Julian the Apostate (361-363): The Last Pagan Roman Emperor

Julian the Apostate, Flavius Claudius Julianus, was Roman emperor from AD 361 to 363 and the last ruler to try to turn the empire back from Christianity to its traditional gods. A nephew of Constantine the Great, he was a philosopher, writer and successful general in Gaul before seizing power. His reign lasted barely twenty months and ended with his death during an invasion of Persia, but it made him one of the most debated figures of late antiquity.

Early life in a Christian dynasty

Julian was born in Constantinople in 331 or 332. His father, Julius Constantius, was a half-brother of Constantine. When Constantine died in 337, soldiers massacred most of the emperor’s male relatives, including Julian’s father, probably with the approval of Constantine’s son Constantius II. Julian, then about six, and his older half-brother Gallus were spared.

The boy was raised under close supervision. A tutor, the eunuch Mardonius, gave him a love of Homer and Greek literature, while bishops oversaw his Christian education. For several years in the 340s he and Gallus lived in near exile on the imperial estate of Macellum in Cappadocia.

As a student in Nicomedia, Pergamum and Ephesus, Julian met Neoplatonist philosophers, above all Maximus of Ephesus, who practised theurgy, a ritual form of religious philosophy. By about 351 Julian had privately abandoned Christianity, although he concealed this for ten years.

Caesar in Gaul

In 351 Constantius made Gallus his Caesar, or junior emperor, but had him executed in 354 for misrule. Julian was summoned to court, then allowed to study in Athens in 355. Later that year Constantius, short of family members he could trust, made him Caesar on 6 November 355 and married him to his sister Helena.

Sent to Gaul with little military experience, Julian proved an able commander. In 357 he defeated a large Alamannic army under King Chnodomar at the Battle of Strasbourg (Argentoratum). Ammianus Marcellinus, who served in the army of the period, puts Julian’s force at about 13,000 men against some 35,000 Alamanni, though such figures are uncertain. Julian then restored the Rhine frontier and reduced taxes in Gaul.

Seizing the throne

In early 360 Constantius, preparing for war with Persia, ordered some of Julian’s best troops to the East. At Paris (Lutetia) the soldiers refused and proclaimed Julian Augustus, or senior emperor, in February 360. Constantius would not accept this, and civil war seemed certain.

Julian marched east in 361. Before the armies met, Constantius fell ill and died at Mopsucrenae in Cilicia on 3 November 361, reportedly naming Julian as his successor. Julian entered Constantinople on 11 December 361 as sole emperor and now openly declared his worship of the gods.

Restoring the old religion

Julian’s religious programme had several parts:

• Toleration as strategy. Early in 362 he allowed bishops exiled in earlier disputes to return. Ammianus believed he hoped their quarrels would divide the Christians.
• Rebuilding the cults. Temples were reopened and repaired, public sacrifices resumed, and property taken from temples under Constantine and Constantius was to be returned.
• A pagan priesthood. Julian appointed high priests over provinces and urged them to live strictly and to organise charity for the poor, consciously copying the Church’s social work.
• The teaching law. A law of 17 June 362, explained in a surviving letter, effectively barred Christians from teaching classical literature, on the grounds that they could not honestly teach texts whose gods they rejected. Even the sympathetic Ammianus thought this harsh.

Julian also planned to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem for the Jews, partly to disprove Christian prophecy. Work began in 363 but stopped after fires broke out at the site, which Ammianus reports and which may have been linked to an earthquake.

Julian did not order executions of Christians for their faith. However, Christians lost privileges and posts, and local mob violence against them was sometimes left unpunished, so Christian writers remembered his reign as a time of persecution.

Antioch and the Misopogon

From July 362 Julian lived in Antioch, preparing his Persian war. The largely Christian city mocked his beard, his frugal habits and his many animal sacrifices. When the temple of Apollo at nearby Daphne burned in October 362, Julian blamed Christians and closed the city’s main church.

A food shortage made relations worse. Julian answered with the Misopogon, or “Beard-Hater”, a satire in which he mocked himself while attacking the Antiochenes. It is one of the most unusual texts ever written by a reigning emperor.

The Persian campaign and death

On 5 March 363 Julian left Antioch to invade the Sasanian Empire of Shapur II. He marched down the Euphrates and reached the Persian capital Ctesiphon but could not take it. During the retreat, on 26 June 363, he was wounded by a spear in a skirmish near Samarra and died that night. The full story is told in Julian’s Persian expedition.

The army chose Jovian, a Christian officer, as emperor. He made a costly peace with Persia and restored the Church’s privileges. Julian was buried at Tarsus; his remains were reportedly later moved to Constantinople, the city founded by his uncle (see Founding of Constantinople).

Writings and character

Julian was one of the most prolific authors among Roman emperors. His surviving works include philosophical hymns to King Helios and the Mother of the Gods, The Caesars (a satire in which earlier emperors are judged by the gods) and about eighty letters. His treatise Against the Galileans, his term for Christians, is lost but can be partly reconstructed from Cyril of Alexandria’s reply.

Contemporaries described him as energetic, austere, learned and impatient. He slept little, ate sparingly, kept no mistress after his wife Helena’s death in 360 and spent his nights reading and writing, habits that impressed admirers and puzzled courtiers. His friend the orator Libanius praised him in speeches; the Christian bishop Gregory of Nazianzus, who had studied with him in Athens, attacked him in two invectives.

Legacy

Julian’s revival collapsed with him. His immediate successors, Jovian, Valentinian I and Valens, were all Christians, though Valentinian largely tolerated traditional worship. Within a generation, Theodosius I made Nicene Christianity the official faith (see Edict of Thessalonica) and later banned sacrifice. Historians debate whether Julian could ever have succeeded; most think Christianity was already too strong among the officials, cities and army.

In later centuries Julian became a symbol. The Enlightenment praised him as a philosopher-ruler, Edward Gibbon gave him admiring chapters, Henrik Ibsen wrote the play Emperor and Galilean (1873), and Gore Vidal the novel Julian (1964).

Timeline

• 331 or 332: Julian is born in Constantinople.
• 337: His father is killed in the massacre after Constantine’s death.
• 355, 6 November: Constantius II makes Julian Caesar.
• 357: Julian defeats the Alamanni at Strasbourg.
• 360, February: His troops proclaim him Augustus at Paris.
• 361, 3 November: Constantius II dies; Julian becomes sole emperor.
• 362, 17 June: Law on teachers issued.
• 362, July: Julian arrives in Antioch.
• 363, 5 March: He sets out against Persia.
• 363, 26 June: Julian is mortally wounded and dies.

Why it matters

Julian’s short reign was the last serious attempt to restore the old religion of Rome from the throne. Its failure showed how deeply Christianity had rooted itself in the empire within fifty years of Constantine, and his writings remain a rare voice of educated pagan thought from the very end of the classical world.