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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 22 ก.ย. 2024
- The Roman Emperor Flavius Claudius Julianus is known today as Julian the Apostate - not so much because he rejected Christianity but because his efforts to restore the worship of Rome's old gods never met with widespread approval.
But why did he fail? What if Rome stayed Pagan? This documentary explores the reasons why Julian's proposed religious reforms never materialized.
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Why do you believe that Julian failed?
Probably getting fragged by some disgruntled soldier... "Dude forgot is armour and a will javelin appeared"... Yeah...sure.
Christians had a higher birth rate as well as a higher conversion rate.
@@usergiodmsilva1983PT it's pretty well documented that he was killed by a persian cavalryman
Not enough time
He died or was murdered too early. Had he lived another five, Rome may have been saved. A decade for sure.
Because he stopped being Julian
I think the main reason is a lot simpler than this, he simply lasted 2 years, died unexpectedly in battle, and was succeeded by a christian. No time for any change to set in, a bad omen, and an heir to undo his work.
That said I really appreciate this video, a lot of people in the neopagan sphere who dont know much about Julian think of him fondly as a "what if" (myself included until just now, since idk much about him) when in reality it seems like he wouldve brought about most of the same changes and problems these people have with catholicism and christianity broadly.
And what changes and problems would these be?
Rome was largely a fascist dictatorship, so no loss there, but it's hard to argue that we wouldn't have reached the Enlightenment faster if the Roman institutions weren't utterly destroyed and replaced by the fascist theocracy that based their power on the the credulity of the poor and the weak.
His own actions were the cause of his own doom. Instead of taking some years to put pagans in positions of power and strenghted his faith, he decided immediately to start a pointless expedition in Persia just to LARP as Alexander .
@@TheUrobolos I don´t see how he is such a fool. As a young "nerd" he got thrust into a really difficult war yet distinguished himself against the Allemani after having to learn the military trade in the field. His Sassanid campaign may seem pointless to you, but he was by this point a proven skilled general and sought to eliminate a threat to the Roman Empire that would be bothering them for a long time to come. Maybe I am biased, but he is kinda cool.
@@maxschreck4095 I can understand his PoV, but still if his main goal was to save paganism not starting unnecessary military campaigns and instead focus on internal matters and promotion of the faith would had been wiser
@@Bluesruse Jesus Christ you just outed yourself by having no idea what fascism is and unironically subscribed to the fascist distain for the weak and poor.
Mediaval Europe is already decentralized and by the time of papal hegemony in the west majority of the nations in Western Europe were a collective of differing forms of government and Culture under Feudalism putting modern concept in the middle ages ain't anything but assertion and ignorance
Akhenaten only rejected certain gods, not all of them. He was more of a henotheist than a monotheist.
Thanks for the additional context!
Not all monotheists reject the gods. And certainly not all Christians did, either. Justin Martyr is a great example here in his Apology, wherein he says (paraphrasing), that "we Christians are no different than you pagans in the worship and esteem of our Christ."
Interpretatio graeca, or the association of foreign gods with that of a Greco-Roman analogue made assimilation relatively easy compared to the wholesale imposition of new rites onto the conquered.
The trade-off with Christianity is that it makes the ‘in-group’ much more unified than that of pagan communities. Jesus shares a personal relationship after all.
So once Rome was Christianized, it could not be paganized.
This was Julian’s folly.
Julian was just one of those nerdy sigma male types that read the works of Marcus Aurelius once and thought, "He's literally me!!!"
haha yes this might not actually be that far off
He was a Neo-Planonist not a Stoic but yes.
Literally the ancient equivalent of a redditor
@@cartelconnection6699 I should have explicitly made this connection
Gore Vidal version is literally this except replace Marcus Aurelius with Alexander the Great 😂
Love your videos. Keep up the great work!
Thank you! The encouragement means so much to us!
Didn't Julian also declare a tax holiday for poor people while also more efficiently taxing the rich?
