Julian by Gore Vidal Read Free Book Online Page B

cousin Bishop Eusebius as well as Bishop Axius, and forced the council to accept the Athanasian doctrine that the father, son and holy spirit are one."
    " But the battle is far from over. We are gaining ground every year. Our wise Augustus believes as we believe, as the late Bishop Arius believed. Two years ago at Antioch we Eastern bishops met to support the true doctrine. This year we shall meet again at Sardica and, with the Emperor's aid, the true believers shall once and for all destroy the doctrine of Athanasius. My son, you are to be a priest. I can tell. You have the mark. You will be a great force in the church. Tomorrow I shall send you one of my deacons. He will give you religious instruction, both of you."
    "But I'm to be a soldier," said Gallus, alarmed.
    "A God-fearing soldier has the strength of twenty," said Bishop George automatically. "Besides, religious training will do you no harm." And curiously enough, it was Gallus who became the devout Galilean while I, as the world knows, returned to the old ways.
    But at that time I was hardly a philosopher. I studied what I was told to study. The deacon who gave me instruction was most complimentary. "You have an extraordinary gift for analysis," he said one day when I was exploring with him John 14:25, the text on which the Arians base their case against the Athanasians. "You will have a distinguished future, I am sure."
    "As a bishop?"
    "Of course you will be a bishop since you are imperial. But there is something even more splendid than a bishop."
    "A martyr?"
    "Martyr and saint. You have the look of one."
    I must say my boyish vanity was piqued. Largely because of this flattery, for several months I was confident that I had been especially chosen to save the world from error. Which, in a way, turned out to be true, to the horror of my early teachers. Bishop George was an arrogant and difficult man but I got on with him, largely because he was interested in me. He was a devoted controversialist. Finding me passably intelligent, he saw his opportunity. If I could be turned into a bishop, I would be a powerful ally for the Arians, who were already outnumbered by the Athanasians, despite the considerable help given them by Constantius. Today, of course, the "pernicious" doctrine of the three-in-one God has almost entirely prevailed, due to the efforts of Bishop Athanasius. Constantius alone kept the two parties in any sort of balance. Now that he is dead the victory of the Athanasians is only a matter of time. But today none of this matters since the Galileans are now but one of a number of religious sects, and by no means the largest. Their days of domination are over. Not only have I forbidden them to persecute us Hellenists; I have forbidden them to persecute one another. They find me intolerably cruel!
    Was I a true Galilean in those years at Macellum? There has been much speculation about this. I often wonder myself. The answer is not clear even to me. For a long time I believed what I was taught. I accepted the Arian thesis that the One God (whose existence we all accept) mysteriously produced a sort of son who was born a Jew, became a teacher, and was finally executed by the state for reasons which were never entirely clear to me, despite the best efforts of Bishop George to instruct me. But while I was studying the life of the Galilean I was also reading Plato, who was far more to my taste. After all, I was something of a literary snob. I had been taught the best Greek by Mardonius. I could not help but compare the barbarous backcountry language of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John to the clear prose of Plato. Yet I accepted the Galilean legend as truth. After all, it was the religion of my family, and though I did not find it attractive I was unaware of any alternative until one afternoon when I was about fourteen. I had been sitting for two hours listening to the deacon sing me the songs of Bishop Arius… yes, that great religious thinker wrote popular songs in