Church History 5.16–5.21

The emperor, who had long been eager for paganism to prevail throughout the whole empire, was vexed to see it outdone by Christianity. Temples had been opened, and sacrifices and the ancestral festivals of the pagans in the cities seemed to be going forward as he wished; but he was distressed, reckoning that if these were stripped of his zeal, they would quickly change back. He was especially annoyed to hear that the wives, children and servants of many priests were Christians. Supposing that Christianity owed its strength to the life and conduct of those who practise it, he planned to adorn the pagan temples everywhere with the arrangements and order of the Christian religion: to dignify the pagan doctrine with platforms and seats of honour, with teachers and readers of pagan doctrines and exhortations, with prayers set at fixed hours and days, with houses for men and women who had resolved to live the philosophic life, with lodgings for strangers and the poor and other kindness to the needy; and, after the tradition of the Christians, to appoint correction proportioned to repentance for voluntary and involuntary sins. Not least, he is said to have imitated the tokens of the bishops’ letters, by which it is customary for strangers travelling anywhere to be received by those to whom they come and thought worthy of care, as friends and dearest acquaintances, on the testimony of the token. With these designs he was eager to accustom the pagans to the practices of the Christians. But since this perhaps seems incredible to many, I shall give the proof of what has been said from no other source than the emperor’s own words. He writes thus to Arsacius, high priest of Galatia: “Paganism is not yet succeeding as it should, because of us who practise it. For the things of the gods are splendid and great, beyond every prayer and every hope. May Adrasteia be gracious to my words; for no one, a little while ago, dared even pray for so great and so sudden a change. Why then do we think this enough, and do not look at what has most increased atheism: kindness to strangers, care for the burial of the dead, and a feigned dignity of life? I think that each of these ought to be practised by us in truth. And it is not enough that you alone should be such, but all the priests in Galatia without exception. Either shame them or persuade them to be zealous, or remove them from the priestly office, if they do not come to the gods with their wives and children and servants, but tolerate servants or sons or wives who are Galileans, who are impious toward the gods and prefer atheism to piety. Next, exhort a priest neither to frequent the theatre nor to drink in a tavern, nor to preside over any craft or trade that is base and disgraceful; honour those who obey, and drive out those who disobey. Set up many guest-houses in each city, so that strangers may enjoy our kindness, not only our own people but others too, whoever is in need of money. Where you will get the means, I have meanwhile provided: for I have ordered thirty thousand modii of grain to be given each year throughout Galatia, and sixty thousand sextarii of wine. One fifth of this, I say, should be spent on the poor who serve the priests, and the rest should be distributed by you to strangers and beggars. For it is shameful that no Jew begs, and the impious Galileans support ours as well as their own, while ours are seen to lack help from us. Teach the pagans, too, to contribute to such services, and the pagan villages to offer the first fruits to the gods; and accustom the pagans to such good works, teaching them that this was our work of old. Homer, at any rate, made Eumaeus say: ‘Stranger, it is not right for me, even if one worse than you should come, to dishonour a stranger; for from Zeus are all strangers and beggars; and a gift is small but dear.’ Let us not, by allowing others to rival us in our own good things, disgrace them by our slackness, or rather betray our reverence for the gods. If I learn that you are doing these things, I shall be full of joy. See the governors seldom at their homes, but write to them as much as possible. When they enter the city, let no priest go to meet them; but when they come to the shrines of the gods, meet them within the porch. Let no soldier precede them inside, but let whoever wishes follow; for as soon as one has crossed the threshold of the precinct he has become a private person. For you yourself, as you know, rule within, since the divine law requires this. Those who obey are truly god-fearing; but those who cling to their pride are seekers of reputation and vainglorious. I am ready to help Pessinus, if they make the Mother of the gods gracious to themselves. But if they neglect her, they will not only not be blameless, but — harsh as it is to say — may even taste our displeasure. ‘For it is not right for me to tend or pity men who are hated by the immortal gods.’ Persuade them, then, if they lay claim to my care, to become suppliants of the Mother of the gods in a body.”