The polytheist tradition in the ancient world was explicitly transactional in nature and non-committal, i.e. people didn't have to "believe" in a creed or legends. It was the performance of a ritual practice that was important to be observed. One day you can make a gift to one god, while the next -- a sacrifice to another god, depending on some personal needs or desires and with the completion of the act, your relation to the deities is over as if you're checking out at the cash register in the local groceries store. This was in sharp contrast of the monotheist counterparts (Judaism, Christianity and later Islam), where the relation with the faith is like a marriage for lifetime and commands total submission, not only in practice but also firm belief, where the faith is internalized in your moral fabric, excluding any other religion... or god. In ancient Rome such exclusionary devotion was seen as an extremist superstition and frowned upon, probably the reason early Christians and messianic Jews were lumped together in the numerous persecutions.
The transactional argument is simply a polemical strategy used by monotheists to denigrate polytheists. There's no reason to believe that ancient polytheists differed much in their devotion to their gods as modern Hindus do in their polytheistic societies. Worship was primarily community-based and localized, but also became centred on individual or household worship.
But there r also sacrifices in the bible, in that sense polytheism and monotheism do not differ.
In Curches during the medival time it was about performance and showing people why u need a priest, wich actually encouraged a lack of a direct conection to their concept of god. ( wich is why catholic curches were especially so affected by the printing press)
Holidays were taken from other religions, cause people liked to celebrate.
The only difference is that Monotheism nowerdays does not want to belive that there can be other deitys/gods. Polytheism just focused on the gods/ Spirits/ deitys that they r familiar with or want to have in their lifes. ( yes some popular deitys like Isis traveld accross countrys)
At one point abrahemic religions started to asume that there is only one god, even tho from what I have heard that was never really excluded in the bible. The bible is also very biased and someone purposefully excluded storys, wich they did not like. I sometimes ask myself what Christianity and Judasm did originally look like for individualls of ancient times, bevor someone turned it into a medium to deny other believesystems a right to exist. The fall of the West Roman empire probably contributed a lot, to finalise the toxic christian mindset that some people even have today. Were they use every religious excuse to do the oposite of being a loving and forgiving Christian at heart.🤔
5:09 What are those caps they're wearing? With a disk and a small rod sticking up out of it... I only get the phrygian cap when I Google.
I don't know if Julian's ideas were quite right, but I admire his willingness to follow his beliefs rather than just follow the religion he was expected to adhere to. As a modern Pagan who worships the Greek/Roman gods, I also admire his effort to save at least a version of that tradition as he saw it fading away in his time.
I dont mean any offense, but 99% of people who claim to be neopagan are just atheist.
Are you a Neoplatonist? Julian wasn't an authentic pagan.
The main reason why Julian's ideas didn't take hold was because he wasn't around long enough to make them stick. Had he ruled Rome for 30 years like his more famous Uncle, things may have turned out different. Your video was a well researched but very negatively biased account of Julian. One of key things you failed to mention was Julian's main reason for rejecting Christianity, the deplorable behavior of those in his family who championed the new religion. Constantine the Not-so-Great, and his weirdly named sons, killed his father and brother and forced their religion on Julian and everybody else in the Roman Empire. The trauma from all of this made the young Julian hold a silent grudge against them until he was old and powerful enough to rebel against them. Nobody knows what would have happened had Julian not died in Persia but it is safe to say that his depiction in history would have probably been drastically different.
I've been thinking about this for some time now. The old traditional religion was basically dead by the fourth century and there was no going back, there was bound to be some religious reforms or the replacement with something new, this must've been clear to a lot of the empire elites and intellectuals at the time. The (neo)platonists were making some very solid foundation for polytheism and spirituality in general for centuries by that point, their work was so good that even Christians and Gnostics took a lot from them by changing some bits, but even then their reform of paganism never actually became popular. The war for the Mediterranean spirituality (the winner of which would transform Europe and the rest of the world) was raged by Christianity, Gnosticism and Manichaeism. The Platonists were sadly shoved to the side. Maybe if they actually tried to spread their teachings to the masses, instead of secluding themselves in mystery cults reserved to a selected few, we would still have the worship of native gods alive in the modern age.
