Julian the Apostate

I was born at Constantinople in the years after Constantine, and I learned early that silence preserves life. My father fell in the purges that followed the emperor’s death; I grew under watch, reading Homer by lamplight while bishops presided at court. At Nicomedia, Ephesus, and Athens I tasted Hellenic paideia and followed Maximus of Ephesus into a piety that wed sacrifice to contemplation. I honored the gods quietly until duty gave me a sword.

Sent as Caesar to Gaul in 355, I found an army mistrustful, coffers thin, and the Rhine uneasy. We drilled, we marched, and at Argentoratum in 357 we broke the Alamanni and steadied the frontier. I pared abuses, lightened levies, and made allies of city councils. In Lutetia my soldiers hailed me Augustus; I did not seek the acclamation, but I did not betray it.

As sole ruler I reopened temples and restored sacrifices, not to persecute but to correct. I proclaimed toleration, recalled exiled bishops, and withdrew the special immunities that had bent the scales. I bound pagan priests to charity and discipline, that our altars might also feed the poor. I forbade men who denied the gods to expound Homer and Plato in the schools. I wrote Against the Galileans, hymns to Helios, and at Antioch I answered mockery with the Misopogon, trimming my court while restoring strength to the cities.

In 363 I crossed into Persia, drove swift to Ctesiphon, and then, the river at my back, burned the fleet and turned inland. A night’s confused fighting near Samarra left me with a spear’s wound and an unfinished design. Others unwound my measures; the questions remained.