Other works by Porphyry than the _Letter to Anebo_ are cited or quoted a good deal by Eusebius in _Praeparatio evangelica_, especially his Περὶ τῆς ἐκ λογίων φιλοσοφίας, but the extracts are made for Eusebius’s own purposes, which are to discredit pagan religion, and neither express Porphyry’s complete thought nor probably even tend to prove his original point. Besides showing that Porphyry was inconsistent in distinguishing the different victims to be sacrificed to terrestrial and subterranean, aerial, celestial, and sea gods in the above-mentioned work, when in his _De abstinentia a rebus animatis_ he held that beings who delighted in animal sacrifice were no gods but mere demons, Eusebius quotes him a good deal to show that the pagan gods were nothing but demons, that they themselves might be called magicians and astrologers, that they loved characters, and that they made their predictions of the future not from their own foreknowledge but from the stars by the art of astrology, and that like men they could not even always read the decrees of the stars aright. The belief is also mentioned that the fate foretold from the stars may be avoided by resort to magic.[1423] [Sidenote: The Emperor Julian on theurgy and astrology.] The Emperor Julian was an enthusiastic follower of Iamblichus whom he praises[1424] in his _Hymn to the Sovereign Sun_ delivered at the Saturnalia of 361 A. D. He also describes “the blessed theurgists” as able to comprehend unspeakable mysteries which are hidden from the crowd, such as Julian the Chaldean prophesied concerning the god of the seven rays.[1425] The emperor tells us that from his youth he was regarded as over-curious (περιεργότερον, a word which almost implies the practice of magic) and as a diviner by the stars (ἀστρόμαντιν). His _Hymn to the Sun_ contains a good deal of astrological detail, speaks of the universe as eternal and divine, and regards planets, signs, and decans as “the visible gods.” In short, “there is in the heavens a great multitude of gods.”[1426] The Sun, however, is superior to the other planets, and as Aristotle has pointed out “makes the simplest movement of all the heavenly bodies that travel in a direction opposite to the whole.”[1427] The Sun is also the link between the visible universe and the intelligible world, and Julian infers from his middle station among the planets that he is also king among the intellectual gods.[1428] For behind his visible self is the great Invisible. He frees our souls entirely from the power of “Genesis,” or the force of the stars exercised at nativity, and lifts them to the world of the pure intellect.[1429] [Sidenote: Julian and divination.]