The Chaldean Oracles: the verses of the two Julians and theurgy

In the second century AD, in the time of the emperor Marcus Aurelius, a collection of oracular verses in Greek hexameters circulated in the Roman world, presenting itself as divine revelation. Today we know it as the Chaldean Oracles. No manuscript has preserved it whole: a few hundred lines survive, quoted and commented on by Neoplatonist philosophers who regarded it as a sacred text, almost a Bible of the educated pagans.

The two Julians

Tradition attributes the oracles to two figures, father and son. The father, Julian called the Chaldean, is said to have been a philosopher or priest of eastern origin; the son, Julian called the Theurgist, is said to have received or transmitted the verses in a state of inspiration. What we know about them comes largely from the Byzantine lexicon known as the Suda and other late sources, and must be read with caution.

According to a legend, Julian the Theurgist took part in Marcus Aurelius's campaign against the Quadi and by his arts obtained the miraculous rain that saved the Roman army. The same episode, in AD 172 or 174, was however also attributed to an Egyptian magician and, by Christian authors, to the prayers of a Christian legion. The variety of versions shows how contested the story was.

The doctrine of the oracles

The fragments describe a universe ordered in degrees. At the summit stands the Father, the supreme and hidden principle; from him proceeds an Intellect that shapes the world. Between the two levels stands Hecate, a female, life-giving power presented as the source of souls and of nature. Intermediate entities also appear, such as the iynges, which act as go-betweens between the divine and human worlds.

The word theurgy, literally «divine work», is linked to the oracles. For the Neoplatonists theurgy was the set of rites through which the soul could purify itself and rise towards the gods, not through intellect alone but through symbols and ceremonies. The theme of the soul's return to its luminous origin is central to the fragments.

From the Neoplatonists to Plethon

The first great readers of the oracles were Porphyry and Iamblichus, in the third and fourth centuries. Proclus, in the fifth century, wrote an extensive commentary now lost, and Damascius quoted many lines. In the eleventh century the Byzantine Michael Psellos composed an exegesis of the oracles that transmitted part of the text. Between the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries George Gemistos Plethon prepared an annotated collection, attributing it to the magi who followed Zoroaster.

It was precisely the attribution to Zoroaster that favoured their success in the Renaissance. Ficino and Pico della Mirandola read them as evidence of the wisdom of the Persian magi, alongside the writings of Hermes. Modern editions have gathered the fragments on critical principles: Wilhelm Kroll's in 1894, Édouard des Places's in 1971 and Ruth Majercik's in 1989.

The Chaldean Oracles are a rare example of a text known only through the quotations of those who loved it. Their reconstruction depends entirely on the work of late antique and Byzantine philosophers, and their image has changed with the ages: a revelation of the gods for the Neoplatonists, the wisdom of the magi for the Renaissance, a document of philosophical religion for modern historians.