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THE COLLECTED WORKS OF

HENRIK IBSEN

VOLUME V

EMPEROR AND GALILEAN

(1873)

THE COLLECTED WORKS OF

HENRIK IBSEN

Copyright Edition. Complete in 11 Volumes.

Crown 8vo, price 4s. each.

ENTIRELY REVISED AND EDITED BY

WILLIAM ARCHER

London: WILLIAM HEINEMANN

21 Bedford Street, W.C.

THE COLLECTED WORKS OF
HENRIK IBSEN

Copyright Edition

VOLUME V

EMPEROR AND

GALILEAN

A WORLD-HISTORIC DRAMA

WITH INTRODUCTIONS BY

WILLIAM ARCHER

LONDON

WILLIAM HEINEMANN

1911

First printed September 1907

Second Impression April 1911

Copyright 1907 by William Heinemann

CONTENTS

EMPEROR AND GALILEAN.

INTRODUCTION.

In a speech delivered at Copenhagen in 1898, Ibsen said: “It is now thirty-four years since I journeyed southward by way of Germany and Austria, and passed through the Alps on May 9. Over the mountains the clouds hung like a great dark curtain. We plunged in under it, steamed through the tunnel, and suddenly found ourselves at Miramare, where the beauty of the South, a strange luminosity, shining like white marble, suddenly revealed itself to me, and left its mark on my whole subsequent production, even though it may not all have taken the form of beauty.” Whatever else may have had its origin in this memorable moment of revelation, Emperor and Galilean certainly sprang from it. The poet felt an irresistible impulse to let his imagination loose in the Mediterranean world of sunshine and marble that had suddenly burst upon him. Antiquity sprang to life before his mental vision, and he felt that he must capture and perpetuate the shining pageant in the medium of his art. We see throughout the play how constantly the element of external picturesqueness was present to his mind. Though it has only once or twice found its way to the stage,[^[1]] it is nevertheless—for good and for ill—a great piece of scene-painting.

It did not take him long to decide upon the central figure for his picture. What moved him, as it must move every one who brings to Rome the smallest scintilla of imagination, was the spectacle of a superb civilisation, a polity of giant strength and radiant beauty, obliterated, save for a few pathetic fragments, and overlaid by forms of life in many ways so retrograde and inferior. The Rome of the sixties, even more than the Rome of to-day, was a standing monument to the triumph of mediævalism over antiquity. The poet who would give dramatic utterance to the emotions engendered by this spectacle must almost inevitably pitch upon the decisive moment in the transition—and Ibsen found that moment in the reaction of Julian. He attributed to it more “world-historic” import than the sober historian is disposed to allow it. Gaetano Negri[^[2]] shows very clearly (what, indeed, is plain enough in Gibbon) that Julian’s action had not the critical importance which Ibsen assigns to it. His brief reign produced, as nearly as possible, no effect at all upon the evolution of Christianity. None the less is it true that Julian made a spiritual struggle of what had been, to his predecessors, a mere question of politics, one might almost say of police. Never until his day did the opposing forces confront each other in full consciousness of what was at stake; and never after his day had they even the semblance of equality requisite to give the struggle dramatic interest. As a dramatist, then—whatever the historian may say—Ibsen chose his protagonist with unerring instinct. Julian was the last, and not the least, of the heroes of antiquity.

Ibsen had been in Rome only two or three months when he wrote to Björnson (September 16, 1864): “I am busied with a long poem, and have in preparation a tragedy, Julianus Apostata, a piece of work which I set about with intense gusto, and in which I believe I shall succeed. I hope to have both finished next spring, or, at any rate, in the course of the summer.” As regards Julianus Apostata, this hope was very far astray, for nine years elapsed before the play was finished.[^[3]] Not till May 4, 1866, is the project again mentioned, when Ibsen writes to his friend, Michael Birkeland, that, though the Danish poet, Hauch, has in the meantime produced a play on the same theme, he does not intend to abandon it. On May 21, 1866, he writes to his publisher, Hegel, that, now that Brand is out of hand, he is still undecided what subject to tackle next. “I feel more and more disposed,” he says, “to set to work in earnest at Kejser Julian, which I have had in mind for two years.” He feels sure that Hauch’s conception of the subject must be entirely different from his; and he does not intend to read Hauch’s play. On July 22, 1866, he writes from Frascati to Paul Botten-Hansen that he is “wrestling with a subject and knows that he will soon get the upper hand of the brute.” His German editors take this to refer to Emperor and Galilean, and they are probably right; but it is not quite certain. The work he actually produced was Peer Gynt; and we know that he had a third subject in mind at the time. We hear no more of Julian until October 28, 1870, when, in his autobiographic letter to Peter Hansen, he writes from Dresden: “... Here I live in a tediously well-ordered community. What will become of me when at last I actually reach home! I must seek salvation in remoteness of subject, and think of attacking Kejser Julian.”

This was, in fact, to be his next work; but two years and a half were still to pass before he finally “got the upper hand of the brute.” On January 18, 1871, he writes to Hegel: “Your supposition that Julian is so far advanced that it may go to the printers next month arises from a misunderstanding. The first part is finished; I am working at the second part; but the third part is not even begun. This third part will, however, go comparatively quickly, and I confidently hope to place the whole in your hands by the month of June.” This is the first mention we have of the division into three parts, which he ultimately abandoned. If Hegel looked for the manuscript in June, he looked in vain. On July 12 Ibsen wrote to him: “Now for the reason of my long silence: I am hard at work on Kejser Julian. This book will be my chief work, and it is engrossing all my thoughts and all my time. That positive view of the world which the critics have so long been demanding of me, they will find here.” Then he asks Hegel to procure for him three articles on Julian by Pastor Listov, which had appeared in the Danish paper, Fædrelandet, and inquires whether there is in Danish any other statement of the facts of Julian’s career. “I have Neander’s German works on the subject; also D. Strauss’s; but the latter’s book contains nothing but argumentative figments,[^[4]] and that sort of thing I can do myself. It is facts that I require.” His demand for more facts, even at this stage of the proceedings, shows that his work must still have been in a pretty fluid state.

Two months later (September 24, 1871) Ibsen wrote to Brandes, who had apparently been urging him to “hang out a banner” or nail his colours to the mast: “While I have been busied upon Julian, I have become, in a way, a fatalist; and yet this play will be a sort of a banner. Do not be afraid, however, of any tendency-nonsense: I look at the characters, at the conflicting designs, at history, and do not concern myself with the ‘moral’ of it all. Of course, you will not confound the moral of history with its philosophy; for that must inevitably shine forth as the final verdict on the conflicting and conquering forces.” On December 27 (still from Dresden) he writes to Hegel: “My new work goes steadily forward. The first part, Julian and the Philosophers, in three acts, is already copied out.... I am busily at work upon the second part, which will go quicker and be considerably shorter; the third part, on the other hand, will be somewhat longer.” To the same correspondent, on April 24, 1872, he reports the second part almost finished. “The third and last part,” he says, “will be mere child’s play. The spring has now come, and the warm season is my best time for working.” To Brandes, on May 31, he writes, “I go on wrestling with Julian”; and on July 23 (from Berchtesgaden) “That monster Julian has still such a grip of me that I cannot shake him off.” On August 8 he announces to Hegel that he has “completed the second part of the trilogy. The first part, Julian and the Philosophers, a play in three acts, will make about a hundred printed pages. The second part, Julian’s Apostasy, a play in three acts, of which I am now making a fair copy, will be of about equal length. The third play, Julian on the Imperial Throne, will run to five acts, and my preparations for it are so far advanced that I shall get it out of hand very much quicker than the others. What I have done forms a whole in itself, and could quite well be published separately; but for the sake of the complete impression I think it most advisable that all three plays should appear together.”

Two months later (October 14) the poet is back in Dresden, and writes as follows to a new and much-valued friend, Mr Edmund Gosse: “I am working daily at Julianus Apostata, and ... hope that it may meet with your approval. I am putting into this book a part of my own spiritual life; what I depict, I have, under other forms, myself gone through, and the historic theme I have chosen has also a much closer relation to the movements of our own time than one might at first suppose. I believe such a relation to be indispensable to every modern treatment of so remote a subject, if it is, as a poem, to arouse interest.” In a somewhat later letter to Mr. Gosse he says: “I have kept strictly to history.... And yet I have put much self-anatomy into this book.”

In February 1873 the play was finished. On the 4th of that month Ibsen writes to his old friend Ludvig Daae that he is on the point of beginning his fair copy of what he can confidently say will be his “Hauptwerk,” and wants some guidance as to the proper way of spelling Greek names. Oddly enough, he is still in search of facts, and asks for information as to the Vita Maximi of Eunapius, which has not been accessible to him. Two days later (February 6) he writes to Hegel: “I have the great pleasure of being able to inform you that my long work is finished—and more to my satisfaction than any of my earlier works. The book is entitled Emperor and Galilean, a World-Drama in Two Parts. It contains: Part First, Caesar’s Apostasy; play in five acts (170 pp.); Part Second, The Emperor Julian, play in five acts (252 pp.).... Owing to the growth of the idea during the process of composition, I shall have to make another fair copy of the first play. But it will not become longer in the process; on the contrary, I hope to reduce it by about twenty pages.... This play has been to me a labour of Hercules—not the actual composition:[composition:] that has been easy—but the effort it has cost me to live myself into a fresh and visual realisation of so remote and so unfamiliar an age.” On February 23, he writes to Ludvig Daae, discussing further the orthography of the Greek names, and adding: “My play deals with a struggle between two irreconcileable powers in the life of the world—a struggle which will always repeat itself. Because of this universality, I call the book ‘a world-historic drama.’ For the rest, there is in the character of Julian, as in most that I have written during my riper years, more of my own spiritual experience than I care to acknowledge to the public. But it is at the same time an entirely realistic piece of work. The figures stood solidly before my eyes in the light of their time—and I hope they will so stand before the readers’ eyes.”

The book was not published until the autumn (October 16, 1873). On September 8, Ibsen wrote to Brandes that he was daily expecting its appearance. “I hear from Norway,” he went on, “that Björnson, though he cannot know anything about the book, has declared it to be ‘Atheism,’ adding that it was inevitable it should come to that with me. What the book is or is not I won’t attempt to decide; I only know that I have energetically seen a fragment of the history of humanity, and what I saw I have tried to reproduce.” On the very day of the book’s appearance, he again writes to Brandes from Dresden: “The direction public affairs have taken in these parts gives this poem an actuality I myself had not foreseen.”

