ZEUL HELIOS – IMAGINE, MESAGER ȘI SUPLEANT AL UNULUI ÎN VIZIUNEA TEURGICĂ A ÎMPĂRATULUI IULIAN

Rezumat

Concerned to find the most suggestive correspondences between the traditional gods of the Graeco-Roman pantheon and the concepts of Neoplatonic philosophy, the Emperor Julian focused his attention on the Sun God, Helios. Due to his double dimension, the visible one, and the invisible one, expression of the divine essence, the God Helios is, from Julian’s perspective, the ideal candidate to exemplify the parallelism between sensible world and supersensible world, and to demonstrate their deep unity.
In the hymn that Julian dedicated to him, God Helios takes over all the functions of the One or the Good, that is, of the Principle, which, due to its status as Absolute, cannot come into direct contact with the lower levels of reality, but only through mediation. For this, the One creates Helios, who is its own image, the reality closest to itself and able to act on its behalf, as if it were acting itself. Helios is somewhat like Hermes, the messenger of Father Zeus to all the other gods, but, at the same time, he is the eminently active arm of Zeus, for the message is identical with the deed.
In fact, when Julian attributes to Helios all divine virtues, when he gives him the title of ”King”, with direct reference to his role as symbol of imperial power, he tries to transfer to him, and to the whole system of traditional gods, the aura of majesty and all the authority that the Empire still had in the eyes of its subjects and, in this way, to help stop the decline of the old religion and the rise of Christianity.