“The Death of the Gods. Julian the Apostate” is a novel by Dmitry Merezhkovsky, the first in the trilogy “Christ and Antichrist.” The story centers on the life of the fourth-century Roman emperor Flavius Claudius Julian, who, in the face of the oncoming Christianity, tried to “restore the reformed paganism under the sign of the Cult of the Sun.” The novel is devoted to the contrast of “two truths”—Christian (ascetic) and pagan (sensual)—and two “nothings”: the heavenly and the earthly (the Kingdom of God, the Kingdom of the “Beast”). “When I began the trilogy ‘Christ and Antichrist,’ I thought there were two truths: Christianity—the truth about heaven—and paganism—the truth about the earth. And in the future uniting of these two truths, there would be the fullness of religious truth. But as I was finishing, I already knew that the union of Christ with the Antichrist is a blasphemous lie. I knew that both truths—about heaven and about earth—are already united in Jesus Christ… But now I also know that I had to go through this lie to the end in order to see the truth.” Dmitry Sergeyevich Merezhkovsky