Dead? I believe most of the empire still worshiped at pagan temples up until Justinian...
@@usergiodmsilva1983PT Yes, dead. It's hyperbolic speech, of course, but we all know that the old ways were dying fast by that point.
Paganism was still very strong. Particularly in the West. So what you've said is nonsense. He could have rid the empire of Christianity had he had a long reign.
@@Insectoid_ You are ignorant. I'm talking exclusively of roman and Greek paganism, but it also includes Egyptian, north African and the Levant. Western Europe would follow not long after.
@@Ζήνων-ζ1ι I'm not.
One of the best fictional works about Julian is the novel named after him by Gore Vidal.
It's a good book, and poses interesting questions, but one of the goals of this video was to push back on the image of Julian that the novel helped advance and popularize. Vidal's Julian bears little resemblance to the actual man
@tribunateSPQR Julian is a hero to people who dislike Christianity and Vidal certainly fit that category.
Is it true that Julian ran into battle without armor? I'd have to consider that one of his larger mistakes.
That's a nice story... Probably was a disgruntle soldier that fragged him.
You might want to put that into context with all the other instances where ancient historians like Herodotus said that this or that non-Roman people "went into battle naked ". It's been said about the Celts, the Slavs and many others numerous times. In reality, it seems to be used as an insulting description of people who were simply not prepared for battle.
@@RobespierreThePoof It was apparently just one day when he was in a huge hurry, which not coincidentally was the same day he died, so I could believe it. Still it could also be a rumor created by anti-Pagan historians. That far in the past it becomes difficult to be certain of the truth
@@RobespierreThePoof there are more than a few accounts of Celtic warriors going into battle without armor or clothes. I don't think it was simply the defamation of their enemies.
@@RobespierreThePoof I would disagree with the assertion that this was a metaphor of sorts to show him as an unworthy commander, I think it is more a reflection of Julian's impulsiveness, his belief that he was a divine emissary and his idolization of Alexander the Great.
Julian tried to build the third temple, it fell
Because he wore no armour when he was struck with a javelin, had he lived long enough to sire children the world would be very different.
I think that paganism was in irreversible decline by this point, but if anything could have saved traditional religion then it was a long reign for an emperor like Julian.
Had he founded a new pagan dynasty then European history would have certainly played out much differently
@@tribunateSPQRIt wasn’t in irreversible decline, Chrisitianity was still a minority religion, only being dominant in parts of the east. Without a continuous line of draconian emperors to push Christianity down everyone’s throats it wouldn’t have have spread like it did.
Who’s to say his children would succeed him? Or that they would believe the same things as him.
@@rhett5058 Because it was still the majority and there’s political disadvantages for future emperors to abandon all that, yes, dynasties come and go, but there would be no Christian domination.
The chrisrian population was probably less than 1% the Roman Empire at the time. Had Julian not been succeeded by a series of christian emperors, the christian Roman Empire 312-361 would've been an odd but interesting period of a solidly polytheistic Roman Empire.
Yes, but we know at this time that "1%" was already in high positions within the Roman aristocracy with access to the emperor and his retinue. That makes a huge difference with access to the levers of power.
No it was at least a third of the population by the Time of Julian if not larger especially in the east. Paganism was reduced to a religion of the Most rural backwaters of the empire and of the Senatorial elite classes. The Military, Bureaucracy, and urban-suburban populations of the empire were plurality of not outright majority Christian by the mid 300s
trust me when I say this channel will blow up big time or else the internet is insane.
Thanks for the vote of confidence! We’re looking forward to sharing lots more exciting Rome-related content with the dedicated fans who have helped make this all possible
The loss of the ancient polytheistic religions of Europe and the Near East is one of the greatest losses of intangible heritage in recorded history. It is only surpassed by the countries religions that Christian missionaries wiped out as agents of modern European empires.
Nobody misses human sacrifice and institutionalized child rape/ sex cults but degenerates.
Antiquity is a horror to us precise of our Christian morality.