A second edition of Emperor and Galilean appeared in December 1873. In the following January Ibsen writes to Mr. Gosse, who had expressed some regret at his abandonment of verse: “The illusion I wished to produce was that of reality. I wished to leave on the reader’s mind the impression that what he had read had actually happened. By employing verse I should have counteracted my own intention.... The many everyday, insignificant characters, whom I have intentionally introduced, would have become indistinct and mixed up with each other had I made them all speak in rhythmic measure. We no longer live in the days of Shakespeare.... The style ought to conform to the degree of ideality imparted to the whole presentment. My play is no tragedy in the ancient acceptation. My desire was to depict human beings and therefore I would not make them speak the language of the gods.” A year later (January 30, 1875) he thus answers a criticism by George Brandes: “I cannot but find an inconsistency between your disapproval of the doctrine of necessity contained in my book, and your approval of something very similar in Paul Heyse’s Kinder der Welt. For in my opinion it comes to much the same thing whether, in writing of a person’s character, I say ‘It runs in his blood’ or ‘He is free—under necessity.’”

An expression in the same letter throws light on the idea which may be called the keystone of the arch of thought erected in this play. “Only entire nations,” Ibsen writes, “can join in great intellectual movements. A change of front in our conception of life and of the world is no parochial matter; and we Scandinavians, as compared with other European nations, have not yet got beyond the parish-council standpoint. But nowhere do you find a parish-council anticipating and furthering ‘the third empire.’” To the like effect runs a passage in a speech delivered at Stockholm, September 24, 1887: “I have sometimes been called a pessimist: and indeed I am one, inasmuch as I do not believe in the eternity of human ideals. But I am also an optimist, inasmuch as I fully and confidently believe in the ideals’ power of propagation and of development. Especially and definitely do I believe that the ideals of our time, as they pass away, are tending towards that which, in my drama of Emperor and Galilean, I have designated as ‘the third empire.’ Let me therefore drain my glass to the growing, the coming time.”

The latest (so far as I know) of Ibsen’s references to this play is perhaps the most significant of all. It occurs in a letter to the Danish-German scholar Julius Hoffory, written from Munich, February 26, 1888: “Emperor and Galilean is not the first work I wrote in Germany, but doubtless the first that I wrote under the influence of German spiritual life. When, in the autumn of 1868, I came from Italy to Dresden, I brought with me the plan of The League of Youth, and wrote that play in the following winter. During my four years’ stay in Rome, I had merely made various historical studies, and taken sundry notes, for Emperor and Galilean; I had not sketched out any definite plan, much less written any of it. My view of life was still, at that time, National-Scandinavian, wherefore I could not master the foreign material. Then, in Germany, I lived through the great time, the year of the war, and the development which followed it. This brought with it for me, at many points, an impulse of transformation. My conception of world-history and of human life had hitherto been a national one. It now widened into a racial conception; and then I could write Emperor and Galilean.”

I have now brought together those utterances of Ibsen’s which relate the external history of the great double-drama, and give us some insight into the spiritual influences which inspired and shaped it. We have seen that, at the time of its completion, he confidently regarded it as his masterpiece. It is the habit of many artists always to think their last work their best; but there is nothing to show that this was one of Ibsen’s foibles. Moreover, even towards the end of his life, when the poet was asked by Professor Schofield, of Harvard, what work he considered his greatest, he replied, Emperor and Galilean. If this was his deliberate and lasting opinion, we have here another curious instance of the tendency, so frequent among authors, to capricious over-valuation of one or another of their less successful efforts. Certainly we should be very sorry to miss this splendid fresco of the decadent Empire from the list of Ibsen’s works; but neither technically nor intellectually—unless I am very much mistaken—can it rank among his masterpieces.

Of all historical plays it is perhaps the most strictly historical. Apart from some unimportant chronological rearrangements, the main lines of Julian’s career are reproduced with extraordinary fidelity. The individual occurrences of the first play are for the most part invented, and the dialogue freely composed; but the second play is a mere mosaic of historical or legendary incidents, while a large part of the dialogue is taken, almost word for word, either from Julian’s own writings, or from other historical or quasi-historical documents. I will try to distinguish briefly between the elements of history and fiction in the first play: in the second there is practically no fiction save the fictions of Gregory and the ecclesiastical historians.

The details of the first act have no historical foundation. Gallus was not appointed Caesar on any such occasion as Ibsen describes; and there seems to be no hint of any intrigue between him and Helena. The character of Agathon is fictitious, though all that is related of Julian’s life in Cappadocia is historical. The meeting with Libanius is an invention; and it was to Nicomedia, not to Pergamus, that Julian was sent shortly after the elevation of his brother to the second place in the Empire.

The chronological order of the events on which the second and third acts are founded is reversed by Ibsen. Julian fell under the influence of Maximus before ever he went to Athens. Eunapius relates his saying, “I go where torches light themselves, and where statues smile,” or words to that effect; but they were spoken at Pergamus to Chrysantius, a Neo-Platonist, who, while deprecating the thaumaturgic methods of Maximus, averred that he himself had witnessed this marvel. For the details of the symposium at Ephesus there is no foundation, though Gregory and others relate weird legends of supernatural experiences which Julian underwent at the instance of Maximus. Not till after the disgrace and death of Gallus did Julian proceed to Athens, where he did not study under Libanius. Indeed, I cannot discover that he ever personally encountered Libanius before his accession to the throne. It is true that Gregory and Basil were his fellow students at Athens; but the tender friendship which Ibsen represents as existing between them is certainly imaginary.

All the military events at Paris, and the story of Julian’s victory over Knodomar, are strictly historical. Helena, however, did not die at Paris, but at Vienne, after her husband had assumed the purple. Her death was said to have been indirectly due to a jealous machination of the Empress Eusebia; but the incident of the poisoned fruit is quite fictitious, and equally so are the vague enormities revealed in the dying woman’s delirium. From the fact that Julian is strangely silent about his wife, we may conjecture that their marriage was not a happy one; but this is all the foundation Ibsen had to build upon.[^[5]]

For the scene in the Catacombs at Vienne there is nothing that can fairly be called a historic basis. It is true that, after assuming the purple, Julian did at one time endanger his position by shutting himself away from his soldiery; it is true, or at least it is related, that Julian “brought from Greece into Gaul the high priest of the mysteries—the Hierophant, as he was called [not Maximus]—and did not decide to rebel until he had, with the greatest secrecy, accomplished the prescribed sacred rites.” There is also a vague, and probably mythical, report of his having gone through some barbarous ceremony of purification, in order to wipe out the stain of his baptism. On such slight suggestions did Ibsen build up the elaborate fabric of his fifth act. The character of Sallust, like that of Oribases, is historical: but of any approach to double-dealing on the part of the excellent Sallust there is no hint. As there is no foundation for the infidelity of the living Helena, so there is no foundation for the part played by Helena dead in determining Julian’s apostasy.

While Ibsen invents, however, he does not falsify; it is when he ceases to invent (paradoxically enough) that falsification sets in. In all essentials, this first play is a representation of the youth of Julian as just as it is vivid. His character is very truly portrayed—his intellectual and moral earnestness, his superstition, his vanity, his bravery, his military genius. The individual scenes are full of poetic and dramatic inspiration. There may be some question, indeed, as to the artistic legitimacy of the employment of the supernatural in the third act; but of its imaginative power there can be no doubt. The drama progresses in an ever-ascending scale of interest, from the idyllic-spectacular opening, through the philosophic second act, the mystic third act, the stirring and terrible fourth act, up to the magnificent poetic melodrama of the fifth. In a slightly old-fashioned, romantic style, the play is as impressive to the imagination as it is, in all essentials, faithful to historic fact.

When Julian has ascended the throne, a wholly different method of treatment sets in. We could almost guess from internal evidence, what Ibsen’s letters prove to be the fact—that he underwent a decisive change of mental attitude during the process of composition. The original first part, we see (that is to say the three-act play which was to have been called Julian and the Philosophers), was finished some time before January 18, 1871, on which date he tells Hegel that he is already at work on the second part. But January 18, 1871, was the very day on which, at Versailles, the King of Prussia was proclaimed German Emperor; so that the first part must have been written before the Imperialisation of Germany was even to be foreseen. While the poet was engaged upon the second part of the “trilogy” he then designed, he was doubtless brooding over the great event of January 18, and gradually realising its nature and consequences. That change in his mental attitude was taking place, which in his letter to Hoffory (p. xvi.) he described as the transition from a national to a racial standpoint. While in January he “confidently hopes” to have the whole play finished in June, July finds him, to all appearance, no further advanced, and (very significantly) asking for “facts,” documents of detail, whereof, in writing the first play, he had felt no need. At the same time he tells Hegel that the critics will find in the play that positive view of the world for which they have long been clamouring—a Weltanschauung, we may fairly conjecture, at which he has arrived during the six months’ interval since his last letter.

What, then, was that “positive view”? It can have been nothing else than the theory of the “third empire,” which is to absorb both Paganism and Christianity, and is to mark, as it were, the maturity of the race, in contrast to its Pagan childhood and its Christian adolescence. (Compare the scene between Julian and Maximus at the end of Part II. Act III.) The analogy between this theory and the Nietzschean conception of the “Overman” need not here be emphasised. It is sufficient to note that Ibsen had come to conceive world-history as moving, under the guidance of a Will which works through blinded, erring, and sacrificed human instruments, towards a “third empire,” in which the jarring elements of flesh and spirit shall be reconciled.

