had carried liberty into license, and license into chaos, until its class and civil war had threatened the economic and political life of the entire Mediterranean world. Diocletian and Constantine concluded that order could be restored only by restricting higher offices to an aristocracy of patrician counts (comites) and dukes (duces), recruited not by birth but through appointment by an emperor who possessed full responsibility and power, and was clothed with all the awesome prestige of ceremonial inaccessibility, Oriental pomp, and ecclesiastical coronation, sanctification, and support. Perhaps the system was warranted by the situation; but it left no check upon the ruler except the advice of complaisant aides and the fear of sudden death. It created a remarkably efficient administrative and judicial organization, and kept the Byzantine Empire in existence for a millennium; but at the cost of political stagnation, public atrophy, court conspiracies, eunuch intrigues, wars of succession, and a score of palace revolutions that gave the throne occasionally to competence, seldom to integrity, too often to an unscrupulous adventurer, an oligarchic cabal, or an imperial fool.
II. CHRISTIANS AND PAGANS
In this Mediterranean world of the fourth century, where the state depended so much on religion, ecclesiastical affairs were in such turmoil that government felt called upon to interfere even in the mysteries of theology. The great debate between Athanasius and Arius had not ended with the Council of Nicaea (325). Many bishops—in the East a majority9—still openly or secretly sided with Arius; i.e., they considered Christ the Son of God, but neither consubstantial nor coeternal with the Father. Constantine himself, after accepting the Council’s decree, and banishing Arius, invited him to a personal conference (331), could find no heresy in him, and recommended the restoration of Arius and the Arians to their churches, Athanasius protested; a council of Eastern bishops at Tyre deposed him from his Alexandrian see (335); and for two years he lived as an exile in Gaul. Arius again visited Constantine, and professed adherence to the Nicene Creed, with subtle reservations that an emperor could not be expected to understand. Constantine believed him, and bade Alexander, Patriarch of Constantinople, receive him into communion. The ecclesiastical historian Socrates here tells a painful tale:
It was then Saturday, and Arius was expecting to assemble with the congregation on the day following; but Divine retribution overtook his daring criminality. For going out from the imperial palace … and approaching the porphyry pillar in the Forum of Constantine, a terror seized him, accompanied by violent relaxation of his bowels. … Together with the evacuations his bowels protruded, followed by a copious hemorrhage, and the descent of the smaller intestine; moreover, portions of his spleen and his liver were eliminated in the effusion of blood, so that he almost immediately died.10
Hearing of this timely purge, Constantine began to wonder whether Arius had not been a heretic after all. But when the Emperor himself died, in the following year, he received the rites of baptism from his friend and counselor Eusebius, Bishop of Nicomedia, an Arian.
Constantius took theology more seriously than his father. He made his own inquiry into the paternity of Jesus, adopted the Arian view, and felt a moral obligation to enforce it upon all Christendom. Athanasius, who had returned to his see after Constantine’s death, was again expelled (339); church councils, called and dominated by the new Emperor, affirmed merely the likeness, not the consubstantiality, of Christ with the Father; ecclesiastics loyal to the Nicene Creed were removed from their churches, sometimes by the violence of mobs; for half a century it seemed that Christianity would be Unitarian, and abandon the divinity of Christ. In those bitter days Athanasius spoke of himself as solus contra mundum; all the powers of the state were opposed to him, and even his Alexandrian congregation turned against him. Five times he fled from his see, often in peril of his life, and wandered in alien lands; through half a century (323–73) he fought with patient diplomacy and eloquent vituperation for the creed as it had been defined under his leadership at Nicaea; he stood firm even when Pope Liberius gave in. To him, above all, the Church owes her doctrine of the Trinity.
Athanasius laid his case before Pope Julius I (340). Julius restored him to his see; but a council of Eastern bishops at Antioch (341) denied the Pope’s jurisdiction, and named Gregory, an Arian, as bishop of Alexandria. When Gregory reached the city the rival factions broke into murderous riots, killing many; and Athanasius, to end the bloodshed, withdrew (342).11 In Constantinople a similar contest raged; when Constantius ordered the replacement of the orthodox patriot Paul by the Arian Macedonius, a crowd of Paul’s supporters resisted the soldiery, and three thousand
persons lost their lives. Probably more Christians were slaughtered by Christians in these two years (342–3) than by all the persecutions of Christians by pagans in the history of Rome.
