And without Plato the Christian religion would be inconceivable too, for, as Nietzsche famously said, "Christianity is Platonism for the crowds." There was a time, in the early centuries of our era, when a mix of Platonism and Pythagoreanism was the main competitor of Christianity for absolute power in the Western world. After the Roman emperor Constantine (called the Great by the Church) adopted Christianity as the state religion in the early 300's AD, another emperor, Julian (called the Apostate by the Church), tried to revert to paganism in 360 AD. To the new, reformed pagan priesthood Julian recommended reading, instead of the Christian Gospels, the Biography of Pythagoras, equally filled with wisdom and miracles.