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| Of the death of the Emperor Julian in Persia.
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Chapter
XX.—Of the death of the Emperor Julian
in Persia.
Julian’s folly was yet more clearly manifested by his death. He
crossed the river that separates the Roman Empire from the Persian,659
| 659 There
seems to be an allusion to Cæsar’s passage of the Rubicon in
49 b.c. | brought over his army, and then forthwith
burnt his boats, so making his men fight not in willing but in forced
obedience.660
| 660 His
fleet, with the exception of a few vessels, was burned at Abuzatha,
where he halted five days (Zos 3. 26). | The best generals are wont to fill
their troops with enthusiasm, and, if they see them growing
discouraged, to cheer them and raise their hopes; but Julian by burning
the bridge of retreat cut off all good hope. A further proof of his
incompetence was his failure to fulfil the duty of foraging in all
directions and providing his troops with supplies. Julian had neither
ordered supplies to be brought from Rome, nor did he make any bountiful
provision by ravaging the enemy’s country. He left the inhabited
world behind him, and persisted in marching through the wilderness. His
soldiers had not enough to eat and drink; they were without guides;
they were marching astray in a desert land. Thus they saw the folly of
their most wise emperor. In the midst of their murmuring and grumbling
they suddenly found him who had struggled in mad rage against his Maker
wounded to death. Ares who raises the war-din had never come to help
him as he promised; Loxias had given lying divination; he who glads him
in the thunderbolts had hurled no bolt on the man who dealt the fatal
blow; the boasting of his threats was dashed to the ground. The name of
the man who dealt that righteous stroke no one knows to this day. Some
say that he was wounded by an invisible being, others by one of the
Nomads who were called Ishmaelites; others by a trooper who could not
endure the pains of famine in the wilderness. But whether it were man
or angel who plied the steel, without doubt the doer of the deed was
the minister of the will of God. It is related that when Julian had
received the wound, he filled his hand with blood, flung it into the
air and cried, “Thou hast won, O Galilean.” Thus he gave
utterance at once to a confession of the victory and to a blasphemy. So
infatuated was he.661
| 661 The
exclamation was differently reported. Sozomen vi. 2. says that some
thought he lifted his hand to chide the sun for failing to help him. It
has been observed that the sound of νενίκηκας
Γαλιλαῖε and ἠπάτηκας
ἥλιε would not be so
dissimilar in Greek as in English. Ammianus Marcellinus (xxv. 3. 9.)
says that he lost all hope of recovery when he heard that the place
where he lay was called Phrygia, for in Phrygia he had been told that
he would die. So it befell with Cambyses at Ecbatana (Her. iii. 64),
Alexander King of Epirus at the Acheron (Livy viii. 24) and Henry IV in
the Jerusalem Chamber, when he asked “Doth any name particular
belong unto this lodging where I first did swoon?” and on hearing
that the chamber was called Jerusalem, remembered the old prediction
that in Jerusalem he must die, and died. | E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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