"尤利安是355 年至 360 年的西方凱撒和 361 年至 363 年的羅馬皇帝,也是一位羅馬著名的希臘哲學家和作家。他對基督教的排斥,保護其他宗教的行為以及他對新柏拉圖希臘主義的提倡,使他在基督教傳統中被稱為叛教者尤利安。他有時被稱為哲學家尤利安。"
"Julian (Latin: Flavius Claudius Julianus; Greek: Ἰουλιανός Ioulianos; 331 – 26 June 363) was the Caesar of the West from 355 to 360 and Roman emperor from 361 to 363, as well as a notable philosopher and author in Greek. His rejection of Christianity, and his promotion of Neoplatonic Hellenism in its place, caused him to be remembered as Julian the Apostate in Christian tradition. He is sometimes referred to as Julian the Philosopher.
A nephew of Constantine the Great, Julian was one of few in the imperial family to survive the purges and civil wars during the reign of Constantius II, his cousin. Julian became an orphan as a child after his father was executed in 337, and spent much of his life under Constantius's close supervision. However, the emperor allowed Julian to pursue freely an education in the Greek-speaking east, with the result that Julian became unusually cultured for an emperor of his time. In 355, Constantius II summoned Julian to court and appointed him to rule Gaul. Despite his inexperience, Julian showed unexpected success in his new capacity, defeating and counterattacking Germanic raids across the Rhine and encouraging the ravaged provinces' return to prosperity. In 360, he was proclaimed emperor by his soldiers at Lutetia (Paris), sparking a civil war with Constantius. However, Constantius died before the two could face each other in battle, and named Julian as his successor.
Julian's political philosophy was that the authority of the cities was expanded at the expense of the imperial bureaucracy as Julian sought to reduce direct imperial involvement in urban affairs. For example, city land owned by the imperial government was returned to the cities, city council members were compelled to resume civic authority, often against their will, and the tribute in gold by the cities called the aurum coronarium was made voluntary rather than a compulsory tax. Additionally, arrears of land taxes were cancelled. This was a key reform reducing the power of corrupt imperial officials, as the unpaid taxes on land were often hard to calculate or higher than the value of the land itself. Forgiving back taxes both made Julian more popular and allowed him to increase collections of current taxes.
While he ceded much of the authority of the imperial government to the cities, Julian also took more direct control himself. For example, new taxes and corvées had to be approved by him directly rather than left to the judgement of the bureaucratic apparatus. Julian certainly had a clear idea of what he wanted Roman society to be, both in political as well as religious terms. The terrible and violent dislocation of the 3rd century meant that the Eastern Mediterranean had become the economic locus of the Empire. If the cities were treated as relatively autonomous local administrative areas, it would simplify the problems of imperial administration, which as far as Julian was concerned, should be focused on the administration of the law and defense of the empire's vast frontiers.
In replacing Constantius's political and civil appointees, Julian drew heavily from the intellectual and professional classes, or kept reliable holdovers, such as the rhetorician Themistius. His choice of consuls for the year 362 was more controversial. One was the very acceptable Claudius Mamertinus, previously the Praetorian prefect of Illyricum. The other, more surprising choice was Nevitta, Julian's trusted Frankish general. This latter appointment made overt the fact that an emperor's authority depended on the power of the army. Julian's choice of Nevitta appears to have been aimed at maintaining the support of the Western army which had acclaimed him.
Julian's personal religion was both pagan and philosophical; he viewed the traditional myths as allegories, in which the ancient gods were aspects of a philosophical divinity. The chief surviving sources are his works To King Helios and To the Mother of the Gods, which were written as panegyrics, not theological treatises.
As the last pagan ruler of the Roman Empire, Julian's beliefs are of great interest for historians, but they are not in complete agreement. He learned theurgy from Maximus of Ephesus, a student of Iamblichus; his system bears some resemblance to the Neoplatonism of Plotinus; Polymnia Athanassiadi has brought new attention to his relations with Mithraism, although whether he was initiated into it remains debatable; and certain aspects of his thought (such as his reorganization of paganism under High Priests, and his fundamental monotheism) may show Christian influence. Some of these potential sources have not come down to us, and all of them influenced each other, which adds to the difficulties.
