Julian (73 page)

"Yes, I see the face," I said flatly. And I did: the dark cruel face of an executioner.

"But you don't like what you see?"

"How can I, when what I see is death."

"But death is not the end."

"It is the end of life."

"This life…"

"Life!" I turned on him fiercely. "You have chosen death, all of you…"

"No, not death. We have chosen life eternal, the resurrection of the…"

"That is a story to tell children. The truth is that for thousands of years we looked to what was living. Now you look to what is dead, you worship a dead man and tell one another that this world is not for us, while the next is all that matters. Only there is no next world."

"We believe…"

"This is all we have, John Chrysostom. There is nothing else. Turn your back on this world, and you face the pit!"

There was a silence. Then John said, "Do you see no significance in our victory? For we have won. You must admit that."

I shrugged. "The golden age ended. So will the age of iron, so will all things, including man. But with your new god, the hope of human happiness has ended."

"For ever?" he taunted me gently.

"Nothing man invents can last for ever, including Christ, his most mischievous invention."

John did not answer. We were now outside the church. The day was pleasantly warm. People I could not see greeted me. Then my son hurried up and I said good-bye to John and got into my litter. All the way home to Daphne, Cimon babbled about his interview with the governor. He has hope of "governmental preferment".

I am alone in my study. I have already put away Julian's papers. The thing is finished. The world Julian wanted to preserve and restore is gone… but I shall not write "for ever", for who can know the future? Meanwhile, the barbarians are at the gate. Yet when they breach the wall, they will find nothing of value to seize, only empty relics. The spirit of what we were has fled. So be it.

I have been reading Plotinus all evening. He has the power to soothe me; and I find his sadness curiously comforting. Even when he writes: "Life here with the things of earth is a sinking, a defeat, a failing of the wing." The wing has indeed failed. One sinks. Defeat is certain. Even as I write these lines, the lamp wick sputters to an end, and the pool of light in which I sit contracts. Soon the room will be dark. One has always feared that death would be like this. But what else is there? With Julian, the light went, and now nothing remains but to let the darkness come, and hope for a new sun and another day, born of time's mystery and man's love of light.

April 1959—6 January 1964, Rome

Julian,
The Works of the Emperor.

Ammianus Marcellinus,
The History.

Libanius, Orations: "
In Praise of Antioch
", "
To Julian
", "
Monody on Julian
", "
Epitaph on Julian
", "
On Avenging Julian
", et cetera.

Gregory Nazianzen, "
Oration Against Julian
".

Sozomen,
Ecclesiastical History.

Socrates,
Ecclesiastical History.

Theodoret,
A History of the Church.

Eunapius,
Lives of the Philosophers.

Pausanias,
Description of Greece.

Edward Gibbon,
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

Jacob Burckhardt,
The Age of Constantine the Great.

R. A. Pack,
Studies in Libanius and Antiochene Society under Theodosius.

T. R. Glover,
Life and Letters in the Fourth Century.

J. Bidez,
La Vie de l'Empereur Julien.

J. B. Bury,
History of the Later Roman Empire.

Franz Cumont,
The Mysteries of Mithra.

Norman Baynes, "
The Early Life of Julian the Apostate
",
Journal of Hellenic Studies
, Vol. XLV, pages 251-254.

G. E. Mylonas,
Eleusis and the Eleusinian Mysteries.

M. J. Vermaseren,
Mithras: The Secret God.

Glanville Downey,
Ancient Antioch.

Glanville Downey,
Antioch in the Age of Theodosius the Great.

Stebelton H. Nulle, "
Julian Redivivus
",
The Centennial Review
, Vol. V, No. 3, summer.

Gore Vidal was born in 1925 at the United States Military Academy at West Point. His first novel,
Williwaw
was written when he was nineteen years old and serving in the Army, appearing in the Spring of 1946. Since then he has written twenty-three novels, five plays, many screenplays, short stories, well over two hundred essays, and a memoir.