Res Gestae

Meanwhile, Julian was preparing a campaign against the Persians, which he had long before planned with lofty strength of mind, being exceedingly aroused to punish their misdeeds in the past, knowing and hearing as he did that this savage

He was inflamed besides with a twofold longing for war, first, because he was tired of inactivity and dreamed of clarions and battle; and then, exposed as he had been in the first flower of his youth to warfare with savage nations, while his ears were still warm[*](His two motives were: a love of action; and, since those men had prayed to him for peace who no one ever thought would do so, a desire for further glory in the Orient.) with the prayers of kings and princes who (as it was believed) could more easily be vanquished than led to hold out their hands as suppliants, he burned to add to the tokens of his glorious victories the surname Parthicus.

But his idle and envious detractors,[*](Apparently referring to the Christians.) seeing these mighty and hasty preparations, cried out that it was shameful and ruinous that through the exchange of one man for another[*](That is, of Julian for Constantius.) so many untimely disturbances should be set on foot; and they devoted all their efforts to putting off the campaign. And they repeatedly said, in the presence of those who they thought could repeat to the emperor what they had heard, that if he did not conduct himself with more moderation in his excessive prosperity and success, like plants that grow rank from too great fertility, he would soon find destruction in his own good fortune.

But though they kept up this agitation long and persistently, it was in vain that they barked around a man as unmoved by secret insults, as was Hercules by those of the Pygmies,[*](When Hercules entered the country of the Pygmies an army of them attacked him in his sleep, but he gathered them up and packed them in his lion skin.) or by

But Julian, being a man of uncommonly high spirit, no less carefully considered the importance of his campaign, and used every effort to make corre- sponding preparations.

Nevertheless, he drenched the altars with the blood of an excessive number of victims, sometimes offering up a hundred oxen at once, with countless flocks of various other animals, and with white birds[*](A colour of good omen; cf. Juv. xiii. 141, gallinae filius albae; Suet., Galba, 1; Hor., Sat. i. 7, 8, equis albis; etc.) hunted out by land and sea; to such a degree that almost every day his soldiers, who gorged themselves on the abundance of meat, living boorishly and corrupted by their eagerness for drink, were carried through the squares to their lodgings on the shoulders of passers-by from the public temples, where they indulged in banquets[*](I.e. sacrificial feasts.) that deserved punishment rather than indulgence; especially the Petulantes[*](Cf. xx. 4, 2, note.) and the Celts, whose wilfulness at that time had passed all bounds.

Moreover, the ceremonial rites were excessively increased, with an expenditure of money hitherto unusual and burdensome. And, as it was now allowed without hindrance, everyone who professed a knowledge of divination, alike the learned and the ignorant, without limit or prescribed rules, were permitted to question the oracles and the entrails, which sometimes disclose the future; and from the notes of birds, from their flight, and from omens, the truth was sought with studied variety, if anywhere it

While these things were thus going on, as if in time of peace, Julian devoted to many interests, entered upon a new way of consultation, and thought of opening the prophetic springs of the Castalian fount;[*](Not the one at Delphi, but a spring at Daphne, a suburb of Antioch.) this, it is said, Caesar Hadrian had blocked up with a huge mass of stones, for fear that (as he himself had learned from the prophetic waters[*](According to Sozomenus, Church History, v. 19, he threw a laurel leaf into the spring, and, when he took it out, found on it a note, which confirmed his hopes.) that he was destined to become emperor), others also might get similar information. And Julian, after invoking the god, decided that the bodies which had been buried around the spring,[*](Caesar Gallus, in order to purify the place from pagan superstition, had caused the remains of martyrs to be brought there.) should be moved to another place, under the same ceremonial with which the Athenians had purified the island of Delos.[*](First under Peisistratus (Hdt. i. 64) and again in the sixth year of the Peloponnesian war (Thuc. iii. 104, 1))

At that same time, on the twenty-second of October, the splendid temple of the Daphnaean Apollo, which that hot-tempered and cruel king Antiochus Epiphanes had built,[*](According to others, the builder was Seleucus Nicator. Antiochus may have enlarged or embellished it.) and with it the statue of the god, a copy of that of the Olympian Zeus[*](At Olympia, the work of Phidias; of. Pausanias, v. 11, 9.) and of equal size, was reduced to ashes by a

The unexpected destruction of this shrine by so terrible an accident inflamed the emperor with such anger, that he ordered stricter investigations than usual to be made, and the greater church at Antioch to be closed. For he suspected that the Christians had done the deed, aroused by jealousy and unwillingness to see the temple enclosed by a magnificent colonnade.

It was said, however, though on very slight evidence, that the cause of the burning of the temple was this: the philosopher Asclepiades, whom I have mentioned in the history of Magnentius,[*](In a lost book.) when he had come to that suburb[*](Daphne.) from abroad to visit Julian, placed before the lofty feet of the statue a little silver image of the Dea Caelestis,[*](Venus Urania, as worshipped in Syria and Phoenicia) which he always carried with him wherever he went, and after lighting some wax tapers as usual, went away. From these tapers after midnight, when no one could be present to render aid, some flying sparks alighted on the woodwork, which was very old, and the fire, fed by the dry fuel, mounted and burned whatever it could reach, at however great a height it was.