The emperor, acting and writing in this way, thought that he would easily bring his subjects to abandon the doctrine willingly. And though he was zealous in every way for the destruction of the Christian religion, he could neither persuade them entirely, and was ashamed to use open force, lest he should seem a tyrant. Yet he did not slacken his eagerness, but devised every means to draw his subjects to paganism, and above all the army, partly by himself and partly through the officers. Accustoming them artfully in every way to pagan practice, he resolved to change back to its former shape the chief of the Roman standards, which Constantine, by divine command, as was said earlier, had reshaped into the symbol of the cross. In the public images of himself he took care to have painted beside him Zeus appearing as from heaven and giving him the crown and purple, the insignia of empire, and Ares and Hermes looking at him and, as it were, bearing witness with their eyes that he was skilled in speech and in war. He ordered these and whatever else pertains to pagan worship to be mixed into his images, so that under pretext of the honour customary to the emperor they might unawares do reverence to what was painted with him; and abusing the ancient customs, he tried by every device to steal the will of his subjects. For he reckoned that if he persuaded them, he could more readily attempt the rest, if he wished; and if he found them disobedient, he could punish them without pardon as innovators in the customs of the Romans and offenders against the state and the emperor. A few, who also suffered punishment, understood the design and, as was customary, refused to do reverence; but the multitude, as usual, from ignorance or simplicity, thought they were simply obeying an old custom and approached the images quite simply. But the emperor gained nothing more even when this device was tried. Yet he did not give up, but went on devising everything by which he might bring his subjects to worship as he did. What he contrived at that time is not unlike what has been told, but was attempted more openly and more forcibly than the former, and gave occasion for courage to not a few of those serving in the palace. For when the time came for the emperor to give a donative to the soldiers — this happens generally on the Romans’ sacred days and the birthdays of emperors and of imperial cities — reckoning that the military is by nature simple and naive and easily overcome by money through habitual greed, … those standing beside the emperor ordered each of those who came up for it to burn incense; for frankincense and fire lay nearby, as though this were an old Roman custom. Then some boldly showed their courage, and would neither burn incense nor accept the gift from the emperor; others, under the cover of law and antiquity, did not even realize that they were sinning; and others, enticed by the visible gain, or overcome beforehand by fear and confusion at the scene suddenly displayed, even if they understood that they were acting as pagans, did not escape doing it. Of those who fell into this sin through ignorance, it is said that some, as they were feasting together in friendship, as tends to happen at drinking parties, and pledging one another, named Christ over their cups. One of the guests interrupted and said: “You do a surprising thing, calling on Christ, whom you denied a little while ago, when you received the gift from the emperor and put the incense on the fire.” As soon as they heard this and understood what they had done, they leapt up at once and ran out in public, shouting and weeping and calling God himself and all men to witness that they were Christians and remained so, and that in ignorance of what was happening — if one may speak so at all — only their hand had acted as a pagan’s, without their mind consenting. When they came to the emperor, they threw down the gold he had given them and very bravely asked him to take back his gift and to kill them; for they would not repent if, for what their right hand had done without forethought, they paid the penalty in their whole body for Christ. The emperor, though he was angry, took care not to kill them, lest they be thought worthy of the honours of martyrdom; but he deprived them of their military rank and expelled them from the palace.

He held this attitude toward all Christians too, wherever he found an occasion. For even when he had no charge against them, he begrudged those who refused to sacrifice their equal civic rights and their share in assemblies and markets; and he did not allow them to be judges or magistrates or to share in offices of rank. Nor did he permit their children to be taught the poets and writers of the Greeks, or to attend the teachers of these. For he was greatly vexed by Apolinarius the Syrian, equipped for every kind of knowledge and every style of speech, and by Basil and Gregory the Cappadocians, who surpassed the orators of the time, and by very many other learned men besides, some of whom were zealous for the decisions of Nicaea, while others had sprung from the heresy of Arius. Thinking, then, that persuasiveness was formed from this source alone, he did not allow Christians to be trained in the learning of the Greeks. Then this Apolinarius, using his wide learning and his talent to meet the occasion, in place of the poetry of Homer composed in heroic verse the Hebrew antiquities up to the reign of Saul, and divided the whole work into twenty-four parts, giving each volume a name the same as the letters of the Greek alphabet, according to their number and order. He also worked at comedies modelled on the plays of Menander, and imitated the tragedy of Euripides and the lyre of Pindar; and, in short, taking his subjects from the divine Scriptures, he produced in a short time works equal in number and in force to those of the so-called general studies, in character, diction, style and arrangement like those that had won renown in these fields among the Greeks. So that, if people did not honour antiquity and think the familiar dear, they would, I think, praise the work of Apolinarius equally with the ancients and study it, admiring his genius the more, inasmuch as each of the ancients worked at one thing only, while he practised them all and in a pressing need reproduced the excellence of each. Not ignoble either is the treatise he wrote against the emperor himself, or against the Greek philosophers, which he entitled On Truth, in which, even without the testimony of the sacred words, he showed that they had been led astray from right thinking about God. For the emperor, mocking such works, wrote to the distinguished bishops of the time: “I read, I understood, I condemned”; and they wrote back in answer: “You read, but you did not understand; for if you had understood, you would not have condemned.” Some attribute this letter to Basil, the head of the church of the Cappadocians, and not unreasonably. But whether it is his or another’s, the writer deserves to be admired for his courage and learning.