Christians divided on almost every point but one—that the pagan temples should be closed, their property confiscated, and the same weapons of the state used against them and their worshipers that had formerly assailed Christianity.12 Constantine had discouraged, but not forbidden, pagan sacrifices and ceremonies; Constans forbade them on pain of death; Constantius ordered all pagan temples in the Empire closed, and all pagan rituals to cease. Those who disobeyed were to forfeit their property and their lives; and these penalties were extended to provincial governors neglecting to enforce the decree.13 Nevertheless, pagan isles remained in the spreading Christian sea. The older cities—Athens, Antioch, Smyrna, Alexandria, Rome—had a large sprinkling of pagans, above all among the aristocracy and in the schools. In Olympia the games continued till Theodosius I (379–95); in Eleusis the Mysteries were celebrated till Alaric destroyed the temple there in 396; and the schools of Athens continued to transmit, with mollifying interpretations, the doctrines of Plato, Aristotle, and Zeno. (Epicurus was outlawed, and became a synonym for atheist.) Constantine and his son continued the salaries of the scholarchs and professors who loosely constituted the University of Athens; lawyers and orators still flocked there to learn the tricks of rhetoric; and pagan sophists—teachers of wisdom—offered their wares to any who could pay. All Athens was fond and proud of Prohaeresius, who had come there as a poor youth, had shared one bed and cloak with another student, had risen to the official chair of rhetoric, and at eighty-seven was still so handsome, vigorous, and eloquent that his pupil Eunapius regarded him as “an ageless and immortal god.”14
But the leading sophist of the fourth century was Libanius. Born at Antioch (314), he had torn himself away from a fond mother to go and study at Athens; offered a rich heiress as wife if he would stay, he declared that he would decline the hand of a goddess just to see the smoke of Athens.15 He used his teachers there as stimuli, not oracles; and amid a maze of professors and schools he educated himself. After lecturing for a time at Constantinople and Nicomedia, he returned to Antioch (354), and set up a school that for forty years was the most frequented and renowned in the Empire; his fame (he assures us) was so great that his exordiums were sung in the streets.16 Ammianus Marcellinus, St. John Chrysostom, and St. Basil were among his pupils. He enjoyed the favor of Christian princes, though he spoke and wrote in defense of paganism and offered sacrifice in the temples. When the bakers of Antioch went on strike he was chosen by both sides as arbitrator; when Antioch revolted against Theodosius I he was named by the chastened city to plead its cause before the Emperor.17 He survived by almost a generation the assassination of his friend Julian, and the collapse of the pagan revival.
Fourth-century paganism took many forms: Mithraism, Neoplatonism, Stoicism, Cynicism, and the local cults of municipal or rustic gods. Mithraism had lost ground, but Neoplatonism was still a power in religion and philosophy. Those doctrines to which Plotinus had given a shadowy form—of a triune spirit binding all reality, of a Logos or intermediary deity who had done the work of creation, of soul as divine and matter as flesh and evil, of spheres of existence along whose invisible stairs the soul had fallen from God to man and might ascend from man to God—these mystic ideas left their mark on the apostles Paul and John, had many imitators among the Christians, and molded many Christian heresies.18 In Iamblichus of Syrian Chalcis miracle was added to mystery in Neoplatonic philosophy: the mystic not only saw things unseen by sense, but—by touching God in ecstasy—he acquired divine powers of magic and divination. Iamblichus’ disciple, Maximus of Tyre, combined the claim to mystic faculties with a devout and eloquent paganism that conquered Julian. Said Maximus, defending against Christian scorn the use of idols in pagan worship,
God the father and the fashioner of all that is, older than the sun or sky, greater than time and eternity and all the flow of being, is unnamable by any lawgiver, unutterable by any voice, not to be seen by any eye. But we, being unable to apprehend His essence, use the help of sounds and names and pictures, of beaten gold and ivory and silver, of plants and rivers, torrents and mountain peaks, yearning for the knowledge of Him, and in our weakness naming after His nature all that is beautiful in this world. … If a Greek is stirred to the remembrance of God by the art of Pheidias, or an Egyptian by worshiping animals, or another man by a river or a fire, I have no anger for their divergences; only let them note, let them remember, let them love.19
It was in part the eloquence of Libanius and Maximus that won Julian from Christianity to paganism. When their pupil reached the throne Maximus rushed to Constantinople, and Libanius raised in Antioch a song of triumph and joy: “Behold us verily restored to life; a breath of happiness passes over all the earth, while a veritable god, under the appearance of a man, governs the world.”20
III. THE NEW CAESAR
Flavius Claudius Iulianus was born in the purple at Constantinople in 332, nephew of Constantine. His father, his eldest brother, and most of his cousins were slain in the massacre that inaugurated the reign of Constantine’s sons. He was sent to Nicomedia to be educated by its Bishop Eusebius; he received an overdose of Christian theology, and gave signs of becoming a saint. At seven he began to study classical literature with Mardonius; the old eunuch’s enthusiasm for Homer and Hesiod passed down to his pupil, and Julian entered with wonder and delight into the bright and poetic world of Greek mythology.
