One evening in Constantinople, around the vernal equinox of 362 CE, the emperor Julian composed what has proved his most difficult work to read, translate, and interpret. This was what has come to be called To the Mother of the Gods (εἰς τὴν μητέρα τῶν θεῶν; cf. Lib. Or. 18.157), which has often been categorized as a prose hymn like those of Aelius Aristides; but as Michael Schramm in his new translation and commentary correctly notes, it is more specifically a “natural oration” (physikos logos) akin to the emperor’s subsequent Hymn to King Helios from around the winter solstice that same year. Schramm therefore reads these two “hymns” as a diptych dedicated to the central and complementary feminine and masculine principles of Julian’s theological program. However, Julian himself seems to suggest that the Hymn to the Mother of the Gods should be read in conjunction with the oration he composed shortly before it, namely To the Cynic Heraclius. In the earlier work, the emperor prescribes the rules for interpreting (and composing) myths allegorically, namely “in the same way as Plotinus, Porphyry, and the godlike Iamblichus” (Jul. Or. 7.222b); in the later work, he demonstrates this very manner of Neoplatonic exegesis through the myth of Attis and Cybele, both as symbolic of the eternal metaphysical processes by which the world is continually created, and as a rationale for the “purificatory ritual” (hagneia) of the Roman festival in honor of these gods—all of this foregrounded by a historical digression on the importation of the cult of Magna Mater to Rome during the Second Punic War. Additionally, the “apologetic” aspects of this text, promote a reading of Attis and the Mother of the Gods as deliberate, pagan alternatives both to the incarnated and resurrected Jesus and to the virgin “Mother of God” (Theotokos).
All of this is to say that a commentary that thoroughly disentangles the interwoven philological, philosophical, histori(ographi)cal, and religious strands and knots of this text—with a full digestion of centuries of efforts that preceded it, from Petau’s initial 1690 edition to De Vita’s 2022 translation and commentary[1]—is bound to be tanta moles. Having already completed a similar project for Julian’s Hymn to King Helios[2]—and before that a brilliant study of Julian’s thought in his monograph Freundschaft im Neuplatonismus[3]—Schramm was evidently prepared for so daunting a challenge. While surmounting it came mostly from his own immense efforts, his foreword duly acknowledges the support of colleagues and institutions, especially the German Research Foundation and Göttingen State and University Library that made possible its open access publication.
First, Schramm provides a 30-page introduction that touches upon the Hymn’s historical and political contexts, the text’s genre, structure, and purpose, the intellectual background of the emperor’s thought, and a brief survey of the manuscript and editorial tradition. Schramm assumes the reader’s basic familiarity with Julian’s life, thought, and times, and dives straight into explicating the significance of the specific place and date of the Hymn’s composition around the time of Easter in Constantinople: as an apologetic work against Christian derision of pagan myths that deliberately offers Attis and Magna Mater as theologically superior alternatives to the resurrected Jesus and his mother Mary. By identifying Magna Mater with the Tyche of Constantinople, moreover, Schramm reads the Hymn as inaugurating the cultic refoundation of the city. While plausible, this latter claim nevertheless risks overstating the importance of Constantinople in Julian’s writings and policies—at the very least in the Hymn itself, whose total silence on the city (noted on p. 49, the very first page of the commentary) contrasts with its consistent focus on Rome and its particular traditions. As for the text’s purpose, Schramm speculates on not only its apologetic but also protreptic functions for initiates and celebrants of the cult, but is far more confident (and correct) in asserting its firm and consistent grounding in the metaphysics and theology of Iamblichus, including his interpretation of the Chaldean Oracles. This is always important to stress, in order to counteract the long and persistent tradition made by Christian apologists that Julian was merely appropriating Christian theology in pagan dress. Schramm’s introduction ends with a brief assessment of modern editions and commentaries, endorsing Nesselrath’s 2015 Teubner edition[4] as the new standard, and noting only a handful of places where he deviates from it.
Schramm’s German translation of that text, moreover, is diligently faithful to the meaning of the Greek, and often to the rather complex structure of Julian’s sentences as well, though not at the expense of readability.[5] Its German, in fact, is so natural that it reads more like an original work than a translation of an ancient text; its style and diction, however, has not so much a contemporary flair but sounds more like nineteenth-century philosophical and literary prose. This is quite appropriate for the Hymn’s content both intellectual and mythical, the latter fittingly narrated in the preterite rather than the perfect. It is unfortunate, however, that this translation lacks the convenience of a facing Greek text, as in a Loeb or Budé, requiring me to have Nesselrath’s edition open beside it. The latter is not open access and quite expensive, and so this may prove a hindrance to accessibility for students and researchers. I understand that this was likely beyond the author’s control, perhaps due to the legal constraints of reproducing the Greek.
