Gore Vidal for P30! That is the price of a secondhand book I bought from a secondhand bookstore. It was so cheap, I felt ashamed to purchase it alone; I got an old Architectural Digest just so I would not go to the sales clerk and hand him one P20 bill and a P10 coin.
The book has a very simple title, Julian. It is the story of the last non-Christian emperor of the Roman empire although he did not reveal this directly. Even so, his attempt to bring back the old gods—the new being the Christian God—earned him the name “Julian the Apostate.”
History has many accounts of Julian. In the style of Gore Vidal, though, he comes out more alive, more complex.
The novel begins with two of Julian’s friends and mentors, Libanius and Priscus, talking about the memoirs of Julian. By this time, the Emperor is already dead. One gets this sense the book may not be about Julian as the exchanges between the two philosophers, Libanius and Priscus, are interesting enough. It is when the documents of Julian are carried out and rendered into thoughts and actions by Vidal that we find the inserts of the two philosophers superfluous. We want more of Julian.
At the beginning, Julian is a young man, not interested in any kind of power or throne. The period is marked by usurpation and rebellion. Julian being the nephew of Constantine the Great has always been seen as a future ruler, a prospective usurper. Julian lives with Gallus, his half-brother. They are isolated from the affairs of the government and are under Christian education. In the narrative of Vidal, a brooding bromance is there between the two, more from Julian than from Gallus.
If one looks at historical accounts, one will find Julian being described as a philosopher and a writer in Greek. That is his conflict in himself, as narrated by Vidal. That inclination also saves him from being killed early on. He always shows himself to be very ill-equipped at soldiering, a fact or admission that does not elude his cousin, Constantius, who becomes the next Augustus.
If, however, the rest of the book is about the Roman Empire, then the book would have been boring. It is in the imagination of Gore Vidal, as he weaves the dialogue and re-interprets the thoughts of these men alive many, many years ago, that the book does come alive.
We learn from the book about the primacy of Greek language, and how people look up to those articulate in the language. During one of the turbulent periods in his life, when people around him are being assassinated, Julian seeks permission to be in Athens. When he is allowed finally to set for Athens, he confesses how that is happiest moment in life.
The Greeks invented everything! Indeed, when Julian arrives in Athens, he is trailed by students campaigning for a particular teacher. Think of it this way: In our country, when one arrives at the pier or bus terminal, one is assaulted by men who offer various means of transportation with a given rate. Can you ever think of a scene where students campaign for a particular philosopher or a political scientist to any young man fresh from the provinces?
By the middle of the book, Julian, without him being conscious of it, gradually develops his own desire —and passion—for power. Before he meets up with Constantius in a battle, the latter dies of a natural death. Julian becomes Augustus.
It is noteworthy to mention here how Christianity is imagined in those years. That the rise of Christianity is not merely through the spread of belief but by conquest. The rulers heeding Christianity start imposing the new belief system. Gore Vidal does not bother to tell us what attracted the rulers to the Christian belief, which means the notion of faith comes in here. Only through Julian do we feel this anguish over the death of the old faith. There is almost a dolorous, lonely feeling to Julian remembering the old gods.
As we are used to Christianity being an accepted religion, a given in most of people’s lives, the views about Christians allow us to rethink our dominance and our role in the present world. For Julian, it is always Helios, the Sun that is divine. He closes his eyes and he feels he has seen the truth. How different is this from revelations?
The Trinity, which is seen as abhorrent, is described by Julian as the three-headed monsters, quite unthinkable now in our theology. Christ is always called the Nazarene. It is when we are afforded by Julian to witness him in his experience of the Eleusinian mysteries that we understand why Christianity is a fluid movement from the Hellenistic thoughts to the notions of the afterlife. The descent of Persephone to Hades is not anymore strange because we now consider Hell as common knowledge, the rebirth of the God, an acceptable tenet in our religion that began as a destructive force in ancient times. Or, when Julian has to pray to a thigh bone of some saints in a Christian Church supplanting Greek temples, because Empress Helena is a hoarder of relics.
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Image credits: Jimbo Albano