The emperor, eager to march against the Persians, came to Antioch in Syria. When the people cried out that provisions were plentiful but were sold at a high price, he, out of desire for popularity, I think, courting the people, ordered the goods for sale in the market to be sold at a lower price than was right. When the dealers fled, the provisions ran short. The Antiochenes, taking this badly, insulted the emperor and mocked his beard for being long, and his coinage because it bore the image of a bull; for they jested that under his rule the world had been overturned like the bulls lying on their backs. At first he was angry and threatened to do the Antiochenes harm, and prepared to move to Tarsus. But changing wonderfully from his anger, he avenged the insult with words only, composing against the Antiochenes a most elegant and witty oration, which he entitled Misopogon. He treated the Christians here as elsewhere, and was eager to strengthen paganism. What happened at that time concerning the tomb of the martyr Babylas and the temple of Apollo at Daphne is worth relating. I begin here. Daphne, the famous suburb of Antioch, is thick with a grove of many cypresses and adorned with other trees mingled with the cypresses. Beneath the trees the ground bears, in turn through the seasons, fragrant flowers of every kind. A covering rather than a shade encloses the place everywhere, since the density of the branches and leaves does not let the sunlight fall on the ground. It is very pleasant and lovely through the abundance and beauty of its waters, the mildness of its seasons, and the breath of gentle winds. Here the sons of the Greeks tell the myth that Daphne, daughter of the river Ladon, fleeing from Arcadia from Apollo her lover, changed herself into the plant of the same name; and that he, not freed from his passion even so, crowned himself with the branches of his beloved, embraced her though she was a tree, and by his constant presence honoured the place above any other as especially dear to him. The suburb of Daphne being such, it was thought shameful for decent people to set foot in it. For the situation and nature of the place were suited to luxury, and the theme of the myth, being erotic, given a slight occasion, doubled the passion of corrupt young men. Holding out the myths as an excuse, they were violently inflamed and went shamelessly to licentious deeds, unable to be chaste themselves and unable to bear seeing the chaste in the same place. For one who spent time at Daphne without a mistress was thought a fool and graceless, and was shunned like an abomination to be averted. The place was also in other ways venerated and highly esteemed by the pagans. For there was there a very beautiful statue of Daphnaean Apollo and a temple built magnificently and lavishly, which Seleucus, the father of Antiochus, after whom the city of Antioch is named, is said to have built. Those who honour these things believed that prophetic water also flowed there from the Castalian spring, which had the same power and name as the one at Delphi. Indeed they boast that Hadrian, while still a private man, had his reign foretold here. For they say that he dipped a laurel leaf in the spring and drew from it knowledge of the future, made known in writing on the leaf; and that when he came to rule he had the spring blocked up, so that others might not learn the future in advance. But let those who care for such things tell their myths precisely. When Gallus, Julian’s brother, having been made Caesar by Constantius, was living at Antioch, being a Christian and honouring above all those who had been martyred for the doctrine, he resolved to cleanse this place of pagan superstition and of the outrage of licentious men. Supposing that he would easily succeed if he set up a house of prayer there in opposition, he moved to Daphne the coffin of the martyr Babylas, who had governed the church of the Antiochenes very gloriously and had been martyred. From that time, it is said, the demon no longer gave oracles as usual. At first it was thought to suffer this because it lacked the sacrifices and worship it had formerly enjoyed; but what followed showed that the martyr, having become its neighbour, did not allow it to do so. For when Julian alone ruled the Roman world, it shared in libations and the savour of sacrifice and an abundance of victims, and was no less silent; and at last, giving an oracle, it itself exposed the cause of its former silence. For when the emperor had resolved to consult the oracle there about matters he thought good, he came to the temple and honoured the demon lavishly with offerings and sacrifices, and begged it not to neglect what he was eager to learn. It did not declare openly that it could not give oracles because of the martyr Babylas, lying in the tomb nearby; but it said that the place was full of corpses and that for this reason the oracles were prevented from coming forth. Though many other dead lay at Daphne, the emperor, inferring that the martyr alone was hindering the oracles, ordered the tomb to be moved. The Christians, gathering together, drew the coffin to the city, about forty stadia, where the martyr now lies, having given his name to the place. They say that the men and women, young men and virgins, old men and children who drew the coffin, encouraging one another, kept singing psalms all along the road, ostensibly lightening their toil with the song, but in truth moved by zeal and eagerness because the ruler did not hold the same belief about the divine as they did. Those who knew the psalms well led the others, and the multitude responded in harmony, singing this verse as a refrain: “Put to shame are all who worship carved images, who boast in their idols.”