It may seem like a play on the word “empire” to connect this concept with the establishment in January 1871 of a political confederation of petty States, compared with which even Julian’s “orbis terrarum” was a world-empire indeed. But there is ample proof that in Ibsen’s mind political unification, the formation of large aggregates inspired by a common idea, figured as a preliminary to the coming of the “third empire.” In no other sense can we read the letters to Hoffory and Brandes cited above (p. xv.); and I give in a footnote[^[6]] a reference to other passages of similar tenor. “But Julian,” it may be said, “represented precisely the ideal of political cohesion which was revived in the unification of Germany; why, then, should Ibsen, in writing the second play, have (so to speak) turned against his hero?” The reason, I think, was that Ibsen had come to feel that a loose political unity could be of little avail without the spiritual fusion implied in a world-religion; and this fusion it was Julian’s tragic error to oppose. He was a political imperialist by inheritance and as a matter of course; but what he really cared for, the point on which he bent his will, was the restoration of polytheism with all its local cults. And here Ibsen parted company with him. He sympathised to the full with Julian’s rebellion against certain phases of Christianity—against book-worship, death-worship, other-worldliness, hypocrisy, intolerance. He had himself gone through this phase of feeling. During his first years in Rome, he had seen the ruins of the ancient world of light and glory sicklied o’er with the pale cast of mediaevalism; and he had ardently sympathised with Julian’s passionate resentment against the creed which had defamed and defaced the old beauty in the name of a truth that was so radically corrupted as to be no longer true. In this mood he had conceived and in great measure executed the First Part, as we now possess it. But further study of detail, in the light of that new political conception which had arisen out of the events of 1870-71, had shown him that the secret of Julian’s failure lay in the hopeless inferiority of the religion he championed to the religion he attacked. That religion, with all its corruptions, came to seem a necessary stage in the evolution of humanity; and the poet asked himself, perhaps, whether he, any more than Julian, had even now a more practical substitute to offer in its place. In this sense, I take it, we must read his repeated assertion that he had put into the play much of his own “spiritual experience.” In the concept of the “third empire” he found, I repeat, the keystone to his arch of thought, to which everything else must be brought into due relation. He re-wrote (it seems probable) the scene of the symposium (Part I. Act III.) in order to emphasise this idea; and it entirely dominated and conditioned the whole of the second play.

But what was the effect of the concept? It was to make Julian a plaything in the hands of some power, some implicitly-postulated World-Will, working slowly, deviously, but relentlessly, towards a far-off, dimly-divined consummation. Christianity, no doubt, was also an instrument of this power; but it was an instrument predestined (for the moment) to honourable uses, while its opponent was fated to dishonour. Thus the process of the second part is a gradual sapping of Julian’s intelligence and power of moral discrimination; while the World-Will, acting always on the side of Christianity, becomes indistinguishable from the mechanical Providence of the vulgar melodramatist.

Whatever we may think of the historical or philosophical value of the theory of the “third empire,” there can be little doubt that its effect upon the play has been artistically disastrous. It has led Ibsen to cog the dice against Julian in a way from which even a Father of the Church might have shrunk. He has not only accepted uncritically all the invectives of Gregory, and the other Christian assailants of “Antichrist,” but he has given to many historic events a fictitious twist, and always to Julian’s disadvantage.[^[7]]

It would need a volume to apply to each incident of the Second Part the test of critical examination. I must be content with a rough outline of the distorting effect of the poet’s preoccupation with his “world-historic” idea.

In the first place, he makes Julian much more of a persecutor than even his enemies allege him to have been. Nothing is more certain than that Julian was sincerely convinced of the inefficacy of violence as a means of conversion, and keenly alive to the impolicy of conferring upon his opponents the distinction of martyrdom. Tried by the standards of his age, he was a marvellously humane man. Compared with his uncle, Constantine, his cousin Constantius, his brother Gallus—to go no further back among wearers of the purple—he seems like a being of another race. It is quite true, as his enemies allege, that his clemency was politic as well as humane; but, whatever its motives, it was real and consistent. Gregory, while trying to make him out a monster, explicitly and repeatedly complains that he denied to Christians the crown of martyrdom. Saint Jerome speaks of his “blanda persecutio”—persecution by methods of mildness. The worst that can be alleged against him is a lack of diligence in punishing popular outrages upon the Christians (generally of the nature of reprisals) which occurred here and there under his rule. That he incited to such riots is nowhere alleged; and it is difficult to judge whether his failure to repress them was due to malicious inertia or to actual lack of power. The policing of the empire cannot have been an easy matter, and Julian was occupied, during the whole of his brief reign, in concentrating his forces for the Persian expedition. It cannot be pretended that his tolerance rose to the pitch of impartiality. He favoured Pagans, and he more or less oppressed Christians; though a considerable part of his alleged oppression lay in the withdrawal of extravagant privileges conferred on them by his predecessors. In his attempt to undo some of the injustices that Christians had committed during their forty years of predominance—such as the seizure of temple glebes and so forth—he was doubtless guilty, on his own account, of more than one injustice. Wrong breeds wrong, and, in a time of religious dissolution and reconstruction, equity is always at the mercy of passion, resentment and greed. There was even, in some of Julian’s proceedings, a sort of perfidy and insolence that must have been peculiarly galling to the Christians. It would not be altogether unjust to accuse him of having instituted against the new religion a campaign of chicanery; but that is something wholly different from a campaign of blood. The alleged “martyrdoms” of his reign are few in number,[^[8]] are recounted by late and prejudiced authorities, are accompanied by all the manifestly fabulous details characteristic of such stories, and are none of them, with the smallest show of credibility, laid to the account of Julian himself.

But what is the impression we receive from Ibsen? We are given to understand that Julian drifted into a campaign of sanguinary atrocity, full of horrors as great as those recorded or imagined of the persecutions under Decius or Diocletian. It is made to seem, moreover, that he was personally concerned in some of the worst of these horrors. We are asked to conceive his life as being passed with the mingled shrieks and psalms of his victims ringing in his ears. He is made to gloat in imagination over their physical agonies. (“Where are the Galileans now? Some under the executioner’s hands, others flying through the narrow streets, ashy pale with terror, their eyes starting from their heads,” &c. &c.; p. 314). He is haunted in his last hours by ghastly visions of whole troops of martyrs. Moreover, his persecutions are made particularly hateful by the fact that they either fall upon or threaten his personal friends. The companion of his childhood, Agathon (a fictitious personage), is goaded by remorseless cruelty to that madness which eventually makes him the assassin of Antichrist. Gregory of Nazianzus is first made (what he never was) Julian’s most cherished comrade, and is then shown as doing what he never did—playing a noble and heroic part in personally defying the tyrant. Mad and monstrous designs are attributed to Julian, such as that of searching out (with the aid of tortures) and destroying all the writings of the Christians. This trait appears to be suggested by a letter from Julian to the Prefect of Egypt enjoining him to collect and preserve all the books which had belonged to George, Bishop of Alexandria: “He had many of them concerning philosophy and rhetoric, and many of them that contained the doctrines of the impious Galileans. I would willingly see the last named all destroyed, if I did not fear that some good and useful books might, at the same time, be destroyed by mistake. Make, therefore, the most minute search concerning them. In this search the secretary of George may be of great help to you.... But if he try to deceive you in this affair, submit him immediately to the torture.” It is needless to remark upon the difference between a rhetorical wish that all the Christian books in a particular library might be destroyed, and an actual attempt to annihilate all the Christian writings in the world. Thus not only are the clearest evidences of Julian’s abstention from violence disregarded, but all sorts of minor incidents are misrepresented to his disadvantage.

A particularly grave injustice to his character meets us almost on the threshold of the Second Part. The execution of the Treasurer, Ursulus, by the military tribunal which Julian appointed on coming to the throne, is condemned by all historians and was regretted by Julian himself. No doubt he was culpably remiss in not preventing it; but Ibsen, without the slightest warrant, gives his conduct a peculiarly odious character in making it appear that he deliberately sacrificed the old man to his resentment of a blow administered to his vanity in the matter of the Eastern Ambassadors. There is nothing whatever to connect Ursulus with this incident.

The failure of Julian’s effort to rebuild the Temple of Jerusalem is a matter of unquestioned history. It is impossible now to determine, though it is easy to conjecture, what natural accidents were magnified by fanaticism into supernatural intervention. But what does Ibsen do? He is not even content with the comparatively rational account of the matter given by Gregory within a few months of its occurrence. He adopts Ammian’s later and much exaggerated account; he makes Jovian, who had nothing to do with the affair, avouch it with the authority of an eye-witness; and, to give the miracle a still more purposeful significance, he represents it as the instrument of the conversion of Jovian, who was to be Julian’s successor, and the undoer of his work. Under ordinary circumstances, this would be a quite admissible re-arrangement of history, designed to save the introduction of another character. But the very fact that the poet is, throughout the play, so obviously sacrificing dramatic economy and concentration to historic accuracy, renders this heightening of the alleged miracle something very like a falsification of evidence. It arises, of course, from no desire to be unjust to Julian, for whom Ibsen’s sympathy remains unmistakable, but from a determination to make him the tragic victim of a World-Will pitilessly using him as an instrument to its far-off ends.

But this conception of a vague external power interfering at all sorts of critical moments to baffle designs of which, for one reason or another, it disapproves, belongs to the very essence of melodrama. Therefore the incident of the Temple of Jerusalem brings with it painful associations of The Sign of the Cross; and still more suggestive of that masterpiece is the downfall of the Temple of Apollo at Daphne which brings the second act of the Second Part to a close. Here the poet deliberately departs from history for the sake of a theatrical effect. The temple of Apollo was not destroyed by an earthquake, nor in any way that even suggested a miracle. It was simply burnt to the ground; and though there was no evidence to show how the conflagration arose, the suspicion that it was the work of Christians cannot be regarded as wholly unreasonable.

An incident of which Ibsen quite uncritically accepts the accounts of Julian’s enemies is his edict imposing what we should now call a test on the teachers in public (municipal) schools. This was probably an impolitic act; but an act of frantic tyranny it certainly was not. Homer and Hesiod were in Julian’s eyes sacred books. They were the Scriptures of his religion; and he decreed that they should not be expounded to children, at the public expense, by “atheists” who (unless they were hypocrites as well) were bound to cast ridicule and contempt on them as religious documents. It is not as though Christians of that age could possibly have been expected to treat the Olympian divinities with the decent reverence with which even an agnostic teacher of to-day will speak of the Gospel story. Such tolerance was foreign to the whole spirit of fourth-century Christianity. It was nothing if not intolerant; and the teacher would have been no good Christian who did not make his lessons the vehicle of proselytism. There is something a little paradoxical in the idea that tolerance should go the length of endowing the propagation of intolerance. It is quite false to represent Julian’s measure as an attempt to deprive Christians of all instruction, and hurl them back into illiterate barbarism. He explicitly states that Christian children are as welcome as ever to attend the schools.

As the drama draws to a close, Ibsen shows his hero at every step more pitifully hoodwinked and led astray by the remorseless World-Will. He regains, towards the end, a certain tragic dignity, but it is at the expense of his sanity. “Quos deus vult perdere prius dementat.” Now, there is no real evidence for the frenzied megalomania, the “Cäsarenwahn,” which the poet attributes to Julian. It is not even certain that his conduct of the Persian expedition was so rash and desperate as it is represented to be. Gibbon (no blind partisan of Julian’s) has shown that there is a case to be made even for the burning of the fleet. The mistake, perhaps, lay, not so much in burning it, as in having it there at all. Even as events fell out, the result of the expedition was by no means the greatest disaster that ever befell the Roman arms. The commonplace, self-indulgent Jovian brought the army off, ignominiously indeed, but in tolerable preservation. Had Julian lived, who knows but that the burning of the ships might now have ranked as one of the most brilliant audacities recorded in the annals of warfare?

