Julian (emperor)

• 1. Introduction

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  Julian, the Roman emperor who ruled from 361 to 363, is remembered by a name he did not choose: the Apostate. To the Christians who survived his reign and wrote its history, that word said everything. But Julian himself would have described his life in opposite terms: as a return, not a betrayal. He was a nephew of Constantine the Great, the first Christian emperor, raised inside the faith he would later try to dismantle. He spent years under close imperial supervision, watched most of his family die in political purges, and yet emerged as one of the most philosophically serious rulers the empire had ever seen.

  How does a man born into the family of Rome's first Christian dynasty become the last pagan emperor the empire would ever have? What did he actually believe, and how far was he willing to go to reshape the world around those beliefs? And why, after a brief but electrifying reign, did his project collapse so completely that within a generation it had left almost no trace? Those are the questions this documentary sets out to answer.

• 2. A Childhood in the Shadow of Power

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  Julian was born in Constantinople, probably in 331, making him the first attested individual born in that city after its refounding. His mother, Basilina, was a Bithynian noble whose own father had served as praetorian prefect under the emperor Licinius. She died shortly after Julian was born, and his childhood attachment to Constantinople was formed without her.

  The death that shaped him most decisively came in 337, when his cousin Constantius II appears to have ordered a massacre of most of Julian's close male relatives in order to secure his own grip on power. Julian's father was among those killed. The survivors were few: Constantius and his brothers, and their young cousins Julian and Gallus. Julian and Gallus were excluded from public life and kept under strict guard, given a Christian education. They were likely saved by their youth.

  At seven, Julian was placed under the guardianship of Eusebius, the semi-Arian Bishop of Nicomedia, and taught by a Gothic eunuch named Mardonius, about whom Julian would later write warmly. After Eusebius died in 342, Julian and Gallus were transferred to the imperial estate of Macellum in Cappadocia. There Julian encountered the bishop George of Cappadocia, who lent him books from the classical tradition. He became a lector, a minor church office, and absorbed the Bible thoroughly. He later held detailed knowledge of Christian scripture that his critics could never quite dismiss.

  At 18, the exile was lifted. Julian spent time in Constantinople and Nicomedia, and around the age of 20 he converted from Christianity to paganism. Looking back on his life in 362, he wrote that he had spent twenty years in the way of Christianity and twelve in what he called the true way, the way of Helios. His path out of Christianity ran through Neoplatonic philosophy.

• 3. The Making of a Philosopher-Soldier

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  Julian began studying Neoplatonism in Asia Minor in 351, first under the philosopher Aedesius, then under Aedesius' student Eusebius of Myndus. It was Eusebius who told Julian about Maximus of Ephesus, a theurgist who practiced a more mystical branch of Neoplatonism. Eusebius described an encounter with Maximus in a temple of Hecate, where the theurgist chanted a hymn and, according to the story, caused a statue of the goddess to smile and her torches to ignite. Eusebius told Julian he should not marvel at such things and should instead value the purification of the soul attained by reason. Julian, undeterred, sought out Maximus anyway.

  According to the historian Eunapius, when Julian left Eusebius he told his former teacher: "farewell, and devote yourself to your books. You have shown me the man I was in search of." Maximus became his guide into a form of pagan practice that blended philosophy, ritual, and direct engagement with the divine.

  In 354, the political ground shifted again. Julian's half-brother Gallus, made caesar of the East in 351, had imposed a reign of terror and was executed. Julian was summoned to Constantius' court in Mediolanum and held under suspicion for a year. He was cleared partly because Empress Eusebia intervened on his behalf. He expressed his gratitude to her in his third oration. He was then permitted to study in Athens, where he became acquainted with two men who would later become both bishops and saints: Gregory of Nazianzus and Basil the Great. In that same period he was also initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries, which he would later attempt to restore.

• 4. Caesar in Gaul

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  On the 6th of November 355, Constantius summoned Julian to Mediolanum and appointed him Caesar of the West, marrying him to Constantius' sister Helena. Constantius intended Julian to be a figurehead, not an active ruler, and sent him to Gaul with a small retinue. He assumed his own prefects there would keep Julian in check.

  They underestimated him. Julian threw himself into military command, learning to lead an army through a series of campaigns against the Germanic tribes that had settled on both sides of the Rhine. His first campaign in 356 recovered several towns from Frankish hands, including Colonia Agrippina, modern Cologne. He then made a tactical error by wintering in the small town of Senon near Verdun with insufficient forces. A large contingent of Franks besieged the town and Julian was effectively held captive for several months until his general Marcellus lifted the siege. Relations between the two were poor, and Constantius eventually replaced Marcellus with Severus.

