Julian was a man of uncommon talent: one has only to read his writings to see this. He was truly Attic; since Dio Chrysostom, Greece has not had such an elegant Attic writer: he is far superior to Libanius. That he was a distinguished general, a humane and paternal ruler in Gaul, is beyond all doubt: he was also great in delaying to march against Constantius, that in the meanwhile he might still fight against the barbarians, so as to hinder them from breaking out. The purity of his morals was spotless; his passions were completely under control: his only happiness was to live entirely in thought. Yet, leaving aside the truth of the Christian religion, we cannot but acknowledge that the attempt to revive Paganism was a downright absurdity. Heathenism, as a real popular faith, had long since been dead; its place had been taken by Neo-Platonism, the groundwork of which indeed was Monotheism, and which was ingeniously tricked out with a good deal of eastern demonology and theology, with theurgy and thaumaturgy. All the old legends of the gods had been allegorized: people saw in Homer and the other old writers everything but what the Greeks had seen in them. Had the religion still lived in tradition, it would have still been able to make a struggle, now it was impossible. This artificial, new-fangled system, which itself was partly borrowed from Christianity, was at most suited for one or two Metaphysicians. Besides Julian and his counsellors and court-philosophers, such a creed could not have numbered five hundred or a thousand followers: moreover there was in the provinces a crowd of negative partisans, who only cared to oppose Christianity. It was, therefore, in fact a counter-revolutionary undertaking: he wished to introduce a hierarchy into paganism, to create quite a new heathen religion which was much nearer Gnosticism than that of the Hellenes, to which indeed it was diametrically opposed. As it was impossible for him to carry this through, he was driven to use tyranny and craft; and yet he could not succeed after all. Christianity was certainly far from being the faith of the majority as yet; but it had firmly taken root. The lines of Prudentius[66] on Julian are the best thing which has been said of him, doing the greatest honour, both to him who made them, and to him on whom they were made:— ——_Ductor fortissimus armis, Conditor et legum celeberrimus, ore manuque Consultor patriæ;—— Perfidus ille Deo, sed non et perfidus orbi._