It would be too much, perhaps, to expect any poet to resist the introduction of the wholly unhistoric “I am hammering the Emperor’s coffin,” and “Thou hast conquered, Galilean!” They certainly fell in too aptly with Ibsen’s scheme for him to think of weighing their evidences. But one significant instance may be noted of the way in which he twists things to the detriment either of Julian’s character or of his sanity. In the second scene of the fifth act, he makes Julian contemplate suicide by drowning, in the hope that, if his body disappeared, the belief would spread abroad that he had been miraculously snatched up into the communion of the gods. Now Gregory, it is true, mentions the design of suicide; but he mentions it as an incident of Julian’s delirium after his wound. Gregory’s virulence of hatred makes him at best a suspected witness; but even he did not hold Julian capable of so mad a fantasy before his intellect had been overthrown by physical suffering and fever.

Thus from step to step, throughout the Second Part, does Ibsen disparage and degrade his hero. It is not for me to discuss the value of the conception of the “third empire” to which poor Julian was sacrificed. But one thing we may say with confidence—namely, that the postulated World-Will does not work by such extremely melodramatic methods as those which Ibsen attributes to it. So far as its incidents are concerned, the Second Part might have been designed by a superstitious hagiologist, or a melodramatist desirous of currying favour with the clergy. Nay, it might almost seem as though the spirit of Gregory of Nazianzus—himself a dramatist after a fashion—had entered into Ibsen during the composition of the play. Certainly, if the World-Will decreed that Julian should be sacrificed in the cause of the larger Imperialism, it made of Ibsen, too, its instrument for completing the immolation.

In translating Kejser og Galilæer I was enabled (by arrangement) to avail myself of occasional aid from Miss Catherine Ray’s version of the play, published in 1876. To Miss Ray belongs the credit of having been the first English translator of Ibsen, as Mr. Gosse was his first expositor. The text of my earlier rendering has been very carefully revised for the present edition.

One difficulty has encountered me at every turn. The Norwegians use only one word—Riget (German das Reich)—to cover the two ideas represented in English by “empire” and “kingdom.” In most cases “empire” is clearly the proper rendering, since it would be absurd to speak in English of the Roman or the Byzantine Kingdom. But it would be no less impossible to say, in the Lord’s Prayer, “Thine is the empire and the power and the glory.” In the scene with Maximus in Ephesus, and in several other passages, I have used the word “empire” where “kingdom,” in its Biblical sense, would have been preferable, were it not necessary to keep the analogy or contrast between the temporal and the spiritual “empire” clearly before the reader’s mind. But at the end of the fifth act of Caesar’s Apostasy, where the Lord’s Prayer is interwoven with the dialogue, I have been forced to fall back on “kingdom.” The reader, then, will please remember that these two words stand for one word—Riget—in the original.

The verse from Homer quoted by Julian in the third act of the second play occurs in the twentieth book of the Odyssey (line 18). Ibsen prints the sentence which follows it as a second hexameter line; but either he or one of his authorities has apparently misread the passage in the treatise, Against the Cynic Heraclius, on which this scene is founded. No such line occurs in Homer; and in the attack on Heraclius, the phrase about the mad dog appears as part of the author’s text, not as a quotation. I have ventured, therefore, to “render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s,” and print the phrase as Julian’s own.

[1]. It was acted at the Leipzig Stadttheater, December 5, 1896, and at the Belle-Alliance Theater, Berlin, on the occasion of the poet’s seventieth birthday, in March 1898. It must, of course, have been enormously cut down.

[2]. Julian the Apostate. 2 vols. London, 1905.

[3]. The poem was never finished at all. It is doubtless that of which a fragment has been recovered and is about to be published (1907).

[4]. It was, in fact, a pamphlet aimed at Frederick William IV. of Prussia, and entitled A Romanticist on the Throne of the Caesars.

[5]. I may, perhaps, be excused for quoting at this point an extract from a review of Negri’s Julian the Apostate, in which I tried to summarise the reasons of Julian’s hatred of Christianity: “Firstly, he was unmoved by the merits of the Christian ethic, even where it coincided with his own, because he saw it so flagrantly ignored by the corrupt Christianity of his day. A puritan in the purple, he was morally too Christian to be a Christian of the fourth-century Church. Secondly, he hated the pessimism of Christianity—that very throwing-forward of its hopes to the life beyond the grave which so eminently fitted it to a period of social catastrophe and dissolution. He found its heaven and hell vulgar and contemptible, and regarded the average Christian as a sort of spiritual brandy-tippler, who rejected, for a crude stimulant and anodyne, the delicate lemonade of Neo-Platonic polytheism. Thirdly, he resented what he called the ‘atheism’ of Christianity, its elimination of the divine from Nature, leaving it inanimate and chilly. Fourthly, like the earlier Emperors, he deemed Christianity anti-social, and the Christian potentially and probably, if not actually, a bad citizen of the Empire. Fifthly, he hated the aggressive intolerance of Christianity, its inability to live and let live, its polemical paroxysms, and iconoclastic frenzies.... These were the main elements in his anti-Christianity; and yet they are not, taken together, quite sufficient to account for the measureless scorn with which he invariably speaks of ‘Galileans.’ One cannot but feel that Christianity must have done him some personal injury, not clearly known to us. Was he simply humiliated by the hypocrisy he had had to practise in his boyhood and youth? Or was Ibsen right in divining some painful mystery behind his certainly unsatisfactory relations with his Christian consort, Helena?”

[6]. For the letter to Hoffory, see Correspondence, Letter 198. The letter to Brandes is numbered 115. See also letters to Hegel (177) and to Brandes (206). I may also refer to an extract from Ibsen’s commonplace book, published in the Die neue Rundschau, December 1906, in which he says, “We laugh at the four-and-thirty fatherlands of Germany: but the four-and-thirty fatherlands of Europe are equally ridiculous. North America is content with one, or—for the present—with two.” For a somewhat fuller treatment of this subject, see the Nineteenth Century and After, February 1907.

[7]. He has also, I think, taken too seriously Julian’s ironic self caricature in the Misopogon.

[8]. Between fifteen and twenty are enumerated by Allard (Julien l’Apostat), a writer who gravely reproduces the most extravagant figments of the hagiographers.

CAESAR’S APOSTASY

CHARACTERS.

• The Emperor Contstantius.
• The Empress Eusebia.
• The Princess Helena, the Emperor’s sister.
• Prince Gallus, the Emperor’s cousin.
• Prince Julian, Gallus’s younger half-brother.
• Memnon, an Ethiopian, the Emperor’s body-slave.
• Potamon, a goldsmith.
• Phocion, a dyer.
• Eunapius, a hairdresser.
• A Fruit-seller.
• A Captain of the Watch.
• A Soldier.
• A Painted Woman.
• A Paralytic Man.
• A Blind Beggar.
• Agathon, son of a Cappadocian vine-grower.
• Libanius, a Philosopher.
• Gregory of Nazianzus.
• Basil of Caesarea.
• Sallust of Perusia.
• Hekebolius, a Theologian.
• Maximus the Mystic.
• Eutherius, Julian’s chamberlain.
• Leontes, a Quaestor.
• Myrrha, a slave.
• Decentius, a Tribune.
• Sintula, Julian’s Master of the Horse.
• Florentius,
  Severus, } Generals.
• Oribases, a Physician.
• Laipso,
  Varro, } Subalterns.
• Maurus, a Standard-bearer.
• Soldiers, church-goers, heathen onlookers, courtiers, priests, students, dancing girls, servants, the Quaestor’s retinue, Gallic warriors.
• Visions and voices.

The first act passes in Constantinople, the second in Athens, the third in Ephesus, the fourth in Lutetia in Gaul, and the fifth in Vienna [Vienne] in the same province. The action takes place during the ten years between A.D. 351 and A.D. 361.

CAESAR’S APOSTASY.

PLAY IN FIVE ACTS.

ACT FIRST.

Easter night in Constantinople. The scene is an open place, with trees, bushes, and overthrown statues, in the vicinity of the Imperial Palace. In the background, fully illuminated, stands the Imperial Chapel. To the right a marble balustrade, from which a staircase leads down to the water. Between the pines and cypresses appear glimpses of the Bosphorus and the Asiatic coast.

Service in the church. Soldiers of the Imperial Guard stand on the church steps. Great crowds of worshippers stream in. Beggars, cripples, and blind men at the doors. Heathen onlookers, fruit-sellers, and water-carriers fill up the place.

Hymn of Praise.

[Inside the church.]

Never-ending adoration

To the Cross of our salvation!

The Serpent is hurled

To the deepest abyss;

The Lamb rules the world;

All is peace, all is bliss.

Potamon the Goldsmith.

[Carrying a paper lantern, enters from the left, taps one of the soldiers on the shoulder, and asks:] Hist, good friend—when comes the Emperor?

The Soldier.

I cannot tell.

Phocion the Dyer.

[In the crowd, turning his head.] The Emperor? Did not some one ask about the Emperor? The Emperor will come a little before midnight—just before. I had it from Memnon himself.[himself.]

Eunapius the Barber.

[Rushes in hastily and pushes a Fruit-seller aside.] Out of the way, heathen!

The Fruit-seller.

Softly, sir!

Potamon.

The swine grumbles!

Eunapius.

Dog, dog!

Phocion.

Grumbling at a well-dressed Christian—at a man of the Emperor’s own faith!

Eunapius.

[Knocks the Fruit-seller down.] Into the gutter with you!

Potamon.

That’s right. Wallow there, along with your gods!

Phocion.

[Beating him with his stick.] Take that—and that—and that!

Eunapius.

[Kicking him.] And this—and this! I’ll baste your god-detested skin for you!

[The Fruit-seller hastens away.

Phocion.

[With the evident intention of being heard by the Captain of the Guard.] It is much to be desired that some one should bring this scene to our blessed Emperor’s ears. The Emperor has lately expressed his displeasure at the way in which we Christian citizens consort with the heathen, just as if no gulf divided us——

Potamon.

You refer to that placard in the market-places? I too have read it. And I hold that, as there is both true and false gold in the world——

Eunapius.

——we ought not to clip every one with the same shears; that is my way of thinking. There are still zealous souls among us, praise be to God!

Phocion.

We are far from being zealous enough, dear brethren! See how boldly these scoffers hold up their heads. How many of this rabble, think you, bear the sign of the cross or of the fish on their arms?