In 341, for reasons now unknown, Julian and his brother Gallus were banished to Cappadocia, and were for six years practically imprisoned in the castle of Macellum. Released, Julian was for a time allowed to live in Constantinople; but his youthful vivacity, sincerity, and wit made him too popular for the Emperor’s peace of mind. He was again sent to Nicomedia, where he took up the study of philosophy. He wanted to attend the lectures of Libanius there, but was forbidden; however, he arranged to have full notes of the master’s discourses brought to him. He was now a handsome and impressionable lad of seventeen, ripe for the dangerous fascination of philosophy. And while philosophy and free speculation came to him in all their lure, Christianity was presented to him as at once a system of unquestionable dogma and a Church torn with scandal and schism by the Arian dispute and the mutual excommunications of East and West.
In 351 Gallus was created Caesar—i.e., heir apparent to the throne—and took up the task of government at Antioch. Safe for a while from imperial suspicion, Julian wandered from Nicomedia to Pergamum to Ephesus, studying philosophy under Edesius, Maximus, and Chrysanthius, who completed his secret conversion to paganism. Suddenly in 354 Constantius summoned both Gallus and Julian to Milan, where he was holding court. Gallus had overreached his authority, and had ruled the Asiatic provinces with a despotic cruelty that shocked even Constantius. Tried before the Emperor, he was convicted of various offenses, and was summarily beheaded. Julian was kept under guard for several months in Italy; at last he convinced a suspicious monarch that politics had never entered his head, and that his one interest was in philosophy. Relieved to find that he had only a philosopher to deal with, Constantius banished him to Athens (355). Having expected death, Julian easily reconciled himself to an exile that placed him at the fountainhead of pagan learning, religion, and thought.
Six happy months he spent there studying in the groves that had heard Plato’s voice, making friends with Themistius and other immortal and forgotten philosophers, pleasing them with his eagerness to learn, and charming the citizens with the grace and modesty of his conduct. He compared these polished pagans, heirs of a millennium of culture, with the grave theologians who had surrounded him in Nicomedia, or those pious statesmen who had thought it necessary to kill his father, his brothers, and so many more; and he concluded that there were no beasts more ferocious than Christians.21 He wept when he heard of famous temples overthrown, of pagan priests proscribed, of their
property distributed to eunuchs and partisans.22 It was probably at this time that in cautious privacy he accepted initiation into the Mysteries at Eleusis. The morals of paganism condoned the dissembling of his apostasy. His friends and teachers, who shared his secret, could hardly consent to his revealing it; they knew that Constantius would crown him with inopportune martyrdom, and they looked forward to the time when their protégé would inherit the throne, and restore their emoluments and their gods. For ten years Julian conformed in all externals to the Christian worship, and even read the Scriptures publicly in church.23
Amid all this apprehensive concealment a second summons came to present himself before the Emperor at Milan. He hardly dared go; but word was conveyed to him from the Empress Eusebia that she had promoted his cause at court, and that he had nothing to fear. To his astonishment Constantius gave him his sister Helena in marriage, conferred upon him the title of Caesar, and assigned to him the government of Gaul (355). The shy young celibate, who had come dressed in the cloak of a philosopher, adopted uncomfortably the uniform of a general and the duties of matrimony. It must have further embarrassed him to learn that the Germans, taking advantage of the civil wars that had almost destroyed the military power of the Empire in the West, had invaded the Roman provinces on the Rhine, defeated a Roman army, sacked the old Roman colonia of Cologne, taken forty-four other towns, captured all Alsace, and advanced forty miles into Gaul. Faced with this new crisis, Constantius called upon the lad whom he both suspected and despised to metamorphose himself at once into an administrator and a warrior. He gave Julian a guard of 360 men, commissioned him to reorganize the army of Gaul, and sent him over the Alps.