Customer Reviews

Julian's Gods: Religion and Philosophy in the Thought and Action of Julian the Apostate

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This is the only recent book (in the last several decades!) in the English language on Julian that is accurate and reliable. It is extremely well written - Smith has a very clear and engaging style. At the same time it is a very scholarly book that makes the kinds of demands on the reader that any book with lots of footnotes makes.

Even more importantly - Rowland Smith has produced the single most important scholarly work on late antique Paganism available in the English language. Seriously. More important than Sarah Iles Johnston's "Hekate Soteira", more important than Pierre Chuvin's "Chronicle of the Last Pagans", more important than the work of Ramsay MacMullen and Robin Lane Fox, etc.

"Julian's Gods" presents the story of the last Pagan emperor of Rome. The author deals in great depth with the spiritual dimension of its subject - which is the main reason why people are interested in Julian in the first place. This is a difficult subject, because Julian's Paganism is both a complex issue on it's own - and also a very contentious issue among modern day scholars - and also among modern day Pagans.

Rowland Smith takes great pains to calmly and cooly rebut the distortions found in G.W. Bowersock's psychotic rant "Julian the Apostate". Smith also clears up much of the confusion caused by Polymnia Athanassiadi's loopy "Julian and Hellenism: An Intellectual Biography". Both Bowersock and Athanassiadi fail to understand the seamless continuity between Platonic philosophy and traditional Hellenistic Paganism.

The thing that distinguishes Smith's treatment of Julian (and his Gods) is that he eschews the rigid, anachronistic approach of so many modern scholars who study late antique Paganism. That faulty approach is epitomized by R.T. Wallis' horrid little book "Neoplatonism" - one of those books that, like watching FOX News, actually has the ability to suck knowledge out of one's brain the more one is exposed to it. Smith allows ancient sources, as much as possible, to speak for themselves. Smith steps lightly with his interpretations of those sources - and his interpretations are thus consistent with what ancient sources say about themselves and about each other. There is no magic (or time travel) involved in such an approach - simply a meticulous and respectful treatment of the rich bounty of primary sources that we have at our disposal. The result is that where Bowersock psychoanalyzes Julian, and Athanassiadi romanticizes him, Rowland Smith succeeds in understanding Julian - and achieves an understanding that would be comprehensible to Julian himself and to his contemporaries.

Smith not only understands Julian (and late antique Paganism generally) - he also succeeds in articulating and motivating that understanding for a wide audience. This is solid scholarship combined with excellent writing.

This book is a very thoughtful, detailed analysis of the religious beliefs of Julian the Apostate. It will not serve as a biography of the man, but then it never intended to. He lays out Julian's beliefs very clearly and precisely using many quotes to illustrate his points. This is a book with a very clearly defined purpose and it achieves it excellently. Just don't expect more from it than it has to offer.

This is a scholarly work and it may well be confusing to the beginning reader. If you want a biography on Julian I'd recommend Adrian Murdoch's The Last Pagan. Some background on Julian is necessary to understand this book.