Potamon.

Not many—and yet they actually swarm in front of the Imperial Chapel——

Phocion.

——on such a thrice-sacred night as this——

Eunapius.

——blocking the way for true sons of the Church——

A Painted Woman.

[In the crowd.] Are Donatists true sons of the Church?

Phocion.

What? A Donatist? Are you a Donatist?

Eunapius.

What then? Are not you one?

Phocion.

I? I? May the lightning blast your tongue!

Potamon.

[Making the sign of the cross.] May plague and boils——!

Phocion.

A Donatist! You carrion! You rotten tree!

Potamon.

Right, right!

Phocion.

You brand for Satan’s furnace!

Potamon.

Right! Give it him; give it him, dear brother.[brother.]

Phocion.

[Pushing the Goldsmith away.] Hold your tongue get you behind me. I know you now;—you are Potamon the Manichæan!

Eunapius.

A Manichæan? A stinking heretic! Faugh, faugh!

Potamon.

[Holding up his paper lantern.] Heyday! Why, you are Phocion the Dyer, of Antioch! The Cainite!

Eunapius.

Woe is me, I have held communion with falsehood!

Phocion.

Woe is me, I have helped a son of Satan!

Eunapius.

[Boxing his ear.] Take that for your help!

Phocion.

[Returning the blow.] Oh, you abandoned hound![hound!]

Potamon.

Accursed, accursed be ye both!

[A general fight; laughter and derision among the onlookers.

The Captain of the Guard.

[Calls to the soldiers.] The Emperor comes!

[The combatants are parted and carried with the stream of other worshippers into the church.

Hymn of Praise.

[From the high altar.]

The Serpent is hurled

To the deepest abyss;—

The Lamb rules the world,—

All is peace, all is bliss!

The Court enters in stately procession from the left. Priests with censers go before; after them men-at-arms and torch-bearers, courtiers and bodyguards. In their midst the Emperor Constantius, a man of thirty-four, of distinguished appearance, beardless, with brown curly hair; his eyes have a dark, distrustful expression; his gait and whole deportment betray uneasiness and debility. Beside him, on his left, walks the Empress Eusebia, a pale, delicate woman, the same age as the Emperor. Behind the imperial pair follows Prince Julian, a not yet fully developed youth of nineteen. He has black hair and the beginnings of a beard, sparkling brown eyes with a rapid glance; his court-dress sits badly upon him; his manners are notably awkward and abrupt. The Emperor’s sister, the Princess Helena, a voluptuous beauty of twenty-five, follows, accompanied by maidens and older women. Courtiers and men-at-arms close the procession. The Emperor’s body-slave, Memnon, a heavily-built, magnificently-dressed Ethiopian, is among them.

The Emperor.

[Stops suddenly, turns round to Prince Julian, and asks sharply.] Where is Gallus?

Julian.

[Turning pale.] Gallus? What would you with Gallus?

The Emperor.

There, I caught you!

Julian.

Sire——!

The Empress.

[Seizing the Emperor’s hand.] Come; come!

The Emperor.

Conscience cried aloud. What are you two plotting?

Julian.

We?

The Emperor.

You and he!

The Empress.

Oh, come; come, Constantius!

The Emperor.

So black a deed! What did the oracle answer?

Julian.

The oracle! By my Holy Redeemer——

The Emperor.

If any one maligns you, he shall pay for it at the stake. [Draws the Prince aside.] Oh, let us hold together, Julian! Dear kinsman, let us hold together!

Julian.

Everything lies in your hands, my beloved lord!

The Emperor.

My hands——!

Julian.

Oh, stretch them in mercy over us!

The Emperor.

My hands? What was in your mind as to my hands?

Julian.

[Grasps his hands and kisses them.] The Emperor’s hands are white and cool.

The Emperor.

What else should they be? What was in your mind? There I caught you again!

Julian.

[Kisses them again.] They are like rose-leaves in this moonlight night.

The Emperor.

Well, well, well, Julian!

The Empress.

Forward; it is time.

The Emperor.

To go in before the presence of the Lord! I—I! Oh, pray for me Julian! They will offer me the consecrated wine. I see it! It glitters in the golden chalice like serpents’ eyes—— [Shrieks.] Bloody eyes——! Oh, Jesus Christ, pray for me!

The Empress.

The Emperor is ill——!

The Princess Helena.

Where is Caesarius? The physician, the physician—summon him!

The Empress.

[Beckons.] Memnon, good Memnon!

[She speaks in a low voice to the slave.

Julian.

[Softly.] Sire, have pity, and send me far from here.

The Emperor.

Where would you go?

Julian.

To Egypt. I would fain go to Egypt, if you think fit. So many go thither—into the great solitude.

The Emperor.

Into the great solitude? Ha! In solitude one broods. I forbid you to brood.

Julian.

I will not brood, if only you will let me——Here my anguish of soul increases day by day. Evil thoughts flock around me. For nine days I have worn a hair shirt, and it has not protected me; for nine nights I have lashed myself with thongs, but scourging does not banish them.

The Emperor.

We must be steadfast, Julian! Satan is very busy in all of us. Speak with Hekebolius——

The Slave Memnon.

[To the Emperor.] It is time now——

The Emperor.

No, no, I will not——

Memnon.

[Seizing him by the wrist.] Come, gracious lord;—come, I say.

The Emperor.

[Draws himself up, and says with dignity.] Forward to the house of the Lord!

Memnon.

[Softly.] The other matter afterwards——

The Emperor.

[To Julian.] I must see Gallus.

[Julian folds his hands in supplication to the Empress behind the Emperor’s back.

The Empress.

[Hastily and softly.] Fear nothing!

The Emperor.

Remain without. Come not into the church with those thoughts in your mind. When you pray before the altar, it is to call down evil upon me.—Oh, lay not that sin upon your soul, my beloved kinsman!

[The procession moves forward towards the church. On the steps, beggars, cripples, and blind men crowd round the Emperor.

A Paralytic.

Oh, mightiest ruler on earth, let me touch the hem of thy garment, that I may become whole.

A Blind Man.

Pray for me, anointed of the Lord, that my sight may be restored!

The Emperor.

Be of good cheer, my son!—Memnon, scatter silver among them. In, in!

[The Court moves forward into the church, the doors of which are closed; the crowd gradually disperses, Prince Julian remaining behind in one of the avenues.

Julian.

[Looking towards the church.] What would he with Gallus? On this sacred night he cannot think to——! Oh, if I did but know—— [He turns and jostles against the blind man, who is departing.] Look where you go, friend!

The Blind Man.

I am blind, my lord!

Julian.

Still blind! Can you not yet see so much as yonder glittering star? Fie! man of little faith! Did not God’s anointed promise to pray for your sight?

The Blind Man.

Who are you, that mock at a blind brother?

Julian.

A brother in unbelief and blindness.

[He is about to go off to the left.

A Voice.

[Softly, among the bushes behind him.] Julian, Julian!

Julian.

[With a cry.] Ah!

The Voice.

[Nearer.] Julian!

Julian.

Stand, stand;—I am armed.[armed.] Beware!

A Young Man.

[Poorly clad, and with a traveller’s staff, appears among the trees.] Hush! It is I——

Julian.

Stand where you are! Do not come near me, fellow!

The Young Man.

Oh, do you not remember Agathon——?

Julian.

Agathon! What say you? Agathon was a boy——

Agathon.

Six years ago.—I knew you at once.

[Coming nearer.

Julian.

Agathon;—by the holy cross, but I believe it is!

Agathon.

Look at me; look well——

Julian.

[Embracing and kissing him.] Friend of my childhood! Playmate! Dearest of them all! And you are here? How wonderful! You have come all the long way over the mountains, and then across the sea,—the whole long way from Cappadocia?

Agathon.

I came two days ago, by ship, from Ephesus. Oh, how I have sought in vain for you these two days. At the palace gates the guards would not let me pass, and——

Julian.

Did you speak my name to any one? or say that you were in search of me?

Agathon.

No, I dared not, because——

Julian.

There you did right; never let any one know more than you needs must——.

Come hither, Agathon; out into the full moonlight, that I may see you.—How you have grown, Agathon;—how strong you look.

Agathon.

And you are paler.

Julian.

I cannot thrive in the air of the palace. I think it is unwholesome here.—’Tis far otherwise at Makellon. Makellon lies high. No other town in Cappadocia lies so high; ah, how the fresh snow-winds from the Taurus sweep over it——! Are you weary, Agathon?

Agathon.

Oh, in no wise.

Julian.

Let us sit down nevertheless. It is so quiet and lonely here. Close together; so! [Draws him down upon a seat beside the balustrade.]—“Can any good thing come out of Cappadocia,” they say. Yes—friends can come. Can anything be better?

[Looks long at him.

How was it possible that I did not know you at once? Oh, my beloved treasure, is it not just as when we were boys——?

Agathon.

[Sinking down before him.] I at your feet, as of old.

Julian.

No, no, no——!

Agathon.

Oh, let me kneel thus!

Julian.

Oh, Agathon, it is a sin and a mockery to kneel to me. If you but knew how sinful I have become. Hekebolius, my beloved teacher, is sorely concerned about me, Agathon. He could tell you——

How thick and moist your hair has grown; and how it curls.—But Mardonius—how goes it with him? His hair must be almost white now?

Agathon.

It is snow-white.

Julian.

How well Mardonius could interpret Homer! I am[Homer! I am] sure my old Mardonius has not his like at that.—Heroes embattled against heroes—and the gods above fanning the flames. I saw it all, as with my eyes.

Agathon.

Then your mind was set on being a great and victorious warrior.

Julian.

They were happy times, those six years in Cappadocia. Were the years longer then than now? It seems so, when I think of all they contained——

Yes, they were happy years. We at our books, and Gallus on his Persian horse. He swept over the plain like the shadow of a cloud.—Oh, but one thing you must tell me. The church——?

Agathon.

The church? Over the Holy Mamas’s grave?

Julian.

[Smiling faintly.] Which Gallus and I built Gallus finished his aisle; but I——; mine never fully prospered.—How has it gone on since?

Agathon.

Not at all. The builders said it was impossible as you had planned it.

Julian.

[Thoughtfully.] No doubt, no doubt. I wronged them in thinking them incapable. Now I know why it was not to be. I must tell you, Agathon;—Mamas was a false saint.

Agathon.

The Holy Mamas?

Julian.

