Julian, byname Julian the Apostate, Latin Julianus Apostata, original name Flavius Claudius Julianus, (born AD 331/332, Constantinople—died June 26/27, 363, Ctesiphon, Mesopotamia),  Roman emperor from AD 361 to 363, nephew of Constantine the Great, and noted scholar and military leader who was proclaimed emperor by his troops. A persistent enemy of Christianity, he publicly announced his conversion to paganism in 361, thus acquiring the epithet “the Apostate.”

Julian was a younger son of Julius Constantius, the half brother of Constantine I (the Great), and his second wife, Basilina. In 337, when Julian was five, his cousin (the third son of Constantine I), also called Constantius, became emperor in the East as  Constantius II and in 350, with the death of his brother Constans I, sole legitimate emperor (though there were two usurpers who were not overthrown until 353). The army, determined to have none but Constantine I’s sons as his successors, murdered the other possible aspirants. Constantius II had had Julian’s father killed in or just after 337, and an elder brother of Julian was killed in 341. Basilina had died soon after the birth of Julian, who was thus early left an orphan. With his surviving half brother,  Gallus, seven years his senior, he was brought up in obscurity, first by  Eusebius, Arian bishop of Nicomedia in Bithynia, and later at the remote estate of Macellum in Cappadocia. By the patronage of Eusebia, wife of Constantius II, Julian, at age 19, was allowed to continue his education, first at Como and later in Greece. In 351 he converted to the pagan Neoplatonism, recently “reformed” by Iamblichus, and was initiated into theurgy by Maximus of Ephesus.

His physical appearance is described thus by his contemporary and comrade-in-arms, Ammianus Marcellinus:

“He was of medium stature, his hair was soft, as if it had been combed, his beard rough and pointed. His eyes were fine and flashing, an indication of the nimbleness of his mind. He had handsome eyebrows, a straight nose, rather a large mouth with a drooping lower lip. His neck was thick and slightly bent, his shoulders broad and big. From top to toe he was well-knit, and so was strong and a good runner.”

His statue in the Louvre generally confirms this description, showing him as a stocky, rather diffident-looking philosopher.

Julian’s freedom as a student had a powerful influence on him and ensured that for the first time in a century the future emperor would be a man of culture. He studied at Pergamum, at Ephesus, and later at Athens. He adopted the cult of the Unconquered Sun. He adopted the cult of the Unconquered Sun.

That his literary talent was considerable is demonstrated in his surviving works, most of which illustrate his deep love of Hellenic culture. Julian had been baptized and raised as a Christian, but, although he outwardly conformed until he was supreme, Christianity in its official guise meant to him the religion of those who had murdered his father, his brother, and many of his relations and, as such, was hardly likely to commend itself to him. He found far more solace in his philosophic speculations. This reaction has sometimes been defended as natural but eccentric. Natural it certainly was, but it is a misinterpretation of the age to imagine that Julian was alone in preferring Hellenism to Christianity. Society, and particularly the educated society in which Julian was at home, was in fact still largely if not predominantly pagan. Even bishops were proud of their Greek culture; no one was proud of the exotic degeneracy and extravagance of the court of Constantius. It is not surprising that Julian’s austerity, chastity, and enthusiasm for the heritage of Greece found a sympathetic response among many of his cousin’s subjects.

In 351 Constantius II, perturbed by the death of his brother Constans and subsequent disorders in the West, appointed Gallus as his caesar; that is, as his coadjutor and eventual successor. Gallus was a failure and was executed near Pola (now Pula, Croatia) in 354. Constantius, again in need of a caesar of his own house, after much hesitation summoned Julian from Greece, whence the latter arrived “still wearing his student’s gown.” On November 6, 355, at the age of 23, he was duly proclaimed and invested as caesar, an honour which he accepted with justifiable foreboding. The emperor gave Julian his sister Helena as wife. She died after five years of marriage—the fate of their issue, if any, is unknown. Julian was at once dispatched to Gaul, where he proved a resolute and successful commander. He defeated and expelled the Alemanni and the Franks, feats that aroused the jealousy of Constantius, who kept Julian short of funds and under secret surveillance. In 360, while Julian was wintering at Paris, the emperor sent a demand for a number of his best troops, ostensibly for service in the East but in reality to weaken Julian. Julian’s army thereupon hailed him as Augustus. This naturally infuriated Constantius, who refused any accommodation. Julian, realizing that war between himself and Constantius was now inevitable, decided to move first. But, before the clash could come, Constantius died near Tarsus (November 361), having on his deathbed accepted the inevitable by bequeathing the empire to Julian.