Of course, the maius opus is the volume’s 325 pages of commentary, which cover an impressively broad yet deep range of subjects related—sometimes tangentially—to the text. Readers are treated to full expositions, with abundant citations of primary (including archaeological) sources—classical, pagan, and Christian—of such topics as histories of ancient sacrifice and food taboos, Middle- and Neoplatonic metaphysics and theurgy, and the Christian literature and theology to which Julian appears to be responding. This quasi-encyclopedic aspect is complemented by a number of interesting questions and original discussions bound to advance and enrich scholarship: for example, how parallels with Ovid’s version of Magna Mater’s translatio to Rome during the Second Punic War (Fast. 4.247–348) play into recent evaluations of Julian’s familiarity with Latin literature (as Stover and Woudhuysen have explored in the case of Aurelius Victor).[6] This is not the place, however, to find full bibliographies of scholarship on such topics; the reference list in the volume’s backmatter does offer a helpful array of (mostly German) secondary literature as well as the editions of primary texts. While demonstrating a strong command of recent academic literature, there are bound to be omissions or shortcomings—most glaringly when, on the topic of Julian’s attitude towards Rome and the Romans, we are directed to obsolete publications from over half a century ago (p. 63).
Naturally, Schramm frequently discusses the many textual variants and difficulties, often electing to defend and preserve what is in the manuscripts against the conjectures and corrections of (early) modern editors. This reflects not only his immersive familiarity with Julian’s late antique Greek, but also an encouraging trend to put more trust in ancient editors and copyists rather than arrogantly assume we know better.
Beyond the aforementioned reference lists, the volume’s backmatter also offers separate indices of names and places, then of subjects, and an extensive index locorum. All is packaged within a sturdy hardcover, though most will enjoy it as an easily searchable, open-access PDF.
It is telling of the quality of this scholarly achievement, furthermore, that the most obvious error that I could find was its identification of the militant pagan historian Zosimus as a Kirchenhistoriker (p. 28). Some casual references less immediately relevant to the text reflect outdated scholarly assumptions, such as Julian’s enthusiasm for Mithraism (p. 154, 353–54) or the notion that he was founding an église païenne (p. 70).[7] Some imprecision is also inevitable: for instance, he refers to Heracles, Dionysus, and Asclepius all as heroes in the Iamblichean taxonomy (p. 200): however, Julian consistently characterizes Heracles and Asclepius as pure souls born of mortal parents, while Dionysus is a daimōn, manifesting a visible body on earth independent of human parturition.[8]
Referring to the above criticisms as “quibbles” is a cliché in book reviews, but they are precisely that: tiny blemishes upon this splendid achievement. Even as a fellow specialist in Julian, reading this commentary advanced my own knowledge and understanding of this text substantially, and so I expect this to become, and remain for a long time, the authoritative commentary on the Hymn. It achieves this by giving equal weight to many of the defining aspects of Julian as emperor, author, and thinker: a profound interest in Roman religion, Greek rhetoric, Iamblichean philosophy, and classical mythology and history—not to mention a firsthand familiarity with the canonical, theological, and apologetic traditions of his Christian opponents. As such, this commentary may become a model for approaches to similar texts by pagan and Christian authors of late antiquity, as we reap the benefits of dissolving the artificial boundaries between “classical” and early Christian studies, and between philosophy and theology.
Notes
[1] Maria Carmen De Vita (ed.), Giuliano imperatore: Lettere e discorsi (Milan, Bompiani, 2022).
[2] Michael Schramm (ed.), Sonne, Kosmos, Rom: Kaiser Julian, Hymnos auf den König Helios (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2022).
[3] Michael Schramm, Freundschaft im Neuplatonismus: Politisches Denken und Sozialphilosophie von Plotin bis Kaiser Julian (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014), pp. 300–443.
[4] Heinz-Günther Nesselrath (ed.), Iulianus Augustus: Opera (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015).
[5] As I am neither a native nor fluent German speaker, my friend Clara Wanning, a philosophy graduate student in Frankfurt, kindly read and evaluated the translation.
[6] Justin A. Stover and George Woudhuysen, The Lost History of Sextus Aurelius Victor (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2023), pp. 139–43.
[7] See Rowland B. Smith, Julian’s gods: Religion and philosophy in the thought and action of Julian the Apostate. (London: Routledge, 1995), pp. 124–37 and Peter van Nuffelen, “Deux fausses lettres de Julien l’Apostat (La lettre aux juifs, Ep. 51 [Wright], et la lettre à Arsacius, Ep. 84 [Bidez]),” Vigiliae Christianae, 56.2 (2002), pp. 136–150.
[8] John F. Finamore, “Julian and the Descent of Asclepius,” Journal of Neoplatonic Studies, 7.1 (1999), pp. 63–86.