That Mamas was never a martyr. His whole legend was a strange delusion. Hekebolius has, with infinite research, arrived at the real truth, and I myself have lately composed a slight treatise on the subject—a treatise, my Agathon, which certain philosophers are said, strangely enough, to have mentioned with praise in the lecture-rooms——

The Lord keep my heart free from vanity! The evil tempter has countless wiles; one can never know——.

That Gallus should succeed and I fail! Ah, my Agathon, when I think of that church-building, I see Cain’s altar——

Agathon.

Julian!

Julian.

God will have none of me, Agathon!

Agathon.

Ah, do not speak so! Was not God strong in you when you led me out of the darkness of heathendom, and gave me light over all my days—child though you then were!

Julian.

All that is like a dream to me.

Agathon.

And yet so blessed a truth.

Julian.

[Sadly.] If only it were so now!—Where did I find the words of fire? The air seemed full of hymns of praise—a ladder from earth to heaven—[Gazes straight before him.] Did you see it?

Agathon.

What?

Julian.

The star that fell; there, behind the two cypresses. [Is silent a moment, then suddenly changes his tone.] Have I told you what my mother dreamed the night before I was born?

Agathon.

I do not recall it.

Julian.

No, no, I remember—I heard of it after we parted.

Agathon.

What did she dream?

Julian.

My mother dreamed that she gave birth to Achilles.

Agathon.

[Eagerly.] Is your faith in dreams as strong as ever?

Julian.

Why do you ask?

Agathon.

You shall hear; it concerns what has driven me to cross the sea——

Julian.

You have a special errand here? I had quite forgotten to ask you——

Agathon.

A strange errand; so strange that I am lost in doubt and disquietude. There is so much I should like to know first—about life in the city—about yourself—and the Emperor——

Julian.

[Looks hard at him.] Tell me the truth, Agathon—with whom have you spoken before meeting me?

Agathon.

With no one.

Julian.

When did you arrive?

Agathon.

I have told you—two days ago.

Julian.

And already you want to know——? What would you know about the Emperor? Has any one set you on to——? [Embraces him.] Oh, forgive me, Agathon, my friend!

Agathon.

What? Why?

Julian.

[Rises and listens.] Hush!—No, it was nothing—only a bird in the bushes——

I am very happy here. Wherefore should you doubt it? Have I not all my family gathered here? at least—all over whom a gracious Saviour has held his hand.

Agathon.

And the Emperor is as a father to you?

Julian.

The Emperor is beyond measure wise and good.

Agathon.

[Who has also risen.] Julian, is the rumour true that you are one day to be the Emperor’s successor?

Julian.

[Hastily.] Speak not of such dangerous matters. I know not what foolish rumours are abroad.—Why do you question me so much? Not a word will I answer till you have told me what brings you to Constantinople.

Agathon.

I come at the bidding of the Lord God.

Julian.

If you love your Saviour or your salvation, get you home again. [Leans over the balustrade and listens.] Speak softy; a boat is coming in——

[Leads him over towards the other side.

What would you here? Kiss the splinter of the holy cross?—Get you home again, I say! Know you what Constantinople has become in these last fifteen months? A Babylon of blasphemy.—Have you not heard—do you not know that Libanius is here?

Agathon.

Ah, Julian, I know not Libanius.

Julian.

Secluded Cappadocian! Happy region, where his voice and his teaching have found no echo.

Agathon.

Ah, he is one of those heathen teachers of falsehood——?

Julian.

The most dangerous of them all.

Agathon.

Surely not more dangerous than Aedesius of Pergamus?

Julian.

Aedesius!—who now thinks of Aedesius of Pergamus? Aedesius is in his dotage——

Agathon.

Is he more dangerous than even that mysterious Maximus?

Julian.

Maximus? Do not speak of that mountebank. Who knows anything certain of Maximus?

Agathon.

He avers that he has slept three years in a cave beyond Jordan.

Julian.

Hekebolius holds him an impostor, and doubtless he is not far wrong——

No, no, Agathon—Libanius is the most dangerous. Our sinful earth has writhed, as it were, under this scourge. Portents foretold his coming. A pestilential sickness slew men by thousands in the city. And then, when it was over, in the month of November, fire rained from heaven night by night.[night.] Nay, do not doubt it, Agathon! I have myself seen the stars break from their spheres, plunge down towards earth, and burn out on the way.

Since then he has lectured here, the philosopher, the orator. All proclaim him the king of eloquence; and well they may. I tell you he is terrible. Youths and men flock around him; he binds their souls in bonds, so that they must follow him; denial flows seductively from his lips, like songs of the Trojans and the Greeks——

Agathon.

[In terror.] Oh, you too have sought him Julian!

Julian.

[Shrinking back.] I!—God preserve me from such a sin. Should any rumours come to your ears, believe them not. ’Tis not true that I have sought out Libanius by night, in disguise. All contact with him would be a horror to me. Besides, the Emperor has forbidden it, and Hekebolius still more strictly.—All believers who approach that subtle man fall away and turn to scoffers. And not they alone. His words are borne from mouth to mouth, even into the Emperor’s palace. His airy mockery, his incontrovertible arguments, his very lampoons seem to blend with my prayers;—they are to me like those monsters in the shape of birds who befouled all the food of a pious wandering hero of yore. I sometimes feel with horror that my gorge rises at the true meat of the Word—— [With an irrepressible outburst.] Were the empire mine, I would send you the head of Libanius on a charger!

Agathon.

But how can the Emperor tolerate this? How can our pious, Christian Emperor——?

Julian.

The Emperor? Praised be the Emperor’s faith and piety! But the Emperor has no thoughts for anything but this luckless Persian war. All minds are full of it. No one heeds the war that is being waged here, against the Prince of Golgotha. Ah, my Agathon, it is not now as it was two years ago. Then the two brothers of the Mystic Maximus had to pay for their heresies with their lives. You do not know what mighty allies Libanius has. One or other of the lesser philosophers is now and then driven from the city; on him no one dares lay a finger. I have begged, I have implored both Hekebolius and the Empress to procure his banishment. But no, no!—What avails it to drive away the others? This one man poisons the air for all of us. Oh, thou my Saviour, if I could but flee from all this abomination of heathendom! To live here is to live in the lion’s den——

Agathon.

[Eagerly.] Julian—what was that you said?

Julian.

Yes, yes; only a miracle can save us?

Agathon.

Oh, then listen! That miracle has happened.

Julian.

What mean you?

Agathon.

You shall hear, Julian; for now I can no longer doubt that it is you it concerns. What sent me to Constantinople was a vision——

Julian.

A vision, you say!

Agathon.

A heavenly revelation——

Julian.

Oh, for God’s pity’s sake, speak!—Hush, do not speak. Wait—some one is coming. Stand here, quite carelessly;—look unconcerned.

Both remain standing beside the balustrade. A tall, handsome, middle-aged man, dressed, according to the fashion of the philosophers, in a short cloak, enters by the avenue on the left. A troop of youths accompanies him, all in girt-up garments, with wreaths of ivy in their hair, and carrying books, papers and parchments. Laughter and loud talk among them as they approach.

The Philosopher.

Let nothing fall into the water, my joyous Gregory! Remember, what you carry is more precious than gold.

Julian.

[Standing close beside him.] Your pardon,—is aught that a man may carry more precious than gold?

The Philosopher.

Can you buy back the fruits of your life for gold?

Julian.

True; true. But why, then, do you entrust them to the treacherous waters?

The Philosopher.

The favour of man is more treacherous still.

Julian.

That word was wisdom. And whither do you sail with your treasures?

The Philosopher.

To Athens.

[He is about to pass on.

Julian.

[With suppressed laughter.] To Athens! Then, oh man of wealth, you do not own your own riches.

The Philosopher.

[Stops.] How so?

Julian.

Is it the part of a wise man to take owls to Athens?

The Philosopher.

My owls cannot endure the church-lights here in the imperial city. [To one of the young men.] Give me your hand, Sallust.

[Is about to descend the steps.

Sallust.

[Half-way down the steps, whispers.] By the gods, it is he!

The Philosopher.

He——?

Sallust.

On my life, ’tis he! I know him;—I have seen him with Hekebolius.

The Philosopher.

Ah!

[He looks at Julian with furtive intentness; then goes a step towards him and says:

You smiled just now. At what did you smile?

Julian.

When you complained of the church-lights, I wondered whether it were not rather the imperial light of the lecture-halls that shone too bright in your eyes.

The Philosopher.

Envy cannot hide under the short cloak.

Julian.

What cannot hide shows forth.

The Philosopher.

You have a sharp tongue, noble Galilean.

Julian.

Why Galilean? What proclaims me a Galilean?

The Philosopher.

Your court apparel.

Julian.

There is a philosopher beneath it; for I wear a very coarse shirt.—But tell me, what do you seek in Athens?

The Philosopher.

What did Pontius Pilate seek?

Julian.

Nay, nay! Is not truth here, where Libanius is?

The Philosopher.

[Looking hard at him.] H’m!—Libanius? Libanius will soon be silent. Libanius is weary of the strife, my lord!

Julian.

Weary? He—the invulnerable, the ever-victorious——?

The Philosopher.

He is weary of waiting for his peer.

Julian.

Now you jest, stranger! Where can Libanius hope to find his peer?

The Philosopher.

His peer exists.

Julian.

Who? Where? Name him?

The Philosopher.

It might be dangerous.

Julian.

Why?

The Philosopher.

Are you not a courtier?

Julian.

And what then?

The Philosopher.

[In a lower voice.] Would you be foolhardy enough to praise the Emperor’s successor?

Julian.

[Deeply shaken.] Ah!

The Philosopher.

[Hastily.] If you betray me, I shall deny all!

Julian.

I betray no man; never fear, never fear!—The Emperor’s successor, you say? I cannot tell whom you mean; the Emperor has chosen no successor.—But why this jesting? Why did you speak of Libanius’s peer?

The Philosopher.

Yes or no—is there at the imperial court a youth who, by force and strict commandment, by prayers and persuasions, is held aloof from the light of the lecture-halls?

Julian.

[Hastily.] That is done to keep his faith pure.

The Philosopher.

[Smiling.] Has this young man so scant faith in his faith? What can he know about his faith? What does a soldier know of his shield until he has proved it in battle?

Julian.

True, true;—but they are loving kinsmen and teachers, I tell you——

The Philosopher.

Phrases, my lord! Let me tell you this: it is for the Emperor’s sake that his young kinsman is held aloof from the philosophers. The Emperor has not the divine gift of eloquence. Doubtless the Emperor is great; but he cannot endure that his successor should shine forth over the empire——

Julian.

[In confusion.] And you dare to——!

The Philosopher.

