A Christian Rebutting of Emperor Julian's Defense of Paganism.

Saint Cyril of Alexandria was born about the year 376 in Egypt, then part of the Roman empire. From 412 until his death in 444 he served as Patriarch of Alexandria, where the last remnants of Greco-Roman polytheism fought a desperate rearguard action against the rise of Christianity, which was itself struggling to define and enforce its beliefs as the imperial state religion. A prolific writer, Cyril is revered as a Greek Orthodox Church Father and a Roman Catholic “Doctor of the Church.” Cyril was exceptionally well-educated for his time, and his writings display a deep familiarity with the ancient Greek classics as well as Holy Scripture.

In 361 the Christian emperor Constantius II died without an heir. His only surviving relative, Julian, aged about 29. became emperor. Raised as a Christian, Julian had rejected the faith as a young man. Long remembered as “Julian the Apostate,” he unsuccessfully tried to restore the worship of the pagan gods, before he was killed on campaign against the Persians in 363. His voluminous writings included an anti-Christian polemic, Against the Galileans (Kata Galilaion in Greek) now mostly lost. Very extensive quotations survive, however, in a long essay Contra Julianum (Against Julian) by Cyril of Alexandria. Only the first ten books of Against Julian survive as complete texts, but there are fragments of some additional books. This book is the first complete English translation of the work.

Cyril dedicated his book to the eastern emperor Theodosius II (reigned 402-450, although for much of that time real power was exercised by his formidable elder sister, Pulcheria). Cyril wrote:

“It is necessary to say what sort of work I am dedicating to you with these words of mine. Forgive me for undertaking to speak not merely against an emperor, but also on behalf of the glory of Christ, the great Emperor…” [p. 68]

Like Julian, Cyril wrote in Greek, the common speech of the eastern Empire, although it was later translated into Latin, Syriac (a Semitic language), and Coptic, the ancient language of Egypt. The editors note:

“Those familiar with Cyril’s Greek will appreciate the difficulty of rendering into intelligible prose his highly idiosyncratic vocabulary and lengthy periods…We suspect our translation is, as a result, rather more intelligible to the average reader than the Greek original would have been to its first audience…” [p. 60]

The introduction concludes:

“…the virtue of Against Julian is that it allows the reader to hear two forceful advocates for these two viewpoints speaking in their own words about what they think is at stake. Cyril has chosen which parts of Julian we are privileged to encounter, but it is still Julian’s voice that we meet in these pages, using every bit of rhetorical skill and intellectual power he could muster to convince his Christian subjects to abandon the false religion…And in Cyril we witness the bishop of the most intellectually renowned city of the ancient world mining all the texts available to him to find arguments he could deploy to rebut Julian’s critique… [p. 59]

Although this book will be of interest to a limited and highly specialized academic community, it should stand as a valuable contribution to Patristics, the scholarly study of the writings and teachings of the early Church Fathers.

Matthew R. Crawford is a professor in the Institute for Religion and Critical Inquiry at Australian Catholic University, Melbourne, where he serves as Director of the Biblical and Early Christian Studies Program. He has written books on Cyril of Alexandria and Eusebius of Caesarea, and edited volumes on Christian intellectual culture in late antiquity.

Aaron P. Johnson is Professor of Classics and Humanities at Lee University, Tennessee. He has written extensively on intellectual culture in Late Antiquity with books focused on Eusebius of Caesarea and Porphyry of Tyre.

Edward Jeremiah is Lecturer in Ancient Languages the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies at the University of Melbourne.

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Our Reviewer: Mike Markowitz is an historian and wargame designer. He writes a monthly column for CoinWeek.Com and is a member of the ADBC (Association of Dedicated Byzantine Collectors). His previous reviews include Caesar Rules: The Emperor in the Changing Roman World, Ancient Rome on the Silver Screen, Justinian: Emperor, Soldier, Saint, Persians: The Age of the Great Kings, Polis: A New History of the Ancient Greek City-State, At the Gates of Rome: The Battle for a Dying Empire, Roman Emperors in Context, After 1177 B.C., Cyrus the Great, Barbarians and Romans: The Birth Struggle of Europe, A.D. 400–700, Crescent Dawn: The Rise of the Ottoman Empire and the Making of the Modern Age, The Missing Thread: A New History of the Ancient World Through the Women Who Shaped It, The Roman Provinces, 300 BCE–300 CE: Using Coins as Sources, The Cambridge Companion to Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations, Archaic Greece, Amazons: The History Behind the Legend, The Byzantine World, Classical Controversies, Reassessing the Peloponnesian War, War and Masculinity in Roman and Medieval Culture, and Nemesis: Medieval England's Greatest Enemy.

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Note: Cyril of Alexandria is also available in e-editions.

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