Julian declined to persecute the Christians unto death. He obliged them to take the slow, winding, rocky path of terrestrial life. He made them sweat out the wearisome human span for a future chance of paradise instead of being propelled there directly in a turbocharged blast of their own blood. The tactic was cunning: deprive those eager to die of their martyrdoms and Galilean exceptionalism might not seem so exceptional: it might relapse into mere doctrinal dissent.