Moved to anger by this, as though insulted, the emperor resolved to punish the Christians. Sallustius, who held the prefect’s authority, though a pagan, did not approve the plan; but being unable to oppose it, he carried out the emperor’s order. The next day he arrested many of the Christians and put them in chains; and bringing out first one young man, whose name was Theodore, he fastened him to the rack. He, though torn for a long time with the claws, was not overcome by the tortures, nor did he plead with the prefect; but showing himself as though free of pain, like a spectator of what was done to him, he received the blows with endurance, and singing again the same psalm as the day before, he showed by his deeds that he cared nothing for the matter for which he was being judged. The prefect, astounded at the young man’s firmness, went to the emperor, told him what had happened, and said that unless he quickly stopped the attempt, they themselves would be made ridiculous and the Christians more glorious. This seemed the better course, and those arrested were released from their chains. It is said that when some afterwards asked Theodore whether he had felt those tortures, he said that he had not been altogether free of pain, but that a young man stood by him and relieved his pains, wiping his sweat with a very fine cloth and pouring on him very cold water, by which he eased the inflammation and refreshed him from his sufferings. It seems to me that it is not for a man alone, however noble, unless helped also by divine aid, to disregard the body so much. So the martyr Babylas, for the reason given, was settled at Daphne and moved again. Not long after this, a fire fell unexpectedly on the temple of Daphnaean Apollo and burned up the whole roof and the statue itself, leaving only the bare walls and enclosures and the columns that held up the porch and the rear chamber. The Christians thought that, at the martyr’s request, fire sent by God had fallen on the demon; the pagans put about the story that the deed was the Christians’. As this suspicion prevailed, the priest of Apollo was brought to court to reveal who had dared to set the fire; and though he was put in chains, endured many blows and was cruelly tortured, he denounced no one. On this ground especially the Christians maintained that it was not by human plotting but by divine wrath that fire from heaven struck the temple. So it happened. And, as I think, because of what had happened at Daphne on account of the martyr Babylas, when the emperor learned that there were houses of prayer in honour of martyrs near the temple of Didymaean Apollo, which is before Miletus, he wrote to the governor of Caria to burn them with fire if they had a roof and a holy table, and, if the buildings were half finished, to dig them up from the foundations.

Among the events of Julian’s time I must tell this too, a sign of Christ’s power and a proof of God’s wrath against the ruler. When he learned that at Caesarea Philippi — a city of Phoenicia, which they call Paneas — there was a famous statue of Christ, which the woman with the flow of blood had set up when she was freed from her affliction, he took it down and set up a statue of himself. But a violent fire fell from heaven, split the statue about the breast, threw down the head together with the neck, and fixed it face down in the ground where the breast was broken off; and from then until now it has stood so, full of the soot of the thunderbolt. The statue of Christ the pagans then dragged about and broke; but afterwards the Christians gathered up the pieces and placed them in the church, where it is kept even now. From the base on which this statue stood, as Eusebius records, there grew a certain herb that was a remedy for all kinds of ailments and diseases, whose kind none of the physicians or experts of our time knew. To me it seems no marvel that, since God has come to dwell among men, his benefits too should be strange. For very many other wonders too, in cities and villages, are, as one would expect, known precisely only to the local inhabitants, learned from the tradition handed down from the beginning; and that this is true I will at once show from this. There is a city in Palestine now called Nicopolis. While it was still a village the divine book of the Gospels knows it and calls it Emmaus. The Romans, after the capture of Jerusalem and the victory over the Jews, named it Nicopolis from what had happened. Before this city, at the crossroads where Christ, after his resurrection from the dead, walking with Cleopas and his companion, took leave of them as though hastening to another village, there is a healing spring in which human beings and other animals suffering from various diseases wash away their afflictions. For it is said that Christ, coming with his disciples from a journey somewhere to the spring, washed his feet there, and from then on the water became a remedy for afflictions. They say also that the tree called Persis at Hermopolis in the Thebaid drove away the diseases of many, when a twig or a leaf or a little of the bark was applied to the sick. For it is told among the Egyptians that when Joseph fled because of Herod, taking Christ and Mary the holy Theotokos, he came to Hermopolis; and as he entered by the gate, this tree, very large as it was, could not bear the coming of Christ, but bent to the ground and worshipped. I have told these things about this plant as I heard them from many. I think either that this was a sign of God’s presence in the city, or, as is likely, that the tree, which was worshipped by the inhabitants according to pagan custom for its size and beauty, was shaken because the demon worshipped through it shuddered at the appearance of the destroyer of such things; for, according to the prophecy, all the idols of the Egyptians were shaken of themselves when Christ then came among them. When the demon had been driven out, the plant remained as a witness of what had happened, healing those who believe. Of these things the Egyptians and the Palestinians are witnesses, each of what is among them.