Yet, after all, such weapons as these would have been quite ineffective, if Paganism had possessed any inherent vitality. The grip of death was already upon it before the arm of power was raised against it. It was as when, after long centuries, the tomb of some ancient king is laid open, the stately form, and the majestic features, and the royal robes are exposed to our view. For the moment he seems to be living still as he lived in history; but we look again, and we see only a handful of dust. Sealed in its sepulchre, the corpse might have preserved its outward form for ages still; but the air and the light were poured in upon it, and all at once it crumbles away. Paganism was confronted with Christianity, and it vanished. The infancy of Julian had been dabbled in blood. His earliest recollections would carry him back to the time when fathers, brothers, uncles, cousins, all had fallen in one indiscriminate massacre. From this carnage he and his brother Gallus alone had escaped; he himself, so he believed, because he was too young to be feared, and his brother because he was then a sickly boy, and seemed not to have long to live. The odium of this foul crime, whether justly or unjustly, rested on his cousin, the Emperor Constantius. If Constantius had not directly ordered it, he was thought to have connived at it. Certainly he had been on the spot, and, whether for want of power or for want of will, he had not prevented it. The courtiers and attendants attempted to palliate his cousin's guilt to the child Julian. They represented to him that Constantius had been deceived; that he was unable to restrain the savage outbreak of the soldiers; that he suffered fearful pangs of remorse; that he attributed to this crime all the misfortunes of his after life. It seems plain from this account that the spectre of this ghastly massacre haunted Julian's childish memory. He could not but feel that the bare sword was hanging over his own neck.