Julian, now sole Augustus, greatly simplified the life of the palace and reduced its expenses. He issued proclamations in which he declared his intention to rule as a philosopher, on the model of Marcus Aurelius. All Christian bishops exiled by Constantius were allowed to return to their sees (although the purpose of this may have been to promote dissension among the Christians), and an edict of 361 proclaimed freedom of worship for all religions.

But this initial toleration of Christianity was coupled with a determination to revive  paganism and raise it to the level of an official religion with an established hierarchy. Julian apparently saw himself as the head of a pagan church. He performed  animal sacrifices and was a staunch defender of a sort of pagan orthodoxy, issuing doctrinal instructions to his clergy. Not surprisingly, this incipient fanaticism soon led from apparent toleration to outright suppression and  persecution of Christians. Pagans were openly preferred for high official appointments, and Christians were expelled from the army and prohibited from teaching classical literature and philosophy. The latter action led  Ammianus, who admired Julian’s virtues and was himself an adherent of the traditional religion, to censure the emperor:

That was inhumane, and better committed to oblivion, that he forbade teachers of rhetoric and literature to practice their profession if they were followers of the Christian religion.

Julian wrote an attack on Christianity, “Against the Galileans,” that is known today only by fragmentary citation. “The trickery of the Galileans”—his usual term—has nothing divine in it, he argues; it appeals to rustics only, and it is made up of fables and irrational falsehoods. Here perhaps may be detected the sunset snobbery of the Athens of his day. Though professing to be a Neoplatonist and a sun worshipper, Julian himself was an addict of superstition rather than religion, according to Ammianus.

His project to rebuild the Jewish Temple in  Jerusalem was designed rather to insult the Christians than to please the Jews, who, for long accustomed to the worship of the synagogue, would have found the revival of animal sacrifice acutely embarrassing. The plan was dropped when it was reported (as it was on both an earlier and a later occasion) that “balls of fire” had issued from the old foundations and scared away the workmen. Christian cities were penalized, and churches were burned in Damascus and Beirut. Bishops, including the great Athanasius, were banished. One was horribly tortured.  Bacchus, the Greco-Roman god associated with nature, wine, and ecstasy, was installed in the Christian basilicas of Emesa (modern Ḥimṣ, Syria) and Epiphaneia (modern Ḥamāh, Syria). At  Antioch, where Julian was preparing for a campaign against the  Persians, his closing of the great basilica and the removal of the relics of the martyr Babylas from the sacred grove of Daphne annoyed the Christians. His priggish austerity did not endear him to the pagans, either, and both were equally incensed by his pamphlet entitled  Misopogon(“Beard Hater”), in which he assailed the Antiochenes for the ridicule that they poured on him for his personal conduct, his religion, and his claim to be a philosopher on the strength of his beard.

The invasion of Persian territory was always a lure in antiquity and one to which Julian was not immune. Motivated by a desire for military glory and a decision to reassert Rome’s preeminence in the East, he assembled, despite counsels of prudence from Rome and the Levant, the largest Roman army (65,000 strong and backed by a river fleet) ever to head a campaign against Persia. The Persians, aided by the desert, famine, treachery, and the incompetence of the Romans, once again proved themselves superior. During a disastrous retreat from the walls of Ctesiphon, below modern Baghdad, Julian was wounded by a spear thrown “no one knew whence,” which pierced his liver. He died the next night at age 31, having been emperor for 20 months.

Julian’s religious policy had no lasting effect. It had shown that paganism, as a religion, was doomed. It is perhaps sad, in retrospect, that the odium of proving it should rest on Julian, who with a little less venom and more tact might have been remembered for his many virtues rather than for his two fatal blunders.