According to one theory (that of Glen Bowersock in particular), Julian's paganism was highly eccentric and atypical because it was heavily influenced by an esoteric approach to Platonic philosophy sometimes identified as theurgy and also Neoplatonism. Others (Rowland Smith, in particular) have argued that Julian's philosophical perspective was nothing unusual for a "cultured" pagan of his time, and, at any rate, that Julian's paganism was not limited to philosophy alone, and that he was deeply devoted to the same gods and goddesses as other pagans of his day.
Because of his Neoplatonist background, Julian accepted the creation of humanity as described in Plato's Timaeus. Julian writes, "when Zeus was setting all things in order there fell from him drops of sacred blood, and from them, as they say, arose the race of men." Further he writes, "they who had the power to create one man and one woman only, were able to create many men and women at once..." His view contrasts with the Christian belief that humanity is derived from the one pair, Adam and Eve. Elsewhere he argues against the single pair origin, indicating his disbelief, noting for example, "how very different in their bodies are the Germans and Scythians from the Libyans and Ethiopians."
The Christian historian Socrates Scholasticus was of the opinion that Julian believed himself to be Alexander the Great "in another body" via transmigration of souls, "in accordance with the teachings of Pythagoras and Plato"."
尤利安(拉丁文:Flavius Claudius Julianus;希臘文:Ἰουλιανός Ioulianos;331 – 363 年 6 月 26 日)是355 年至 360 年的西方凱撒和 361 年至 363 年的羅馬皇帝,也是一位羅馬皇帝,也是一位羅馬著名的希臘哲學家和作家。他對基督教的拒絕,以及他對新柏拉圖希臘主義的提倡,使他在基督教傳統中被稱為叛教者尤利安。他有時被稱為哲學家尤利安。
尤利安是君士坦丁大帝的侄子,他是他的堂兄君士坦提烏斯二世統治時期,在清洗和內戰中倖存下來的皇室成員之一。公元 337 年,尤利安的父親被處決,尤利安小時候就成了孤兒,並在君士坦提烏斯的密切監督下度過了他一生的大部分時間。然而,皇帝允許尤利安在希臘語東部自由地接受教育,結果尤利安在當時的皇帝中變得異常有教養。 355年,君士坦提烏斯二世將尤利安召至宮廷,任命他統治高盧。儘管缺乏經驗,尤利安在他的新職位上卻取得了意想不到的成功,擊敗並反擊了日耳曼人跨越萊茵河的襲擊,並鼓勵遭受蹂躪的省份恢復繁榮。 360年,他在盧泰西亞(巴黎)被他的士兵擁立為皇帝,引發了與君士坦提烏斯的內戰。然而,君士坦提烏斯在兩人交鋒之前就去世了,並任命尤利安為他的繼任者。
尤利安政治哲學的另一個影響是,城市權威的擴張是以犧牲帝國官僚機構為代價的,因為尤利安試圖減少帝國對城市事務的直接參與。例如,帝國政府擁有的城市土地被歸還給城市,市議員被迫恢復公民權力,而這往往是違背他們的意願,而城市的黃金貢品(稱為金冠)是自願的,而不是強制性的稅。此外,拖欠的土地稅也被取消。這是一項減少腐敗帝國官員權力的關鍵改革,因為未繳納的土地稅往往難以計算或高於土地本身的價值。免除退稅既使朱利安更受歡迎,又使他能夠增加當期稅收的徵收。
雖然尤利安將帝國政府的大部分權力讓給了城市,但他自己也採取了更直接的控制。例如,新的稅收和徭役必須由他直接批准,而不是留給官僚機構判斷。朱利安當然清楚知道他希望羅馬社會成為什麼樣子,無論是在政治或宗教方面。三世紀可怕而暴力的混亂意味著東地中海已成為帝國的經濟中心。如果將這些城市視為相對自治的地方行政區域,就會簡化帝國行政的問題,在尤利安看來,帝國行政的重點應該是法律的管理和帝國廣大邊疆的防禦。