It truly is a loss.
skill issue lol, cry more that your public human sacrifices and catamite slaves got banned
Le christianity bad upvotes to the left
I never understood why you people simp so hard for paganism, like do you have some trauma with christianity? Its ALL fairytales. Like we would be any better believing in Zeus xd all religion is cringe, not only abrahamic ones.
To begin with, I believe Akhenaten never created or tried to create an Egypt-wide alternative religion centered on Aten. He closed the old temples and focused on building a new capital centered on the worship of the "new" god, Aten. He certainly did that. But what then of the rank and file Egyptians? What were they to do? Were they expected to relocate to or make regular pilgrimages to el-Amarna? This was a ham-fisted effort to destroy the influence of the priesthoods and take their resources. But without an alternative religion to get the population in line, it was doomed. It might have been different had Akhenaten had a son to carry on after him. This is often so crucial to the success of radical change: time. Constantine had 3 surviving sons (not counting the one he murdered due to the lies his second wife told him) to keep the Christianization moving forward. Julian came too late and did not have a like-minded heir either.
It is noteworthy that his father, Amenhotep III, actually began the family veneration of the Aten. Akhenaten simply continued the religious legacy of his father. That needs to be said because far too many people seem to place all the blame on the son.
I think this video is not providing a plausible story. It isn't properly knowledgeable regarding the late development of neo-Platonism. Paganism at this time was monotheistic, with the One at the top, then the Demiurge (which was a good, although deficient Platonic reflection of the One). The Hellenic/Roman gods in this monotheistic system were simply manifestations of natural forces and indirectly of the will of the One via the Demiurge, and can be compared to an unruly flock of angels or later on: saints. Denigrating Julian because of a failure to understand what Paganism was at the time, does not make a good impression. I think you should remake this video, and this next time make it properly.
Julian's version of late-hellenistic paganism CAN be accurately described as polytheistic because:
1. it is Iamblican; Iamblicus were more heavily involved with ritualizing theurgy, and was also basing his model of the universe on still-alive religious traditions from mesopotamia and egypt, as well as the canaanite and syrian religious beliefs that were heavily syncretised into Hellenistic theology. Iamblicus also was more focused on the worship and invocation of earthly gods than the ineffable One.
2. The One also wasn't a god, in the monotheistic sense; it's the underlying principle of all things, and the cause as well as end of everything. Neopythagoreans identified the Platonic one and his Form of Goodness with thr Pythagorean Monad, that is to say, the One isn't a god in any sense, but literally the manifestation of Goodness, as well as the First Number One. As for the demiurge, many Neoplatonists did identify it with Zeus.
We must remember that Julian as a youth was taken in by his uncle Eusebius, one of the great early fathers of the Christian movement. An Julian was a professing Christian for awhile....
This is the last man documented to speak to an oracle. I don’t think most people understand the importance of Julian
It's quite sad that Julian did not succeed with his plans. He was trying to bring in a more just and fair society and only a few rulers have ever been able to do that. Darrius the Great, Alexander the Great, ext. Learning about Julian in more depth has re-fueled my dislike for Christians.
He wasn't good enough against the Sassanids
Be honest: he tried to curry favor with the Jews and rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem which Christ had predicted would happen 40 years before it happened. They learned what God destroys and does not want rebuilt does not get rebuilt. What do Christians have to do with Emperor Julian building a "fairer" society? Give us a break.
"New" faith? Christianity was about 300 years old when Constantine converted. It would have been decades older when Julian was emperor.
New relative to Greco-Roman paganism
@@thelittleredhairedgirlfrom6527 It's better to say 'paganisms,' plural. Rome had been adopting lots of 'pagan' traditions, foreign and domestic and Christianity was among the many other cults newly adapted.
yes that's very new for a religion
I mean, Sikhism is considered a new religion today despite having existed for nearly 600 years
@@hogndog2339 Who considers Sikhism to be new?
Do an episode on the reforms he proposed and their likelihood. Like, I heard he wanted to return to city focused administration of the greeks, how could that mesh with his base of support being rural?.
