Julian passed the winter in preparations for his Persian campaign. At the beginning of spring, on the fifth of March, he quitted Antioch with an army of sixty-five thousand men. The snow was melting from the mountains. In fruit-gardens the leafless young apricot trees were trimmed with pink blossoms. The soldiery marched gaily to the war as to a festival.
The dockyards of Samos had built a fleet of twelve hundred ships, wrought of enormous cedars, pine, and oak from Taurus gorges, and the fleet had ascended the Euphrates as far as the city of Leontopolis.
By forced marches Julian passed by Hieropolis to Carrhæ, and thence along the Euphrates as far as the southern Persian frontier. In the north, another army of thirty thousand men had been sent out under the generals Procopius and Sebastian. Joined to the forces of the Armenian Arsaces, these were to lay waste Adiabene, Apolloniatis, and traversing Corduene rejoin the principal army on the banks of the Tigris at Ctesiphon.
All had been provided for, combined and planned with ardour by the Emperor himself. Those who understood the plan of campaign were amazed, and not without reason, at its wisdom, simplicity, and greatness of conception.
At the beginning of April, the army reached Circesium, a post remarkably fortified by Diocletian on the frontier of Mesopotamia, at the junction of the Araxes and the Euphrates. There a bridge of boatswas constructed, Julian having given the order to cross the frontier on the following morning. Late that evening, when all was ready, he returned to his tent, fatigued but satisfied. He lit his lamp in order to resume his favourite work, for which part of his night was reserved. It was a study in pure philosophy:Against the Christians. He used to write it in snatches, within sound of the trumpets and camp-songs and challenging sentries. He rejoiced in the idea that he was fighting the Galilean with every weapon lying to his hand; by battlefield and book, by Roman sword and Hellenic learning. Never did the Emperor part with the works of the Fathers, ecclesiastical canons and creeds of the councils. On the margin of the New Testament, which he studied with no less care than Plato and Homer, he would make caustic annotations with his own hand.
Julian took off his dusty armour, sat down before his table, and dipping his reed-pen in ink, began to write. His leisure was immediately invaded. Two couriers had just arrived in camp, one from Italy, the other from Jerusalem. Their news was by no means agreeable. An earthquake had destroyed the city of Nicomedia in Asia Minor, and subterranean rumblings had raised to the highest pitch the terror of the inhabitants of Constantinople. The books of the sibyls, moreover, forebade the crossing of the frontiers before the year had elapsed. The courier from Jerusalem brought a letter from the dignitary Alipius of Antioch. By a strange contradiction Julian, the worshipper of the manifold Olympus, had decided to rebuild the temple, destroyed by the Romans, of the one God of Israel, in order to refute, in the face of time and the world, the prophecy of the Gospel, "There shall not beleft here one stone upon another that shall not be thrown down" (Matt. xxiv. 2). The Jews responded with enthusiasm to the Emperor's appeal. Gifts flowed in from all sides. The plan of rebuilding was a superb one. The work was promptly taken in hand, and Julian confided the general supervision to his friend, the learned and noble Alipius of Antioch, formerly proconsul of Britain.
"What has happened?" asked Julian, before unsealing the missive, perturbed at the sombre face of the courier.
"A great misfortune, well-beloved Cæsar!"
"Speak, fear nothing."
"So long as the workmen were working at the ruins and demolishing the old walls, all went well. But hardly had they proceeded to lay the first stone of the new edifice, when flames, in the shape of balls of fire, escaped from the vaults, overturned the blocks, and scorched the workmen. On the following day, on the order of the most noble Alipius, the works were resumed. The miracle was repeated, and so also a third time. The Christians are triumphant; the Hellenes in despair; and not a single workman will consent to go down into the vaults. Nothing remains of the edifice, not one stone!"
"Hush, fool! You must be a Galilean yourself!" exclaimed the Emperor. "These are old wives' tales!"
He broke the seal, unfolded, and read the letter. The courier spoke the truth. Alipius confirmed his words. Julian could not believe his eyes. He re-read the message carefully, bringing it nearer to the lamp. His face flushed with anger and shame. He bit his lips and threw the crumpled papyrus to the physician Oribazius, who stood hard by.
"Read!... Either Alipius has gone mad, or indeed.... No! that's impossible!"
The young Alexandrian doctor picked up and read the letter with the calmness which never deserted him. Lifting his clear and intelligent eyes to Julian's, he answered—
"I see in this no miracle. Scientific men described the phenomenon long ago. In the vaults of old buildings which have been sealed from the air for centuries, there collects a dense inflammable gas. To go with a lighted torch into these vaults is enough to explain the explosion and kill the rash workman. To the ignorant and superstitious this of course appears a miracle, but it is perfectly natural and explicable."
He laid the letter on the table with a slightly pedantic smile on his thin lips.
