In other respects Julian was no unworthy successor of the Antonines. Though brought up in a studious and pedantic solitude, he was no sooner called to the government of Gaul than he displayed all the energy, the hardihood and the practical sagacity of an old Roman. In temperance, self-control and zeal for the public good, as he understood it, he was unsurpassed. To these Roman qualities he added the culture, literary instincts and speculative curiosity of a Greek. One of the most remarkable features of his public life was the perfect ease and mastery with which he associated the cares of war and statesmanship with the assiduous cultivation of literature and philosophy. Yet even his devotion to culture was not free from pedantry and dilettantism. His contemporaries observed in him a want of naturalness. He had not the moral health or the composed and reticent manhood of a Roman, or the spontaneity of a Greek. He was never at rest; in the rapid torrent of his conversation he was apt to run himself out of breath; his manner was jerky and spasmodic. He showed quite a deferential regard for the sophists and rhetoricians of the time, and advanced them to high offices of state; there was real cause for fear that he would introduce the government of pedants in the Roman empire. Last of all, his love for the old philosophy was sadly disfigured by his devotion to the old superstitions. He was greatly given to divination; he was noted for the number of his sacrificial victims. Wits applied to him the joke that had been passed on Marcus Aurelius: "The white cattle to Marcus Caesar, greeting. If you conquer, there is an end of us."