I'll return to this later - it's best not to think of his support base here as the typical rural farmers but the large landlords who owned the majority of the arable land. Because their holdings were not always concentrated in one specific area, these wealthy landowners resided in the cities at least part of the time so were still somewhat urbanized.
@@tribunateSPQR oh, also how well do you think his reforms would deal with the issues the empire would come to face, I highly doubt a dejure confederacy of cities defacto under the empire city-provinces, during the empire's urban decline would work better than the dominus Constantine-Diocletian way the empire was organized.
Would this mean the Empire falls more completely or does the Empire reform from that and would they keep the dejure image of being organized like that due to his prestige or completely do away with it?. Or do you think the reforms may actually work?.
I still think the reforms would fail and how would that period and the earlier/worse collapse affect the Church especially the proto-Catholic-Orthodox.
@@tribunateSPQRI think it’s better to say Julian’s support came from the “senatorial class” not just “rural landowners” the Illyrian military families that gave rise to Constantine and the major Figures of the Christian Dominate were also “rural landowners” just not of the same caliber.
Julian lost most of his family because of Constantine He also got into drugs as a youth
Very interesting!
thank you!
Nice work, well done
What are the main sources for this video? Sounds like interesting reads.
Here are a few:
How Rome Fell - Adrian Goldsworthy
Rome: Empire of the Eagles - Neil Faulkner
The Fate of Rome - Kyle Harper
The Rise of Christianity - Rodney Stark
Also relied on Gibbon and the surviving works of Julian himself. Happy reading!
@@tribunateSPQR Thank you!
@@BernasLL of course! Always happy to recommend books
Well, it is more subtle than that.
for it was not Christianity that triumphed, merely a fusion of Christian rhetoric covering pagan attitudes and ultimately pagan practice
How so?
when the church jumped into bed with the world at Constantine's real or imagined ( i am not sure which) conversion they compromised the gospel of Christ, forsaking it for the favour if the world.
IOW i regard the conversion of Constantine as an unmitigated disaster for the church
and having forsaken Christ ( a biblical term with biblical meaning) they had nothing left but paganism under a Christian gloss
most people cannot tell the difference between Christian rhetoric and spiritual reality.
this is a brief summary of what could be a book on the matter
but the upshot is paganism merely changed its form even if few at the time, nominal Christian or overt pagan, understood this.
of course some did notice this. but their response the desert monasticism of the so called desert fathers - to wit poor mad St Anthony et al - was itself rank heresy for they ignored what the bible said about severe treatment of the body being of no value against sin
so what did the do? went out in to the desert to flog and starve themselves not into holiness but apostasy and insanity.
So Julian need not have worried.
paganism won, just not in the form he expected it to
Curious is that emperor Julian is called "the apostate" by historians!
But he couldn't possibly have apostatized as he never had been a christian
He actually wrote himself that he spent his first 20 years of life as a Christian, so he was indeed an apostate
splendid work as usual
Thank you, much appreciated!
Ave Divus Julianus!
Larp lol
Julian's "new religion" sounds like a Temu version of Second Temple Judaism with basically everything that made Judaism succeed missing
I look so much like Julian from the video image damn
He must have not had enough piety mana points or controlled 3 holy sites, so couldn’t reform the religion.
Wasn’t Christianity also heavily neo-Platonic? That’s what Yaron Brook said anyway.
Yes, there are many ideas from platonic philosophy that were later echoed in Christianity such as the immortality of the soul. However, the Platonism of late antiquity wasn't solely relevant to Christianity. It was an independent (and thoroughly pagan) school of thought and in turn influenced Christian, Jewish, and Islamic theology as well as the thought of other Pagans (like Julian). The connection is real but shouldn't be overemphasized IMO as Christianity existed and thrived for centuries before theologians like St. Augustine integrated some Neoplatonic ideas into Christian doctrine.
Just like Rome. It was greed.
