Julian, as a sensitive and struggling spirit, had felt this pressure, and had honestly and successfully combated the lusts of the flesh. Grown up though he was, among murderers and sybarites, in the extravagant luxury of the Byzantine Court, where, for example, he had at first possessed a thousand barbers and a thousand cooks, he had abandoned luxury, lived like a Christian ascetic, acted justly, and was high-minded. He had a perfect comprehension of the soul’s imprisonment in the flesh or of “sin,” but understood nothing of the Redemption through Christ. Three hundred years had passed since the birth of Christ, and the world had become continually more wretched. The Christians he had seen, especially his uncle Constantine the Great, lived worse than the heathen. As a young man he had tested the new teaching in his own internal struggles; he had prayed to Christ as to God, but had not been heard. When he had lamented his plight to the devout Eusebius, the latter had answered, “Be patient in hope! Continue constant in prayer.” But the youth answered, “I cannot be patient.” Then Eusebius said, “The deliverance comes, but not in our time. A thousand years are as a day before the Lord God! Wait five days, then you will see.” “I will not wait,” exclaimed the youth angrily. “So say the damned souls also. But look you, impatience is one of the torments of hell, and you make a hell for yourself with your impatience.” Julian became a hater of Christ, without exactly knowing why. The philosophers did not teach it him, for they adapted Christianity to their philosophy. Celsus’ feeble attack on Christianity had not misled Julian’s ripe and cultured intelligence. Eusebius explained his pupil’s hatred of Christ in the following way: “He has heathen blood in him, for he comes of Illyrian stock; he does not belong to this sheepfold. Or is his pride so boundless, his envy so great, that he cannot tolerate any Autocrat in the realm of the spirit? He lives himself like a Christian, and teaches the same as Christ, but at the same time is a Christ-hater.” * * * * * Meanwhile Julian, in order to hide his anger, had approached the little Temple of Mars on the hill. The building was in ruins, the doors had been carried away, and the columns were broken. As he entered it, he saw the statue of Mars, modelled after a good Greek one of Ares, standing in the apse, but the nose was broken off, the fingers were lacking, and the whole statue was streaked with dirt. “This is the work of the Galilaeans,” said Julian, “but they shall pay for it.” “They have already paid with their lives,” answered Maximus. “Dionysius [Footnote: St. Denis] was beheaded on the hill, and his chapel stands there on the slope.” “Are you also a Galilaean?” “No; but I love justice.” “Justice and its guardian-goddess Astrasa left the earth when the Iron Age began; now she is a star in heaven.”