Julian the Apostate's Persian Campaign — Death of a Dream
Julian invaded Persia in 363 with some 65,000 men and was dead within four months. He was the last non-Christian Roman emperor, a nephew of Constantine, raised in confinement after his family was murdered in the purge that followed Constantine's death, educated in Greek philosophy at Athens, and proclaimed emperor by his troops in Gaul in 360 after a successful campaign against the Alamanni. His civil war with Constantius II was averted by Constantius dying. He then spent eighteen months attempting to restore the traditional cults — reopening temples, restoring sacrifices, and barring Christians from teaching classical literature on the grounds that they could not honestly expound what they did not believe. The Persian campaign was intended to settle the eastern frontier and to supply the military prestige his religious programme needed. He marched down the Euphrates with a fleet of over a thousand supply boats, reached the walls of Ctesiphon, won a battle outside it, and could not take the city. He then burned the fleet — on the argument that it could not be taken upriver and that its crews were needed — and marched inland, which left the army without supplies in country the Persians had stripped. The retreat north was harassed continuously. He was speared in the side in a skirmish on 26 June, having ridden out without armour, and died that night. His successor Jovian bought a withdrawal by ceding five provinces and Nisibis, and Rome was never again a power east of the Tigris. His last words, that the Galilean had won, are almost certainly invented. What is not is the consequence: the pagan restoration died with him after eighteen months, and no emperor after him attempted it.
- Year: 363 CE
- Category: Military
