Julian, the Intolerant Pagan Emperor
Flavius Claudius Julianus was the last pagan Emperor of Rome. His reign followed those of Constaintine, the first Christian emperor, and several other self-professed Christian emperors. Rejecting the Christianity of his family, Julian sought to use his power as Emperor to restore Rome as a pagan society. Julian has become something of a hero to skeptics and atheists. According to the anti-Christian historian Edward Gibbons in his The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, “[Julian] extended to all the inhabitants of the Roman world the benefits of a free and equal toleration; and the only hardship which he inflicted on the Christians was to deprive them of the power of tormenting their fellow-subjects….” Such a portrayal, however, overstates the intolerance of the early Christian emperors as well as the tolerance of the pagan Julian. As noted by Rodney Stark in his new book, Cities of God : For Constantine neither outlawed paganism nor condoned persecution of non-Christians. In...