Ay, ay, you are wroth on your master’s account, but——

Julian.

Far from it; on the contrary—that is to say——

Listen; my place is somewhat near that young prince. I would gladly learn——

[Turns.]

Go apart, Agathon; I must speak alone with this man.

[Withdraws a few steps along with the[the] stranger.

You said “shine forth”? “Shine forth over the empire?” What do you know, what can any of you know, of Prince Julian?

The Philosopher.

Can Sirius be hidden by a cloud? Will not the restless wind tear a rift in it here or there, so that——

Julian.

Speak plainly, I beg you.

The Philosopher.

The palace and the church are as a double cage wherein the prince is mewed up. But the cage is not close enough. Now and then he lets fall an enigmatic word; the court vermin—forgive me, sir—the courtiers spread it abroad in scorn; its deep meaning does not exist for these gentlefolk—your pardon, sir—for most of them it does not exist.

Julian.

For none. You may safely say for none.

The Philosopher.

Yet surely for you; and at any rate for us.——

Yes, he could indeed shine forth over the empire! Are there not legends of his childhood in Cappadocia, when, in disputation with his brother Gallus, he took the part of the gods, and defended them against the Galilean?

Julian.

That was in jest, mere practice in rhetoric——

The Philosopher.

What has not Mardonius recorded of him? And afterwards Hekebolius! What art was there not even in his boyish utterances—what beauty, what grace in the light play of his thoughts!

Julian.

You think so?

The Philosopher.

Yes, in him we might indeed find an adversary to fear and yet to long for. What should hinder him from reaching so honourable an eminence? He lacks nothing but to pass through the same school through which Paul passed, and passed so unscathed that, when he afterwards joined the Galileans, he shed more light than all the other apostles together, because he possessed knowledge and eloquence! Hekebolius fears for his pupil’s faith. Oh, I know it well; the fear is his. Does he forget then, in his exceeding tenderness of conscience, that he himself, in his youth, has drunk of those very springs from which he would now have his pupil debarred? Or think you it was not from us that he learned to use the weapons of speech which he now wields against us with such renowned dexterity?

Julian.

True, true; undeniably true!

The Philosopher.

And what gifts has this Hekebolius in comparison with the gifts which declared themselves so marvellously in that princely boy, who, it is said, in Cappadocia, upon the graves of the slain Galileans, proclaimed a doctrine which I hold to be erroneous, and by so much the more difficult to instil, but which he nevertheless proclaimed with such fervour of spirit that—if I may believe a very widespread rumour—a multitude of children of his own age were carried away by him, and followed him as his disciples! Ah, Hekebolius is like the rest of you—more jealous than zealous; that is why Libanius has waited in vain.

Julian.

[Seizes him by the arm.] What has Libanius said? Tell me, I conjure you, in the name of God?

The Philosopher.

He has said all that you have just heard. And he has said still more. He has said: “Behold yon princely Galilean; he is an Achilles of the spirit.”

Julian.

Achilles! [Softly.] My mother’s dream!

The Philosopher.

There, in the open lecture-halls, lies the field of battle. Light and gladness encompass the fighters and the fray. Javelins of speech hurtle through the air; keen swords of wit clash in the combat; the blessed gods sit smiling in the clouds——

Julian.

Oh, away from me with your heathendom——

The Philosopher.

——and the heroes go home to their tents, their arms entwined, their hearts untouched by rancour, their cheeks aglow, the blood coursing swiftly through every vein, admired, applauded, and with laurels on their brows. Ah, where is Achilles? I cannot see him. Achilles is wroth——

Julian.

Achilles is unhappy!—But can I believe it? Oh, tell me—my brain is dizzy—has Libanius said all this?

The Philosopher.

What brought Libanius to Constantinople? Had he any other end than to achieve the illustrious friendship of a certain youth?

Julian.

Speak the truth! No, no; this cannot be true. How reconcile it with the scoffs and jibes that——? Who scoffs at one whose friendship he would seek?

The Philosopher.

Wiles of the Galileans to build up a wall of wrath and hate between the two champions.

Julian.

Yet you will not deny that it was Libanius——?

The Philosopher.

I will deny everything to the uttermost.

Julian.

The lampoons were not his?

The Philosopher.

Not one of them. They have all been hatched in the palace, and spread abroad under his name——

Julian.

Ah, what do you tell me——?

The Philosopher.

What I will avouch before all the world. You have a sharp tongue—who knows but that you yourself——

Julian.

I——! But can I believe this? Libanius did not write them? Not one of them?

The Philosopher.

No, no!

Julian.

Not even those infamous lines about Atlas with the crooked shoulders?

The Philosopher.

No, no, I tell you.

Julian.

Nor that foolish and ribald verse about the ape in court dress?

The Philosopher.

Ha, ha; that came from the church, not from the lecture-hall. You disbelieve it? I tell you it was Hekebolius——

Julian.

Hekebolius!

The Philosopher.

Yes, Hekebolius, Hekebolius himself, to breed hatred between his enemy and his pupil——

Julian.

[Clenching his fists.] Ah, if it were so!

The Philosopher.

If that blinded and deceived young man had known us philosophers, he would not have dealt so hardly with us.

Julian.

Of what are you speaking?

The Philosopher.

It is too late now. Farewell, my lord!

[Going.

Julian.

[Seizes his hand.] Friend and brother, who are you?

The Philosopher.

One who sorrows to see the God-born go to ruin.

Julian.

What do you call the God-born?

The Philosopher.

The Uncreated in the Ever-changing.

Julian.

Still I am in the dark.

The Philosopher.

There is a whole glorious world to which you Galileans are blind. In it our life is one long festival, amid statues and choral songs, foaming goblets in our hands, and our locks entwined with roses. Airy bridges span the gulfs between spirit and spirit, stretching away to the farthest orbs in space——

I know one who might be king of all that vast and sunlit realm.

Julian.

[In dread.] Ay, at the cost of his salvation!

The Philosopher.

What is salvation? Reunion with the primal deeps.

Julian.

Yes, in conscious life. Reunion for me, as the being I am!

The Philosopher.

Reunion like that of the raindrop with the sea, like that of the crumbling leaf with the earth that bore it.

Julian.

Oh, had I but learning! Had I but the weapons to use against you!

The Philosopher.

Take to yourself weapons, young man! The lecture-hall is the armoury of intellect and talent——

Julian.

[Recoiling.] Ah!

The Philosopher.

Look at those joyous youths yonder. There are Galileans among them. Errors in things divine cause no discord among us.

Farewell! You Galileans have sent truth into exile. See, now, how we bear the buffets of fate. See, we hold high our wreath-crowned heads. So we depart—shortening the night with song, and awaiting Helios.

[He descends the steps where his disciples have waited for him; then the boat is heard rowing away with them.

Julian.

[Gazes long over the water.] Who was he, that mysterious man?

Agathon.

[Approaching.] Listen to me, Julian——?

Julian.

[In lively excitement.] He understood me! And Libanius himself, the great, incomparable Libanius——! Only think, Agathon, Libanius has said—— Oh, how keen must the heathen eye not be!

Agathon.

Trust me, this meeting was a work of the Tempter!

Julian.

[Not heeding him.] I can no longer endure to live among these people. It was they, then, who wrote those abominable lampoons! They make a mockery of me here; they laugh behind my back; not one of them believes in the power that dwells in me. They ape my gait; they distort my manners and my speech; Hekebolius himself——! Oh, I feel it—Christ is deserting me; I grow evil here.

Agathon.

Oh, though you know it not—you, even you, stand under special grace.

Julian.

[Walks up and down beside the balustrade.] I am he with whom Libanius longs to measure swords. How strange a wish! Libanius accounts me his peer. It is me he awaits——

Agathon.

Hear and obey: Christ awaits you!

Julian.

What mean you, friend?

Agathon.

The vision that sent me to Constantinople——

Julian.

Yes, yes, the vision; I had almost forgotten it. A revelation, you said? Oh, speak, speak!

Agathon.

It was at home in Cappadocia, a month ago or a little more. There went a rumour abroad that the heathens had again begun to hold secret meetings by night in the temple of Cybele——

Julian.

How foolhardy! Are they not strictly forbidden——

Agathon.

Therefore all we believers arose in wrath. The magistrates ordered the temple to be pulled down, and we broke in pieces the abominable idols. The more zealous among us were impelled by the Spirit of the Lord to go still further. With singing of psalms, and with sacred banners at our head, we marched through the town and fell upon the godless like messengers of wrath; we took from them their treasures; many houses were set on fire, and heathens not a few perished in the flames; still more we slew in the streets as they fled. Oh, it was a marvellous time for the glory of God!

Julian.

And then? The vision, my Agathon!

Agathon.

For three whole nights and days the Lord of Vengeance was strong in us. But at last the weak flesh could no longer keep pace with the willing spirit, and we desisted from the pursuit——

I lay upon my bed; I could neither wake nor sleep. I felt, as it were, an inward hollowness, as though the spirit had departed out of me. I lay in burning heat; I tore my hair, I wept, I prayed, I sang;—I cannot tell what came over me——

Then, on a sudden, I saw before me by the wall a white and shining light, and in the radiance stood a man in a long cloak. A glory encircled his head; he held a reed in his hand, and fixed his gaze mildly upon me.

Julian.

You saw that!

Agathon.

I saw it. And then he spoke and said: “Agathon; arise, seek him out who shall inherit the empire; bid him enter the lion’s den and do battle with the lions.”

Julian.

Do battle with the lions! Oh, strange, strange!—Ah, if it were——! The meeting with that philosopher—A revelation; a message to me—; am I the chosen one?

Agathon.

Assuredly you are!

Julian.

Do battle with the lions!—Yes, I see it;—so it must be, my Agathon! It is God’s will that I should seek out Libanius——

Agathon.

No, no; hear me out!

Julian.

——worm from him all his arts and his learning—smite the unbelievers with their own weapons—fight, fight like Paul—conquer like Paul, in the cause of the Lord!

Agathon.

No, no! that was not the intent.

Julian.

Can you doubt it? Libanius—is he not strong as the mountain lion, and is not the lecture-hall——?

Agathon.

I tell you it is not so; for the vision added: “Proclaim to the chosen one that he shall shake the dust of the imperial city from his feet, and never more enter its gates.”

Julian.

Are you sure of that, Agathon?

Agathon.

Absolutely sure.

Julian.

Not here, then! Do battle with, the lions? Where, where? Oh, where shall I find light?

Prince Gallus, a handsome, strongly-built man of five-and-twenty, with light curly hair, and fully armed, enters by the avenue on the left.

