ABSTRACT
The problem to which Julian's edict on education addresses itself can be reduced to a simple choice of alternatives. Hellenism: unity or diversity. Rich in feeling and crystalline in its logic, Julian's law proclaims an unambiguous answer: unity! a view shared by not a few Christian thinkers. The critical initiative was taken by the Syrian Iamblichus, who made the first steps towards crystallizing Neoplatonism into a dogma and endowing it with a ritual, a process which Julian was to continue and amplify. It is clear that the Christian theologian did not believe in the intrinsic value of the feeble arguments that he put forward in his invectives against Julian, for his own attitude towards Greek culture was one of regretful half-denial. Julian's Hellenism did not die with the cessation of philosophical teaching in Athens. It lived through Byzantium as a hidden underground current, and found dynamic expression at the very moment when the Byzantine empire was disintegrating politically.
