santhes and Eusebius,
supplied, at his own desire, the place of their aged master. These
philosophers seem to have prepared and distributed their respective
parts; and they artfully contrived, by dark hints and affected disputes,
to excite the impatient hopes of the aspirant, till they delivered him
into the hands of their associate, Maximus, the boldest and most skilful
master of the Theurgic science. By his hands, Julian was secretly
initiated at Ephesus, in the twentieth year of his age. His residence at
Athens confirmed this unnatural alliance of philosophy and superstition.

He obtained the privilege of a solemn initiation into the mysteries of
Eleusis, which, amidst the general decay of the Grecian worship, still
retained some vestiges of their primaeval sanctity; and such was the
zeal of Julian, that he afterwards invited the Eleusinian pontiff to the
court of Gaul, for the sole purpose of consummating, by mystic rites and
sacrifices, the great work of his sanctification. As these ceremonies
were performed in the depth of caverns, and in the silence of the night,
and as the inviolable secret of the mysteries was preserved by the
discretion of the initiated, I shall not presume to describe the horrid
sounds, and fiery apparitions, which were presented to the senses, or
the imagination, of the credulous aspirant, [24] till the visions of
comfort and knowledge broke upon him in a blaze of celestial light. [25]
In the caverns of Ephesus and Eleusis, the mind of Julian was penetrated
with sincere, deep, and unalterable enthusiasm; though he might
sometimes exhibit the vicissitudes of pious fraud and hypocrisy, which
may be observed, or at least suspected, in the characters of the most
conscientious fanatics. From that moment he consecrated his life to the
service of the gods; and while the occupations of war, of government,
and of study, seemed to claim the whole measure of his time, a stated
portion of the hours of the night was invariably reserved for the
exercise of private devotion. The temperance which adorned the severe
manners of the soldier and the philosopher was connected with some
strict and frivolous rules of religious abstinence; and it was in honor
of Pan or Mercury, of Hecate or Isis, that Julian, on particular days,
denied himself the use of some particular food, which might have been
offensive to his tutelar deities. By these voluntary fasts, he prepared
his senses and his understanding for the frequen