Ibsen and Hauptman 3 



Hence, in " Kaiser Julian," he wrote with a different point of 

 view, so convinced that Julian was of necessity foredoomed to 

 failure that he even " loaded the dice " against him, and made him 

 out to be much worse than history gives us any warrant for sup- 

 posing him really to have been. 



Whether or not we accept this suggestion, there is no denying 

 the inferiority of " Kaiser Julian " to " Casars Abfall." The sec- 

 ond drama might with appropriateness have been called " Julian's 

 Downfall," for he comes eaten up with childish vanity, he lends 

 a ready ear to flattery, he condones the persecutions of the Chris- 

 tians and reconciles it with his idealization of Marcus Aurelius 

 by the flimsiest and most insincere of sophistries. He is seized 

 with the " Casaren-wahn." To his courtiers he is an object of 

 derision, to his Christian subjects a demon of terror. At a time 

 of general famine he pays no heed to his starving people, but goes 

 about making sacrifice, even though the crowd jeers at his heels. 

 As a rebuke to the frivolity of his courtiers he goes about clad 

 in tatters and boasts that his unshorn beard swarms with vermin 

 as the thickets swarm with game. To all criticism and antago- 

 nism he replies by writing interminable " Schriften," which he 

 insists upon reading to his ennuied courtiers, and which but ex- 

 pose him to fresh derision. 



Yet through all failures and humiliations he retains his " Casaren- 

 wahn." Even after he has admitted to Maximos that the " Gali- 

 laer " is a living and conquering force in the hearts of men ; even 

 when, cast down by the failure to rebuild the Temple, he is 

 ashamed to show himself again upon the streets of Antioch, he 

 still clings to the delusion. He believes that through the Persian 

 war he will yet win back all that he has lost, fulfil the prophecy 

 of a Messias, and possess the world as a spiritual and physical 

 ruler. 



This war completes his undoing. He is tricked by Persian 

 craft into burning his fleet and cutting his army off from its sup- 

 plies. When, after weeks of wandering and privation, his army 

 and the Persians come into conflict, he falls. But his fatal wound 

 is dealt by Agathon, the friend of his youth, the convert of his 



245 



