Emperor Julian the Apostate

Julian was the last non-Christian Roman emperor and reigned for twenty months. Born in Constantinople in AD 331, a nephew of Constantine the Great, he survived the massacre of his family in AD 337 that eliminated most male relatives of the dynasty, and was raised in isolated confinement in Cappadocia under Christian tutors. He was permitted to study at Athens and elsewhere, and there converted privately to a philosophical paganism drawn from Neoplatonism and the mystery cults, concealing it for a decade. His cousin Constantius II made him Caesar in AD 355 and sent him to Gaul, which was overrun by Alamanni and Franks and which nobody expected him to hold. He proved an unexpectedly effective general, destroying a much larger Alamannic army at Strasbourg in AD 357, restoring the Rhine frontier and reforming provincial taxation. Constantius, alarmed, ordered his best troops transferred east. They mutinied and proclaimed Julian emperor in AD 360. Civil war was avoided only because Constantius died in AD 361. Julian then declared his religion openly. He restored temples and sacrifices, recalled exiled bishops to encourage Christian faction, removed state subsidies from the church, and barred Christians from teaching classical literature on the grounds that they did not believe it. He wrote polemics against them and attempted to organise a pagan priesthood on charitable lines. He avoided outright persecution, and Christians called him the Apostate. He invaded Persia in AD 363, reached Ctesiphon, burned his fleet, and was speared in a skirmish during the retreat. He died at thirty-one, and the restoration died with him.

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