"Ah, yes! to be sure," said Julian, not without bitterness. "The earthquakes at Nicomedia and Constantinople, the prophecies of the sibylline books, drought at Antioch, conflagrations at Rome, inundations in Egypt, all are perfectly natural! Only it is odd that everything is in league against me, earth and water, fire and sky, and even the gods, I believe!"
Sallustius Secundus came into the tent.
"Sublime Augustus! Tuscan wizards, charged by you to ascertain the will of the gods, beg you to wait; not to cross the frontier to-morrow. The birds of the oracles, despite all prayers, refuse food, and will not even pick at the grains of barley!"
At first Julian frowned angrily, but his face immediately brightened, and he burst into a surprising fit of laughter.
"Really, Sallustius? They won't peck at anything, eh? Then what must we do with these obstinatebeasts? Suppose we retrace our steps to Antioch, amid the laughter of the Galileans?... My dear friend, go back immediately to these Tuscan wizards and tell them my will. Let the fowls be thrown into the river. Do you understand? These pampered birds are not pleased to eat. Let's see if they will drink.... Carry my orders."
"Is this some jest, Cæsar? Do I understand you rightly? In spite of everything, we are to cross the frontier to-morrow?"
"Yes! And I swear by my next victory, and the greatness of Rome, that no prophetic bird shall daunt me, neither water, earth, nor fire, not even the gods! It is too late! The die is cast. My friends, is there anything in all nature superior to the will of man? In all the sibylline books is there anything stronger than the words 'I will'? More than ever I feel the mystery of my life. No auguries shall enmesh me. To-day I believe in, and yet I laugh at them. Is it sacrilege? So much the worse. I have nothing to lose! If the gods abandon me I will deny them!"
When everybody had gone out, Julian approached the little statue of Mercury, with the intention of praying, as he usually did, and casting some grains of incense on the tripod; but suddenly he turned away with a smile, lay down on the lion-skin which served him as bed, and extinguishing the lamp fell into a deep and careless slumber, as folk often do on the brink of misfortune.
Dawn had hardly risen when he awoke in higher spirits than on the evening before. The trumpet sounded. Julian leapt on horseback and rode to the banks of the Araxes. It was a cool April morning. A gentle wind bore the nocturnal desert warmth fromthe banks of the great Asiatic river. All along the Euphrates, from Circesium as far as the Roman camp, stretched the fleet, over a space of nearly two miles. Since the reign of Xerxes no such display of forces had ever been seen here. The sun's first rays glittered behind the mausoleum raised to Gordian, the conqueror of the Persians, killed in that place by the Arab Philip. The edge of the purple disk rose from the desert like a burning coal, and all the tops of the masts and sails grew red in the morning fog. The Emperor raised his hand, and the earth-shaking mass of sixty-five thousand men began the march. The Roman army began to cross the bridge that separated it from the Persian frontier. Julian's horse carried him over the bridge and up a high sandy hill on the enemy's soil. The centurion of the Imperial Guard, Anatolius, the admirer of Arsinoë, marched at the head of the palatine cohort.
Anatolius looked at the Emperor. A great change had come over Julian during the month passed in the open air, amidst the healthy toils of campaigning. It was difficult to recognise in this masculine warrior, so hale of visage, whose young glance was brilliant with gaiety, the thin and yellow-faced philosopher, dull-eyed, ragged-bearded, nervous in movement, with ink-stained fingers and toga, Julian the rhetorician, who had served as butt for the street-boys of Antioch.
"Hark! hark! Cæsar is going to speak!"
All was silent. The clink of arms, the noise of waves lapping sides of ships, and the silky rustle of the standards were the only sounds audible.
"Warriors, my bravest of the brave," said Julian in his strong voice, "I read such gaiety, such boldness on your faces, that I cannot help addressing you somewords of welcome. Remember, comrades, the destiny of the world is in our hands! We are going to restore the old greatness of Rome! Steel your hearts; be ready for any fate. There is to be no turning back.
"I shall be at your head, on horseback or on foot, taking all dangers and toils with the humblest among you; because, henceforth, you are no longer my servants, but my children and my friends! If fate kills me, happy shall I be to die for our great Rome, like Scævola and the Curiatii and the noblest of the Decii. Courage, then, my comrades! and remember that the strong are always conquerors!"
He stretched his sword, with a smile, toward the distant horizon. The soldiers in unison held up their bucklers, shouting in rapture—
"Glory, glory to conquering Cæsar!"
The galleys glided down the reaches of the river. The Roman eagles hovered above their cohorts, and the Emperor rode on his white horse, to meet the rising sun, across the cold blue shadow, on the desert sand, cast from the pyramid of Gordian. Soon, soon was Julian to quit the light of day for the long shadow of the solitary grave.