Julian.

[Rushing up to him.] Gallus!

Gallus.

What now? [Points to Agathon.] Who is that man?

Julian.

Agathon.

Gallus.

What Agathon? You have so many strange companions——Ah, by heaven, it is the Cappadocian! You have grown quite a man——

Julian.

Do you know, Gallus—the Emperor has asked for you.

Gallus.

[Anxiously.] Just now? To-night?

Julian.

Yes, yes; he wanted to speak with you. He seemed greatly angered.

Gallus.

How know you that? What did he say?

Julian.

I did not understand it. He asked what some oracle had answered.

Gallus.

Ah!

Julian.

Hide nothing from me. What is the matter?

Gallus.

Death or banishment is the matter.

Agathon.

Gracious Saviour!

Julian.

I feared as much! But no, the Empress spoke hopefully. Oh, say on, say on!

Gallus.

What shall I say? How should I know more than you? If the Emperor spoke of an oracle, a certain messenger must have been intercepted, or some one must have betrayed me——

Julian.

A messenger?—Gallus, what have you dared to do?

Gallus.

How could I live any longer this life of doubt and dread? Let him do with me as he pleases; anything is better than this——

Julian.

[Softly, leading him some paces aside.] Have a care, Gallus! What is this about a messenger?

Gallus.

I have addressed a question to the priests of Osiris in Abydus——

Julian.

Ah, the oracle! The heathen oracle——!

Gallus.

The heathenism might be forgiven me; but—well, why should you not know it?—I have inquired as to the issue of the Persian war——

Julian.

What madness!—Gallus—I see it in your face: you have asked other questions!

Gallus.

No more; I have not asked——

Julian.

Yes, yes; you have inquired as to a mighty man’s life or death!

Gallus.

And if I had? What can be of more moment to both of us?

Julian.

[Throwing his arms around him.] Be silent, madman!

Gallus.

Away from me! You may cringe before him like a cur; but I have no mind to endure it longer. I will cry it aloud in all the market-places—— [Calls to Agathon.] Have you seen him, Cappadocian? Have you seen the murderer?

Julian.

Gallus! Brother!

Agathon.

The murderer!

Gallus.

The murderer in the purple robe; my father’s murderer, my step-mother’s, my eldest brother’s——

Julian.

Oh, you are calling down destruction upon us!

Gallus.

Eleven heads in one single night; eleven bodies; our whole house.—Ah, but be sure conscience is torturing him; it shivers through the marrow of his bones like a swarm of serpents.

Julian.

Do not listen to him! Away, away!

Gallus.

[Seizes Julian by the shoulder.] Stay;—you look pale and disordered; is it you that have betrayed me?

Julian.

I! Your own brother——!

Gallus.

What matter for that! Brotherhood protects no one in our family. Confess that you have secretly spied upon my doings! Who else should it be? Think you I do not know what people are whispering? The Emperor designs to make you his successor.

Julian.

Never! I swear to you, my beloved Gallus, it shall never be! I will not. One mightier than he has chosen me.—Oh, trust me, Gallus: my path is marked out for me. I will not go thither, I tell you. Oh, God of Hosts—I on the imperial throne! No, no, no!

Gallus.

Ha-ha; well acted, mummer!

Julian.

Ay, you may scoff, since you know not what has happened. Myself, I scarcely know. Oh, Agathon—if this head were to be anointed! Would it not be an apostasy—a deadly sin? Would not the Lord’s holy oil burn me like molten lead?

Gallus.

Were that so, then were our august kinsman balder than Julius Caesar.

Julian.

Beware how you speak! Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s——

Gallus.

My father’s blood——your father’s and your mother’s——!

Julian.

Oh, what know we of those horrors? We were children then. The soldiers were chiefly to blame; it was the rebels—evil counsellors——

Gallus.

[Laughing.] The Emperor’s successor rehearses his part!

Julian.

[Weeping.] Oh, Gallus, would I might die or be banished in your stead! I am wrecking my soul here. I ought to forgive—and I cannot. Evil grows in me; hate and revenge whisper in my ear——

Gallus.

[Rapidly, looking towards the church.] There he comes!

Julian.

Be prudent, my beloved brother!—Ah, Hekebolius!

The church door has meanwhile been opened. The congregation streams forth; some pass away, others remain standing to see the Court pass. Among those who come out is Hekebolius; he wears priestly dress.

Hekebolius.

[On the point of passing out to the left.] Is that you, my Julian? Ah, I have again passed a heavy hour for your sake.

Julian.

Alas! I fear that happens too often.

Hekebolius.

Christ is wroth against you, my son! It is your froward spirit that angers him; it is your unloving thoughts, and all this worldly vanity——

Julian.

I know it,[it,] my Hekebolius! You so often tell me so.

Hekebolius.

Even now I lifted up my soul in prayer for your amendment. Oh, it seemed as though our otherwise so gracious Saviour repulsed my prayer,—as though he would not listen to me; he suffered my thoughts to wander upon trifling things.

Julian.

You prayed for me? Oh, loving Hekebolius, you pray even for us dumb animals—at least when we wear court dress?

Hekebolius.

What mean you, my son?

Julian.

Hekebolius, how could you write those shameful verses?

Hekebolius.

I? I swear by all that is high and holy——

Julian.

I see in your eyes that you are lying! I have full assurance that you wrote them. How could you do it, I ask—and under the name of Libanius, too?

Hekebolius.

Well, well, my dearly beloved, since you know it, I——

Julian.

Ah, Hekebolius! Deceit, and lies, and treachery——

Hekebolius.

Behold, my precious friend, how deep is my love for you! I dare all to save the soul of that man who shall one day be the Lord’s anointed. If, in my zeal for you, I have had recourse to deceit and lies, I know that a gracious God has found my course well pleasing in his sight, and has stretched forth his hand to sanction it.

Julian.

How blind have I been! Let me press these perjured fingers——

Hekebolius.

The Emperor!

[The Emperor Constantius, with his whole retinue, comes from the church. Agathon has already, during the foregoing, withdrawn among the bushes on the right.

The Emperor.

Oh, blessed peace of heaven in my heart.

The Empress.

Do you feel yourself strengthened, my Constantius?

The Emperor.

Yes, yes! I saw the living Dove hovering over me. It took away the burden of all my sin.—Now I dare venture much, Memnon!

Memnon.

[Softly.] Lose not a moment, sire!

The Emperor.

There they both stand.

[He goes towards the brothers.

Gallus.

[Mechanically feels for his sword, and cries in terror.] Do me no ill!

The Emperor.

[With outstretched arms.] Gallus! Kinsman!

[He embraces and kisses him.]

Lo, in the light of the Easter stars, I choose the man who lies nearest my heart.—Bow all to the earth. Hail Gallus Caesar![^[9]]

[General astonishment among the Court; a few involuntary shouts are raised.

The Empress.

[With a shriek.] Constantius!

Gallus.

[Amazed.] Caesar!

Julian.

Ah!

[He tries to seize the Emperor’s hands, as if in joy.

The Emperor.

[Waving him aside.] Away from me! What would you? Is not Gallus the elder? What hopes have you been cherishing? What rumours have you, in your blind presumption——? Away; away!

Gallus.

I—I Caesar!

The Emperor.

My heir and my successor. In three days you will set out for the army in Asia. I know the Persian war is much on your mind——

Gallus.

Oh, my most gracious sire——!

The Emperor.

Thank me in deeds, my beloved Gallus! King Sapor lies west of the Euphrates. I know how solicitous you are for my life; be it your task, then, to crush him.

[He turns, takes Julian’s head between his hands, and kisses him.

And you, Julian, my pious friend and brother—so it needs must be.

Julian.

All blessings on the Emperor’s will!

The Emperor.

Call down no blessings! Yet listen—I have thought of you too. Know, Julian, that now you can breathe freely in Constantinople——

Julian.

Yes, praise be to Christ and the Emperor!

The Emperor.

You know it already? Who has told you?

Julian.

What, sire?

The Emperor.

That Libanius is banished?

Julian.

Libanius—banished!

The Emperor.

I have banished him to Athens.

Julian.

Ah!

The Emperor.

Yonder lies his ship; he sails to-night.

Julian.

[Aside.] He himself; he himself!

The Emperor.

You have long wished it. I have not hitherto been able to fulfil your desire; but now——; let this be a slight requital to you, my Julian——

Julian.

[Quickly seizing his hand.] Sire, do me one grace more.

The Emperor.

Ask what you will.

Julian.

Let me go to Pergamus. You know the old Aedesius teaches there——

The Emperor.

A very strange wish. You, among the heathens——?

Julian.

Aedesius is not dangerous; he is a high-minded old man, drawing towards the grave——

The Emperor.

And what would you with him, brother?

Julian.

I would learn to do battle with the lions.

The Emperor.

I understand your pious thought. And you are not afraid——; you think yourself strong enough——?

Julian.

The Lord God has called me with a loud voice. Like Daniel, I go fearless and joyful into the lions’ den.

The Emperor.

Julian!

Julian.

To-night, without knowing it, you have yourself been his instrument. Oh, let me go forth to purge the world!

Gallus.

[Softly to the Emperor.] Humour him, sire; it will prevent his brooding on higher things.

The Empress.

I implore you, Constantius—set no bar to this vehement longing.

Hekebolius.

Great Emperor, let him go to Pergamus. I fear I am losing hold of him here, and now ’tis no longer of such moment.

The Emperor.

How could I deny you anything in such an hour? Go with God, Julian!

Julian.

[Kissing his hands.] Oh, thanks—thanks!

The Emperor.

And now to a banquet of rejoicing! My Capuan cook has invented some new fast-dishes, carp-necks in Chios wine, and—— Forward;—your place is next to me, Gallus Caesar!

[The procession begins to advance.]

Gallus.

[Softly.] Helena, what a marvellous change of fortune!

Helena.

Oh, Gallus, dawn is breaking over our hopes.

Gallus.

I can scarce believe it! Who has brought it about?

Helena.

Hush!

Gallus.

You, my beloved? Or who—who?

Helena.

Memnon’s Spartan dog.

Gallus.

What do you mean?

Helena.

Memnon’s dog. Julian kicked it; this is Memnon’s revenge.

The Emperor.

Why so silent, Eusebia?

The Empress.

[Softly, in tears.] Oh, Constantius—how could you make such a choice!

The Emperor.

Eleven ghosts demanded it.

The Empress.

Woe upon us; this will not appease the ghosts.

The Emperor.

[Calls loudly.] Flute-players! Why are the rascals silent? Play, play!