Abrahamisms success isn't monotheism. It's deceit.
to answer your question:
because Truth prevails and monotheism is the logical evolution of polytheism (even pre-Christian philosophers like Plato and Aristotle called out the superstitious primitive beliefs of polytheism).
realizing that, on a cosmological level, there has to be a singular source of creation, but not humanized antropomorphic metaphors that constantly bicker and fight between each other, for the universe's unwritten laws to make sense, is a process of emotional and rational maturity.
And ultimately Atheism is the logical end to all the religious discussion as science progresses and proves the real truth about the universe.
@@swarupkumar2 its actually a very intellectually deficit and contradictory position but I dont expect a pajeet to understand.
@@crasnicul3371 lol.... here comes the insult. Thanks for accepting that you have no valid arguments left.
@@crasnicul3371 anyways, mathematically speaking, "many Gods to one God to no God" is the logical progression. And I am drawing this conclusion from your logical argument only. So if my conclusion is false then it means your premise was false as well
@@swarupkumar2 you are brown so you don't understand either logic or mathematics.
you cannot even understand abstract concepts or hypothetical questions. your calling in life is operating a street vendor.
You know if this guy had succeed there could have been a weird Hindu esc religion in the west.
I was expecting a more thorough video about his rise and fall. It's not like he inherited the position without any merit. He was an accomplished commander in the west. I also find the notion of his Helios being a new god, when he himself uses the moniker of Sol Invictus/Mithra to adress to him in the "Caesers"... Also, stating that unlike the christians his supporters were not there through merit, then mentioning those same christians convertinf to be in favor of the preceding emperors, and then saying that the priests of the temples of Julian needed to be in good behaviour in order to stay in their place... Bit contradictory... Christian scholars were also deeply influence by platonists and neoplatonists so, none of these came from a vaccum:
The Heliaia, solis agon, was founded by the Emperor Aurelian at Rome in 274 a., d.; but the "unconquerable sun," sol invictus, had been worshipped there for fully a century before Aurelian's foundation; see Usener, Sol invictus, in Rheinisches Museum, 1905. Julian once again, Caesars 336 C calls Helios by his Persian name Mithras.
The main reason for why Julian failed was him getting killed in Persia. There really was no huge advantage of Christianism by that time that could not be backtracked given time.
Excerpt of on of his letters to the Alexandrians. Seems to be a reasonable man: "Now compare this letter of mine with the one[7] that I wrote to you a short time ago, and mark the difference well. What words of praise for you did I write then! But now, by the gods, though I wish to praise you, I cannot, because you have broken the law. Your citizens dare to tear a human being in pieces as dogs tear a wolf, and then are not ashamed to lift to the gods those hands still dripping with blood! But, you will say, George deserved to be treated in this fashion. Granted, and I might even admit that he deserved even worse and more cruel treatment. Yes, you will say, and on your account. To this I too agree; but if you say by your hands, I no longer agree. For you have laws which ought by all means to be honoured and cherished by you all, individually. Sometimes, no doubt, it happens that certain persons break one or other of these laws; but nevertheless the state as a whole ought to be well governed and you ought to obey the laws and not transgress those that from the beginning were wisely established.
It is a fortunate thing for you, men of Alexandria, that this transgression of yours occurred in my reign, since by reason of my reverence for the god and out of regard for my uncle[8] and namesake, who governed the whole of Egypt and your city also, I preserve for you the affection of a brother. For power that would be respected and a really strict and unswerving government would never overlook an outrageous action of a people, but would rather purge it away by bitter medicine, like a serious disease. But, for the reasons I have just mentioned, I administer to you the very mildest remedy, namely admonition and arguments, by which I am very sure that you will be the more convinced if you really are, as I am told, originally Greeks, and even to this day there remains in your dispositions and habits a notable and honourable impress of that illustrious descent.
Let this be publicly proclaimed to my citizens of Alexandria.
I suggest another possible reason for the success of Tutankhamen while Julian failed is that Atenism may have been almost entirely the personal conviction of the Pharoah itself, with no roots in the lower classes. So when he died there were no grass roots to carry on his ideas. Compare and contrast with the constant war against "idolatry" in ancient Israel, which was a constant power between the urban elites in the temple versus the practice of the rural people. Because rural people would not leave their ancestral beliefs until the Babylonian captivity, their viewpoints would continue to percolate upwards and trouble the temple priesthood for centuries.
