The Death of the Gods

Julian the Apostate takes the Roman purple and tries to give the old gods back their world, in the opening volume of Merezhkovsky's trilogy on Christ and Antichrist. Merezhkovsky was nominated for the Nobel nine times and died in Paris exile; his argument — that the flesh and the spirit are two truths at war and neither can win — begins here, in an emperor who loses. Fifty-six plates of Roman ruins, campagna light and antique scenes, among them works by Munch and Hayez, run through the book like the empire Julian could not hold.