The celebrated sophist, Hekobolis, Court professor of eloquence, had begun to climb the ladder of promotion at the very lowest rungs. He had been a servant attached to the Temple of Astarte at Hieropolis. At sixteen, having stolen some articles of value, he escaped to Constantinople, lived with the dregs of the populace, soaked in every kind of rascality. Later he took to the high-roads, where, roving on ass-back from village to village, he lived from hand to mouth, in company both with respectable pilgrims and with bands of brigands—sacrificers to Dindymene, that goddess beloved of the people. Finally he reached the school of Prœres the rhetorician, and soon became a teacher of eloquence himself.
During the last years of Constantine the Great, when the Christian religion became fashionable at Court, Hekobolis became a Christian. The clergy showed him sympathy, but Hekobolis (though never inopportunely) changed his form of creed as the wind blew: from Arian he became Orthodox, from Orthodox Arian, and every conversion raised him a step in office.
The clergy pushed him up this ascent, and in turn he lent the clergy a helping hand.
His head grew grey; he became pleasantly corpulent, his sage speeches more and more honeyed and insinuating, his cheeks more rosy, his eyes more kindly and brilliant. At moments an evil irony sparkled in them, as of some cold and arrogant spirit, but theeyelids would promptly drop and the sparkle vanish. All his habits were clerical. He was a strict observer of fasts, and an exquisite judge of cookery. His lean diet was more refined than the most sumptuous course of holiday feeding; just as his ecclesiastical witticisms were keener than the frankest pleasantries of the Pagans. He used to be served with a cooling drink made of beetroot and savoured with delicious spices. Many thought it preferable to wine. When denied ordinary wheaten bread he invented cakes of a desert manna, with which, it is said, Pachomius fed himself in Egypt. Ill-natured folk insinuated that Hekobolis was a libertine, and quaint tales were told about him at Constantinople. A young woman avowed to her confessor that she had fallen from chastity—
"It is a great sin! And with whom were you guilty, my daughter?" "With Hekobolis, father!" The priestly visage cleared up. "With Hekobolis; ah, really! Well, well, the holy man is devoted to the Church! Repent, my daughter; the Lord will forgive!"
Such anedoctes were mere tittle-tattle. But his thick red lips were a trifle too prominent in the respectable shorn visage of the dignitary, although he usually kept them tightly closed, with an expression of monastic humility. Women were fond of his company.
Sometimes Hekobolis used to disappear for several days. No one fathomed the mystery, for he kept his own counsel. Neither servant nor slave accompanied him on these enigmatic journeys, from which he would return calmed and refreshed.
Under the Emperor Constantius, he received the appointment of Court rhetorician, with a superb salary, the senatorial laticlave, and the blue shoulder-ribbon,a distinction of the highest dignitaries. Nor was his ambition satisfied.
But at the moment when Hekobolis was preparing to mount a step higher, Constantius unexpectedly died. Julian, the Church's enemy, ascended the throne. Hekobolis lost no whit of his presence of mind. He merely did what many others were doing, but did it neither too soon nor too late.
Julian, in the first days of his reign, organised a theological controversy in his palace. A young doctor of philosophy, esteemed by everybody for his uprightness and noble nature, Cæsar of Cappadocia,—brother of the famous theologian, Basil the Great,—undertook the defence of the Christian faith against the Emperor himself.
In such tournaments of learning Julian authorised an entire independence of language, and even liked to be answered with passion and complete disregard of rank.
Discussion was of the keenest kind, and considerable numbers of sophists, priests, and men of science were present. Usually the opponent little by little gave way, yielding, not to the logic of the Greek philosopher, but to the majesty of the Roman Emperor.
But on this occasion it was not so. Cæsar of Cappadocia did not yield. He was a young man, almost feminine in the grace of his movements, and with a steady clearness in his frank eyes. He denominated the Platonic philosophy "the tortuous wisdom of the serpent," contrasting it with the heavenly wisdom of the Gospel. Julian frowned, bit his lips, bridling his anger with difficulty. The argument, like all sincere discussions, ended without results, and the Emperor, recovering his self-possession, quitted the hall with a philosophic jest, and a face of smilingly regretful magnanimity; in reality, pierced to the heart.
Precisely at this moment, Hekobolis, the rhetorician, came up. Julian, who considered him an enemy, asked him—
"What do you want?"
Hekobolis fell on his knees, and began a confession of repentance. For long, he said, he had hesitated; but the reasonings of the Emperor had finally convinced him. He cursed the dark Galilean superstition, and his heart returned to the remembrance of his childhood and the bright gods of Olympus.
The Emperor raised the old man, and, scarcely able to speak with emotion, pressed him convulsively to his bosom, and kissed him on his shaven cheeks and thick red lips. His eyes sought out Cæsar of Cappadocia to feast on his opponent's humiliation.
Julian kept Hekobolis near him for several days, repeating everywhere the story of his conversion, proud of his disciple as a child of a new toy, as a youth of his first mistress.
The Emperor desired to give some Court place of honour to his new friend, but Hekobolis flatly refused, alleging himself to be unworthy such distinction. He had decided to prepare his soul for the virtue of the Olympians by a long novitiate; and to purge his heart of Galilean impiety by personal service to one of the old gods.
Julian therefore nominated him chief sacrificial priest of Bithynia and Paphlagonia.
Persons bearing this title were called by the Pagans Archiepiscopts. The Archbishop Hekobolis thus governed two Asiatic provinces. Having taken the new way, he pursued it with as much success as the old, and even contributed to the conversion of many Christians to Hellenism.
Hekobolis became the high-priest to the celebrated Phœnician goddess, Astarte Atargatis, where in childhood he had served as a slave. This temple was built half-way between Chalcedon and Nicomedia, on a lofty promontory running out into the Propontic Sea. The place was called Gargarus. Pilgrims came thither from all corners of the earth to adore Aphrodite Astarte, goddess of life and love.