Christianity, by contrast, had its roots in the urban poor, in slaves and in women. As a result, there was a foundational basis for the religion so it would not simply disappear when their Emperor-advocate died. Perhaps religion is more a bottom-up phenomenon than something which can be imposed from the top down.
Bottom up was not some accident. It was strategy.
There was little difference between Christianity and neoplatonism
This was the position of Nietzsche, and it has its merits but I think it oversimplifies the distinctions between the two schools of thought. So while there are many ideas from platonic philosophy that were later echoed in Christianity (such as the immortality of the soul or the transcendent good) the connection shouldn't be overstated as Christianity initially existed and thrived for centuries before theologians like St. Augustine integrated some Neoplatonic ideas into core Christian doctrine. This was the height of neoplatonic influence on Christianity and I don't think its an accident that it occurred so close to the reign of Julian when neoplatonism was so dominant.
I am ironically both an absolute Neoplatonist and a Catholic. I don't have to choose.
I don't think you understand what paganism ís. Divination ís paganism, that ís what the ancient Greeks practiced.
Christ is king and the old pagan idols are dead. Now we'll have to get rid of the modern idols. Ad maiorem Dei gloriam.
But it seems ultimately it will be science and atheism that will be the final victor.
@@swarupkumar2 the science of GOD yes
@@judasmaccabee3 thats a contradiction in itself
Me and all my homies hate Julian
Good.
Christianity's triumph was a dark day for all the peoples of the world. The Christian Empires swept across the planet, and their savagery would please even old Rome.
@@DreamersOfReality Yes, a very dark day for pagans. Because judgement of their wickedness had arrived.
@@cartesian_doubt6230 christianity still brought wickedness though. That’s why it was defeated by the State, starting from the enlightenment period
@@lucius4753The overrated an enlightenment was crushed by Romanticism a century later. It never spread beyond a few Anglo-Frankish states. And as time goes on its values are noticeably being abandoned as we speak
I wish he'd just improved the defences. And concentrated on getting rid of Christianity lol
Cope.
@@pao5567 lol. Well I’m doing well since Christianity is dead in my country
@@Insectoid_ Neopaganism is cringe af, coming from an atheist.
@@Insectoid_ It will rise again in time.
@@battlerushiromiya651 no it won't , at any time
A higher perspective : Julian was Leonidas of Thermopylae. Later as Roman emperor he was aware of atrocities committed by so called Christians, as the killing in Alexandria of the revered female mathematician and astronomer Hypatia. There a fanatic bishop encouraged a rabid Christian mob to scrape the flesh of her bones with sharp sea shells. ( A case of victims later turning torturers when in power). By spiritual insight or personal revelation Julian understood that at least some of the Greek gods which spoke via oracles were spiritual masters under God. One of them channelled today is Athena. He erred in calling Helios the God which is above all creeds . Akhenaton recognized there is only one God ( which he named Aton) to be represented to the simple people by the Sun, but not identified with it. Today on the other side of the veil Julianus is disciple of Master Sirus, he who was Cyrus the Great, Alkuin and Leonardo da Vinci. To doubters Hamlet : There are things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, beyond your philosophy.
Your premise is wrong. Roman paganism was not dying. It had to be slain. The persecution under Constantius and Theodosius and Justinian had a very hard time rooting it out. The population was very pagan in the western Empire. They had to make sure that Christians were appointed to high positions. They then had to make sure that people weren’t worshiping the gods in private. They had to make sure of a lot of things. Even in spite of all of that, Helenic paganism survived into the 10th century. Hardly the mark of a dying religion.
It was dead. Your examples are no better than saying that Native American religions are alive today because you still have shamans and old customs.
Paganism was killed by Theodosius, after that it never had a shot in hell of returning. Even the fall of the empire didn’t matter as the invading Germans were Arian Christians
He was not the last no Christian emperor.