Helios myth of Julian the Apostate

The present paper is a brief study on Julian the Apostate’s religion with the detailed analysis of the so called Helios myth being a part of his speech Against Heraclius (Or. VII), delivered in Constantinople in AD 362. In the chapter one I discuss veracity of the Gregory of Nazianzus’ account in the Contra Julianum (Or. IV-V) on the emperor’s strange Gods and cults. In the chapter two the reconstruction of the Julian’s theological system has been presented and the place of Helios in this hierarchy has been shown. The chapter three consists of the short preface to the Against Heraclius and of the appendix with the Polish translation and commentary on the Julian’s Helios myth. The Emperor’s theosophy, known from his four orations (X-XI and VII-VIII), bears an imprint of the Jamblichean speculation on it. The gods are arranged in the three neo-Platonic hypostases: the One, the Mind, and the Soul, named Zeus, Hecate, and Sarapis. The second and third hypostases contain in themselves the enneads and the triads. The Helios’ position is between the noetic world and the cosmic gods, so he becomes a mediator or a centre of the universe and he is assimilated with Zeus the Highest God as well as with the subordinated gods like Apollo, Dionysus, Sarapis, and Hermes. The King Helios was also the Emperor’s personal God, who saved him from the danger of death in AD 337 and 350. These tragic events are described by Julian in the allegorical fable (Or. VII 22). The question is who was Helios of the Julian’s myth: the noetic God, the Hellenistic Helios, the Persian Mithras, the Chaldean fire, or the Orphic Phanes, what is suggested by the Gregory’s invective. The answer is that the King Helios was all of them. The Helios myth in Or. VII is the best illustration of the extreme syncretism of the Julian’s heliolatry, where the neo-Platonic, Hellenistic, magic, and Persian components are mingled