Julian's Pagan Revival and the Decline of Blood Sacrifice

Abstract

IT HAS ALWAYS BEEN A PARADOX that in a predominantly pagan empire the Emperor Julian (A.D. 360-363) did not meet with immediate success in his efforts to revive paganism. Contemporary pagans felt uneasy with Julian's attempt to make the gods live again in the public consciousness through the rebuilding of temples, the revival of pagan priesthoods, the restoration of ancient ceremonies, and most importantly, the revival of blood sacrifices. Historians have long pointed out that Christian emperors had permitted other elements of pagan festivals to continue while forbidding blood on the altars, since blood sacrifice was the element of pagan cult most repugnant to Christians. Thus, blood sacrifice, although linked to the fate of pagan cults in general, poses special problems precisely because it was regarded as the most loathsome aspect of cult and aroused the greatest amount of Christian hostility. The present article explores Julian's motives in reviving public blood sacrifices and the reasons for his apparent failure to mobilize immediate, strong support. By public, I mean not only sacrifices in public cults, but more generally, sacrifices conducted in the public eye. My principal interest is in what we might call normative public paganism in the larger towns and cities of the Eastern Empire in the fourth century A.D. Asia Minor, Syria, and Greece figure prominently in the discussion, since these regions were for Julian the heartland of Hellenism, the regions that could be counted on to respond to the call for a pagan revival, and they are also the regions where we find clustered much of the evidence about sacrifice in the Roman imperial period. I begin by setting out the debate within Neoplatonism about the desirability of sacrifices and Julian's own place in the debate. I then examine the status of sacrifices in the cities of the Greek East in the generation before Julian's reign and contemporary reaction to Julian's conduct during the pagan revival. Finally, I examine