The Library
1780 works catalogued century by century, from the literature the Bible was written among to the present — each with a note on what it is, why it lasted, and where to read it.
301–400
4 works
362–363; survives in fragments quoted by Cyril of Alexandria
Greek
Julian the Apostate · 331 – 363
The only sustained attack on Christianity by a Roman emperor, and by one raised in the faith. Julian argues that the Christians have kept neither Greek philosophy nor the Jewish law but invented a third thing from the worst of both, that Genesis makes God jealous of knowledge, and that Jesus is nowhere foretold as God in the books they cite.
361–363
Greek
Julian the Apostate · 331 – 363
Administrative and personal correspondence from the last pagan emperor, including the edict barring Christians from teaching the classics on the ground that a man who thinks Homer's gods false should not be paid to expound him — and a letter urging pagan priests to match the Galileans, who support not only their own poor but ours.
c. 362–363
Greek
Sallustius
A short handbook of pagan belief written for Julian's revival: the nature of the gods, why myths are not to be taken literally, why the world is eternal, why evil comes from us, and what happens to the soul. These things never happened, it says of the myths, but always are.
c. 390–395
Latin
Res Gestae
Ammianus Marcellinus · c. 330 – c. 395
The last great history written in Latin, by a pagan soldier who served under Julian, covering the years 353 to 378 and ending at Adrianople. He records the Christians tearing at each other over the see of Rome — a prize worth having, given what the city's matrons will give a bishop — and observes that no wild beasts are so hostile to men as Christians are to one another.
401–500
1 work
c. 435–441
Greek
Contra Iulianum
Cyril of Alexandria · c. 376 – 444
A reply to the emperor Julian's Against the Galileans, written eighty years after the fact because the book was still circulating and still doing damage. Cyril quotes Julian at length, section by section, before answering.
5 of 1780 works