  The decisive engagement came at the Battle of Argentoratum. The Romans were heavily outnumbered. During the fighting, a group of 600 horsemen on the right wing deserted. Despite this, Julian's forces routed the enemy and drove them into the river. King Chnodomarius of the Alamanni was captured and sent to Constantius in Mediolanum. The historian Ammianus, who was present at the battle, wrote that Julian commanded the field himself. After the victory, his soldiers acclaimed him Augustus. He rejected the title and rebuked them for it, then rewarded them for their valor.

  He followed up by crossing the Rhine at Moguntiacum and penetrating deep into what is now Germany, forcing three local kingdoms to submit. In 358 he secured victories over the Salian Franks and the Chamavi. By the end of 357 he had also blocked a tax increase proposed by the Gallic praetorian prefect Florentius and personally taken charge of the province of Belgica Secunda, his first direct experience of civil administration.

• 5. Emperor Against the Tide

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  On the 11th of December 361, Julian entered Constantinople as sole emperor after Constantius died, having named Julian as his successor. His first public act, despite rejecting Christianity, was to preside over Constantius' Christian burial, escorting the body to the Church of the Apostles. It was a statement about legal legitimacy, not piety.

  His reforms came fast. Thousands of servants, eunuchs, and superfluous officials were summarily dismissed from the bloated imperial court. He set up the Chalcedon tribunal to address the corruption of the previous administration under the supervision of magister militum Arbitio. Several high-ranking officials, including the chamberlain Eusebius, were found guilty and executed. Julian was conspicuously absent from those proceedings.

  He reversed Constantine's grants to Christian bishops, stripping their stipends and removing their privileges as private courts. He returned city lands that had been taken by the imperial government and cancelled arrears of land taxes. He promulgated an edict on the 4th of February 362 guaranteeing freedom of religion, declaring all religions equal before the law. He also issued the School Edict, requiring that all public teachers be approved by the emperor. Ammianus interpreted this as an attempt to prevent Christian teachers from using classical pagan texts. Julian's own framing in the edict was blunt: "If they want to learn literature, they have Luke and Mark: Let them go back to their churches and expound on them."

  In his Tolerance Edict of 362 he ordered pagan temples reopened, confiscated temple properties restored, and exiled Christian bishops allowed to return. The recall of exiled bishops may have been designed to inflame internal Christian disputes as much as to show tolerance. He idealized the reigns of Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius and described the ideal ruler in his first panegyric to Constantius as primus inter pares, first among equals. In practice, senators regularly saw Julian participating in debates on the floor.

• 6. The Antioch Disaster

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  Julian left Constantinople in May 362 and arrived in Antioch in mid-July, staying nine months. His arrival on the 18th of July coincided with the festival of Adonia, which marked the death of Adonis. There was wailing in the streets. It was not considered a good omen.

  His time in Antioch became a prolonged mutual alienation. He discovered that wealthy merchants were hoarding food and driving up prices toward a famine. When the city's curia failed to act, he intervened directly: fixing grain prices and importing more from Egypt. Landholders refused to sell at his fixed prices, claiming the harvest was too poor. He accused them of price gouging and forced sales. The historian Libanius, a personal friend of Julian, acknowledged that both sides had a point. Ammianus accused Julian of "a mere thirst for popularity."

  His religious activities also misfired. He ordered the removal of the bones of the third-century bishop Babylas from near the temple of Apollo at Daphne, believing they were suppressing the oracle. The result was a large Christian procession. Shortly afterward the temple burned. Julian suspected Christian arson and ordered a harsh investigation, then shut the city's main Christian church. The investigation concluded the fire was accidental.

  The Antiochenes mocked his beard and his ascetic habits. They expected an emperor who displayed imperial grandeur from a dignified distance. Julian was too present, too earnest, and too willing to leap up to show appreciation during a panegyric by Libanius rather than attend the chariot races. He responded by writing a satire on himself called Misopogon, or "Beard Hater," blaming the people of Antioch for preferring that their ruler's virtues be visible in the face rather than in the soul. On leaving the city he appointed Alexander of Heliopolis as governor. Libanius, his friend, admitted the appointment was dishonourable. Julian called the man undeserving but appropriate "for the avaricious and rebellious people of Antioch."

• 7. The Persian Campaign and Its End

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  On the 5th of March 363, despite a series of omens against the campaign, Julian departed from Antioch with a force variously estimated at somewhere between 65,000 and 95,000 men and marched toward the Euphrates. He had a fleet of over 1,000 ships built at Samosata and 50 pontoon vessels for river crossings. His stated aim was to besiege the Sassanid capital of Ctesiphon and install Hormisdas, the brother of the Persian king Shapur II, as a client ruler. The Sassanids had sent envoys hoping to settle matters peacefully. Julian rejected them.

