This volume contains an annotated Italian translation of the Emperor Julian's Hymn to King Helios with an introductory essay focusing especially on the religious and political context of the work.
Julian, the last pagan emperor of Rome (361–363) and, for his short and busy life, a surprisingly prolific author, left behind a number of highly interesting works of religious, political, philosophical and theological relevance. The Hymn to King Helios is clearly one of his most important writings, in which the emperor celebrates the Sun god by describing his origin, nature and works both within the cosmos and beyond. This cosmic-and-supracosmic Sun (or Suns – the number of the solar entities being a matter of debate) was conceived of both as a deity capable of integrating the various gods and cults of a multicultural empire in a unified worship, and as an alternative to the increasingly popular Christian God. It is precisely this anti-Christian bias of late-antique solar theology which explains why most of its sources have been lost. As a result, Julian's surviving works, and especially his hymn, became uniquely important as a testimony of pagan speculations on the Sun. Moreover, the solar theology of the hymn, other than forming the central part of an imperial ideology, seems to have been also a matter of personal belief for Julian. He wrote his hymn on the occasion of the winter solstice, the turning point of the Sun's annual course, when the life-giving deity starts his journey back from the farthest south. If we may believe the author, he even composed this ‘Christmas sermon’ during three of the nights around the solstice. That this was a somewhat too short period of time to give a concise summary of a philosophically argued theology illustrated with learned examples, becomes evident to any reader of the hymn. Therefore every attempt to reconstruct the ideas behind these often terse and obscure statements is appreciated by all those interested in that formative period of intellectual history.
An interest in Julian and his solar theology dates back at least to the Italian Renaissance when Marsilio Ficino and his fellow Neoplatonists studied and commented on the hymn. The text, based on various manuscripts, was printed three times before the modern critical editions of F.C. Hertlein (1875), C. Lacombrade (1964) and C. Prato (1987) – with a new edition being prepared by H.-G. Nesselrath (2015). The hymn exists in several translations including Latin, English, French, German and Italian – the most recent Italian translation before the present one was made by A. Marcone, based on and printed together with Prato's edition (1987).
Julian's hymn has been studied from a number of perspectives: political history and imperial ideology; the conflict between paganism and Christianity; and from the point of view of the specific cults and beliefs (especially Mithraism and the Chaldean Oracles), philosophical schools and doctrines (especially Neoplatonism) that might have influenced the author. Few of these studies have discussed the hymn as a whole, and the last commentary devoted to it before the present one was published by G. Mau (1907). It was time to summarise more than a century of scholarship in a new edition, translation and commentary.
M., a professor of ancient religions and an expert on Mithraism, approaches the hymn from the point of view of a historian of religions and political ideas. The book was originally written in connection with a university course on Julian in 2002 (p. viii) but, as is clear from the references, it was significantly expanded in subsequent years before it was published in 2011. Although it relies on a great deal of research relevant to the hymn (the select bibliography lists only a small fragment of the primary and secondary sources cited in the book), this volume cannot be considered in every respect as a synthesis of previous scholarship.
The volume consists of a preface, an introduction, a translation with extensive notes, the Greek text, a list of abbreviations, a bibliography and an index of proper names (in Italian).
The Greek text is a reproduction of the Les Belles Lettres edition of Lacombrade (1964) (p. 23), a reliable edition partly prepared by J. Bidez. M. does not enter into a critical evaluation of this text. There are only four instances where he gives his reflections on textual problems, accepting the suggestions of Hertlein, P. Thillet (in REG 1965) and Prato. The chapter divisions also follow Lacombrade, although these are not part of the textual tradition and are far from plausible.
The translation cannot be conveniently compared with the Greek text as it is printed separately and without the traditional page numbers. In most cases it follows closely the French translation of Lacombrade (which has several controversial renderings) and, in one section (pp. 66–7), it coincides with the Italian translation of Marcone. At several points, the translation is not entirely accurate, for example Chapter 22, p. 53 (143c): ‘gli elementi estremi: fuoco, terra, aria e acqua, sono collegati nello spazio intermedio’ (πυρὸς καὶ γῆς εἰλημμένον ἀέρα καὶ ὕδωρ ἐν μέσῳ τῶν ἄκρων σύνδεσμον) – not all the four elements are ‘extremes’ – air and water only connect the extremes fire (highest) and earth (lowest), as is clear from the Timaeus passage (32b) cited in the note (n. 156). Both here and in general, the translation of Marcone is more felicitous (cf. ad locum: ‘aria e acqua sono posti nel mezzo tra fuoco e terra come elementi connettivi di due estremi’).
The annotation (187 footnotes on the translation) covers numerous questions arising in the hymn. There are illuminative explanations of the details (e.g. nn. 150, 176, 177, 179, 181, 236), interesting parallels from the Christian tradition (nn. 102, 142) and the broader religious context (nn. 110, 149, 191, 221), and in general the notes testify to M.'s impressive erudition. What I missed is a more systematic engagement with the text itself and with previous interpretations of specific passages.
There are many intriguing questions that M. does not discuss in detail, including the Aristotelian-Phoenician doctrine of light (Chapter 7), the place of the solar disc (Chapter 28), or the relation of the winter solstice and Christmas (n. 239). The largest part of the introduction (pp. 6–18), as well as many of the comments, argue in favour of the Mithraic interpretation of the hymn proposed especially by F. Cumont (La théologie solaire [1913]) and P. Athanassiadi (JThS [1977]). According to this interpretation, the emperor was an initiate of the mysteries of Mithras (which did not prevent one from being an adept of other mystery cults as well) but since he was not permitted to reveal these secret doctrines (cf. pp. 16–17) it is the reader's task to decode the allusions hidden in the text. This may be true to a certain extent, although, despite M.'s vast knowledge of Mithraism, not all his arguments seem to be compelling when applied to Julian's hymn (cf. nn. 114, 121, 137). On the other hand, in order to have a more balanced picture, the results of scholars of Neoplatonism and other fields (e.g. J.-C. Foussard in Braun-Richer [edd.], L'Empereur Julien [1978], W. Fauth, Helios Megistos [1995], J. Dillon in Itaca [1998/99], J. Opsomer in C. Schäfer [ed.], Kaiser Julian [2008]) should also be taken into consideration.
More convincing is M.'s suggestion that the hymn has a hitherto relatively neglected political dimension (pp. 18–23, cf. also nn. 174, 180, 183). This seems to be a path that promises new insights, especially in the light of Julian's œuvre as a whole.
