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Answered Questions (1)

I have a few questions. I'm doing some homework and I'm not entirely sure how to answer my last two questions. The first one is: What was more important to Julian: religion or philosophy, and does the book present this as a contradiction? The second one is: why does Vidal use three narrators for the novel? This would be a huge help!

Samuel Daniel Robert, I am so sorry. I just saw this! Too bad this was not in time for your homework but the questions are beautiful and important in understanding â€¦m´Ç°ù±ðRobert, I am so sorry. I just saw this! Too bad this was not in time for your homework but the questions are beautiful and important in understanding the book.

Julian is not anti-religious or hateful of Christians necessarily. however philosophy is important to him and he fears the Judeo-Christian approach and ascendancy as a threat to academic freedom and of conscience and expression.

The reason Vidal used three narrators is to give us a feel or the era where a lot of information was primarily stored and passed on through letter and dialogues. the novel had not been invented since there wasn't a huge class of common people who read. Thus knowledge and information was passed on from teacher to student and between scholars through letters or the less frequent tool of memoirs and diaries.

The interplay between Libanius, Priscus and Julians diary is used as to give the feel of historical authenticity... and a lot of these documents do exist. almost a thousand and half letters of Libanius have been preserved and Vidal tried to built a story on these manuscripts.

The end result is a beautiful book and a joy to read(less)

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Unanswered Questions (1)

"I saw a cemetery where several of the graves were covered with fishnets. I asked one of the native soldiers what this meant. 'It is to keep the ghosts of mothers who die in childbirth from stealing back their children'". Does anyone know if this is an invention of Vidal's or if this was an actual burial custom in Gaul? My searches have been unsuccessful and I'm wondering if this is in any of his source material.

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