  The early phase went well. He crossed the Euphrates near Hierapolis and sent a diversionary force of 30,000 soldiers under Procopius and Sebastianus eastward, drawing the main Persian army in that direction. The Romans captured the fortress of Pirisabora at the end of April and reached the vicinity of Ctesiphon by mid-May. Julian had his troops ferried across the Tigris by night and won a tactical victory before the city gates, driving the Persians back inside. But master-general Victor ordered his soldiers not to enter the open gates in pursuit, fearing encirclement. The main Persian army was still intact and approaching.

  In the council of war that followed, Julian's generals persuaded him not to besiege Ctesiphon. Still hoping the column under Procopius would arrive, Julian ordered the fleet destroyed and marched east into the Persian interior. It proved hasty. They were on the wrong side of the Tigris with no clear line of retreat. The Persians burned food in the Romans' path and harassed them ceaselessly. A second council of war on the 16th of June 363 decided on a withdrawal north toward Corduene.

  During the retreat, on the 26th of June 363, in the Battle of Samarra near Maranga, Julian was struck by a spear. He had gone into the fighting wearing only his sword, without his coat of mail. The spear reportedly pierced the lower lobe of his liver and intestines. His personal physician, Oribasius of Pergamum, treated the wound, likely including irrigation with dark wine and a surgical suturing of the damaged intestine known as gastrorrhaphy. On the third day a major hemorrhage occurred and Julian died during the night. Some Christian writers reported that his final words were "Thou hast conquered, Galilean." Julian was buried outside Tarsus, as he had wished, though his remains were later moved to Constantinople.

  His successor Jovian, a senior officer in the imperial guard, was obliged to cede territory including the city of Nisibis to the Persians to save the trapped Roman forces. Julian and Jovian were the last sole emperors to rule the whole empire for their entire reign; afterward it was permanently divided.

• 8. The Pagan Experiment

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  Julian's attempt to restore Roman paganism ran into a structural problem he could not solve: there was no single thing to restore. Paganism, as one historian quoted in the sources characterized it, was "no more than a spongy mass of tolerance and tradition." It had no unified theology, no central priesthood with shared doctrine, and no institutions for charity. Christians had used those exact strengths to build their position over decades.

  Julian tried to introduce tighter organization for the pagan priesthood, with greater qualifications of character and service. He attempted to create philanthropic institutions to rival Christian charity. He wrote in a letter criticizing the Christians for feeding not only their own poor but those of pagans too: "These impious Galileans not only feed their own poor, but ours also; welcoming them into their agapae, they attract them, as children are attracted, with cakes." But classical paganism had never accepted the idea of priests as moral exemplars or social welfare administrators. Priests had traditionally been civic elites who organized festivals and helped pay for them. Julian's model of a reformed priesthood drew paganism toward the very values it was supposed to be competing against.

  His efforts to rebuild the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, which he authorized not long before the Persian campaign, illustrated a similar dynamic. He almost certainly saw the project as a way to invalidate Jesus' prophecy about the Temple's destruction in 70, rather than as genuine support for Judaism. Fires broke out and stopped the construction. The earthquake of 363 in Galilee may have been responsible. Contemporary Christians saw it as divine intervention.

  The historian Libanius wrote in his epitaph that many cities set Julian beside images of the gods and honored him as divine, and that blessings had been sought of him in prayer. But no similar recognition came from the Roman central government, which was already moving toward a Christian monopoly on imperial authority. His immediate successor Jovian reestablished Christianity's privileged position throughout the empire. The short reign of Julian had not shifted the inertia. Civic leaders and politicians had too little motivation to revive pagan festivals that Christianity had spent decades discrediting. The middle ground of religiously neutral ceremonies and entertainment had already taken hold before Julian arrived, and it outlasted him.

  His literary output, ranging from philosophical panegyrics to the satirical Misopogon and the Caesars, a humorous contest among Roman emperors that took sharp aim at Constantine, continued to attract readers across the centuries. The opera Der Apostat by Felix Weingartner appeared in 1924. Nikos Kazantzakis authored a tragedy called Julian the Apostate in 1945, first staged in Paris in 1948. Gore Vidal made him the subject of a novel in 1964. The Greek poet C.P. Cavafy wrote six poems about Julian between 1923 and 1935. A porphyry sarcophagus believed by Jean Ebersolt to be Julian's stands today in the Istanbul Archaeology Museum, across the city where he was born.