在取代君士坦提烏斯任命的政治和民事官員時,朱利安從知識分子和專業階層中大量吸收,或保留了可靠的後繼者,例如修辭學家 泰米斯提烏斯。他對362年執政官的選擇更具爭議性。其中一位是非常受歡迎的克勞迪斯·馬梅爾蒂努斯(Claudius Mamertinus),他曾擔任伊利裡庫姆的禁衛軍長官。另一個更令人驚訝的選擇是尤利安信任的法蘭克將軍內維塔。後者的任命公開了這樣一個事實:皇帝的權威取決於軍隊的力量。尤利安選擇內維塔似乎是為了維持曾經稱讚他的西方軍隊的支持。
尤利安的個人宗教既是異教的又是哲學的。他將傳統神話視為寓言,其中古代諸神是哲學神性的各個面向。現存的主要資料是他的著作《致赫利俄斯國王》和《致眾神之母》,這些作品是頌詞,而不是神學論文。
作為羅馬帝國最後一位異教統治者,尤利安的信仰引起了歷史學家的極大興趣,但他們並不完全一致。他向以弗所的馬克西姆斯( Iamblichus的學生)學習神術。他的體系與普羅提諾的新柏拉圖主義有些相似之處;波利姆尼亞·阿塔納西亞迪(Polymnia Athanassiadi)使人們重新關注他與密特拉教的關係,儘管他是否開始接觸密特拉教仍然存在爭議。他思想的某些方面(例如他對大祭司領導下的異教的重組,以及他基本的一神論)可能顯示出基督教的影響。其中一些潛在來源還沒有落到我們頭上,而且它們都相互影響,這增加了困難。
根據一個理論(特別是格倫鮑爾斯克的理論),尤利安的異教信仰非常古怪和非典型,因為它深受柏拉圖哲學深奧方法的影響,有時被認為是神學和新柏拉圖主義。其他人(特別是羅蘭史密斯)則認為,尤利安的哲學觀點對於他那個時代的「有教養的」異教徒來說並沒有什麼不尋常的,而且無論如何,尤利安的異教主義並不僅限於哲學,而且他深深致力於哲學與他那個時代的其他異教徒有同樣的神和女神。
由於尤利安的新柏拉圖主義背景,他接受柏拉圖《蒂邁歐篇》中所描述的人類創造。尤利安寫道:“當宙斯將萬物安排妥當時,他身上滴下了神聖的血液,正如人們所說,人類從這些血液中誕生了。”他進一步寫道,「那些有能力只創造一個男人和一個女人的人,能夠同時創造許多男人和女人...」他的觀點與基督教信仰形成鮮明對比,即人類是源自人類的來自亞當和夏娃這一對。在其他地方,他反對單對起源,表明他的懷疑,例如,他指出,“德國人和斯基泰人與利比亞人和埃塞俄比亞人的身體有多麼不同。”
基督教歷史學家蘇格拉底·斯科拉提庫斯(Socrates Scholasticus)認為,尤利安相信自己是透過靈魂轉世「在另一個身體中」的亞歷山大大帝,「根據畢達哥拉斯和柏拉圖的教義」。
1.
"By purple death I'm seized and fate supreme."
我被紫色的死亡所抓住,命運至高無上。
2.
"Whither are we fleeing, my most valiant men?"
我最勇敢的士兵們,我們要逃到哪裡去?
3.
"Are you not aware that all offerings whether great or small that are brought to the gods with piety have equal value, whereas without piety, I will not say hecatombs, but, by the gods, even the Olympian sacrifice of a thousand oxen is merely empty expenditure and nothing else?"
難道你不知道,所有的祭品,無論大小,只要虔誠地奉獻,都具有同等的價值,而如果缺乏虔誠,不僅僅是百牲墓,對眾神來說,即使是奧林匹斯山的一千頭牲畜作為祭品也毫無意義。
4.
"The end and aim of the Cynic philosophy, as indeed of every philosophy, is happiness, but happiness that consists in living according to nature, and not according to the opinions of the multitude."
犬儒哲學的目的和目標,其實就像所有哲學一樣,是幸福,但幸福在於按照自然產生而不是按照大眾的意見存在。
5.
"Is it not absurd when a human being tries to find happiness somewhere outside himself, and thinks that wealth and birth and the influence of friends… is of the utmost importance?"
當一個人試圖在自己之外尋找幸福,並認為財富、出身和朋友的影響是最重要的。
把最不重要的事情當作圭臬,這不是荒謬至極嗎?
6.
"Zeal to do all that is in one's power is, in truth, a proof of piety."
事實上,戮力於做力所能及的一切,是最虔誠的證明。
7.
"No wild beasts are so dangerous to men as Christians are to one another."
沒有哪一種野獸對人類來說比基督徒對彼此更危險。
8.
"One indeed is the Creator of all things, but many are the creative powers revolving in the heavens."
確實,萬物的創造者只有一位,但天上運轉的創造力量卻有很多。