Hi, I'm Peter Adamson, and you're listening to the History of Philosophy podcast, brought to you with the support of King's College London and the Leverver Hume Trust, online at

W.W. History of Philosophy. Net.

Today's episode, Pythagorean Theorems,

Eamblicus. Before he became the last pagan ruler of the Roman Empire, Julian the Apostate was a philosophy

student, so don't ever let anyone tell you that studying philosophy isn't a good career move.

One of Julian's teachers particularly impressed him with the following anecdote.

It seems that a philosopher named Maximus invited this teacher to attend a ritual at the temple of the goddess Hecety.

Incense was burned, chanted.

As Maximus performed these rites,

this statue of the goddess that presided over the temple

seemed to come to life.

It smiled and then laughed.

At Maximus's command, torches held in the statue's hands burst spontaneously into flame.

Julian's teacher regarded all this as mere trickery, but Julian himself reacted differently.

He left town to travel to the city of Ephesus, where he might sit at the feet of this wonder-working

philosopher.

About a decade later, Julian would take the purple, and for a brief time the religious and

philosophical ideas of pagans like Maximus would become the basis for imperial policy.

It was a last chance for Christians to be persecuted and for the old gods to be venerated as

divine patrons of Rome.

However much he may have impressed Julian, Maximus was a mere footnote in the history of

paganism. His ideas, to the extent that we know about them, closely

...