Summary

Flavius Claudius Julianus (Constantinople, Nov. 6, 331) was a Roman emperor and philosopher, the last avowedly pagan ruler, who attempted, unsuccessfully, to reform and restore the classical Roman religion, by then syncretistically fused with Greek religion and united by Julianus with Mithraism and the cult of Sol Invictus, after it had fallen into decline in the face of the spread of Christianity.

A member of the Constantinian dynasty, he was Caesar in Gaul from 355; a military pronouncement in 361 and the simultaneous death of his cousin Constantius II made him emperor until his death in 363 during the military campaign in Persia. He did not go to Rome in his short reign, but ruled from Milan first and then from Constantinople, the official capital since 330.

To distinguish him from Didius Julianus or Julian of Pannonia, a usurper of the time of Carinus, he was also called Julian II, Julian Augustus, Julian the Philosopher or Julian the Apostate by Christians, who presented him as a persecutor but, although personally averse to Christianity, there was nevertheless never any anti-Christian persecution (although discriminatory policies against Christians were enacted by the emperor). Julian manifested tolerance toward other religions, including Judaism, to the point of ordering the rebuilding of the Jewish temple in Jerusalem according to a program of restoring and strengthening local religious cults at the expense of Christian monotheism; however, the reconstruction attempt was abandoned.

In fiscal and administrative matters Julian continued the policy he had held when he ruled Gaul. He reduced the tax burden, combated bureaucratic corruption through a more careful selection of clerks, and tried to give a role back to the administration of cities.

With Julian's death, the dynasty of the Constantinian emperors came to an end and the last attempt at Western imperial expansion in the East ended.

Julian wrote numerous philosophical, religious, polemical and celebratory works, in many of which he criticized Christianity. His philosophical inspiration was largely neo-Platonic.

Family origins

When Constantine I seized power in 306, the first care of his mother Helena, the ex-lady and concubine of Constantius Chlorus whom the latter had abandoned for Theodora, was to have her son's half-brothers Dalmatius, Hannibalian, and Julius Constantius removed from the court to Toulouse, in Gallia Narbonense, a city that even then boasted of being a prestigious center of culture. These were the sons of Constantius Chlorus and his second wife Flavia Massimiana Theodora, stepdaughter of Emperor Maximian (Julian's great-grandfather by marriage), and thus half-sister of Emperor Maxentius, the rival defeated by Constantine at the Milvian Bridge, whose great-grandson Julian was.

Twenty years later, when Helena was bestowed the title of Augusta by her son, Julius Constantius was in Italy, the husband of the Roman noblewoman Galla, who bore him three sons, the youngest of whom, Gallus, was born in Etruria about 325. Julius Constantius, after sojourning in Corinth and becoming a widower, found himself in Nicomedia at the home of his own sister Constantia, widow of Emperor Licinius, where an influential post was occupied by the patrician Julius Julianus, former governor of Egypt and prefect of the praetorium from 316 to 324. A lover of letters and a relative of Bishop Eusebius of Nicomedia, Julius Julian had his slave Mardonius given a first-rate education and entrusted him with the education of his own daughter Basilina.

Julius Constantius obtained the family's consent to his marriage to Basilina, which was blessed by Bishop Eusebius, and from their union in Constantinople, Flavius Claudius Julianus was born at the end of 331: he was named Julianus after his maternal grandfather, Flavius after all the members of Constantine's family, and Claudius after the purported founder of the Constantinian dynasty, Claudius II the Gothic, according to what the current ruler of the Western world propagated in order to ennoble the obscure origins of his own parents.

Basilina died a few months after giving birth: it was later said that she had dreamed of giving birth to a new Achilles, without having known whether to interpret in a well-wishing sense the premonition of the birth of a son who was indeed heroic, but short-lived and from violent death. Julian carried with him a nostalgia for a figure he could not know and would one day dedicate a newly founded city, Basilinople, to her.

After his mother's death, in the last years of his reign, Constantine adopted a policy of conciliation toward the other branch of the imperial family, granting them positions of responsibility in the management of power. In 333 Theodora's son Dalmatius was appointed consul, then her namesake son was made Caesar, and finally her other son Hannibalian, given the unusual title of King of Kings, was sent to guard the insecure Parthian frontiers-Julian had thus become grandson of three emperors and cousin of four Caesars.

Constantine's sudden death in May 337 opened a tragic succession. According to Philostorgius, Constantine was poisoned by his brothers while near Nicomedia. Upon discovering the conspiracy, the emperor drew up a will and delivered it to Eusebius of Nicomedia, ordering that it be delivered only into the hands of one of his direct heirs. In the will Constantine demanded justice for his death and divided the empire among his sons. Other sources do not mention the poisoning of Constantine but explicitly mention that the will was delivered into the hands of his son Constantius, who was in the East and was the first to reach Nicomedia. He, or, with his endorsement, his generals, had all the male descendants of Constantius Chlorus and Theodora exterminated: his father, his elder half-brother, an uncle and six cousins of Julian were suppressed. Julian, then only six years old, and his other half-brother Gallus were spared, perhaps because, ill, he was thought to be dying. Of course, the memory of the massacre would never leave Giuliano: "All that day was carnage and by divine intervention the tragic curse came true. They divided the patrimony of my ancestors by the edge of the sword and everything was turned upside down," saying he was convinced that it was the god Helios who led him away "from the blood, the tumult, the screams and the dead."

As he grew into adulthood, Julian would trace Constantine's lust for power as the source of all the ills of his descendants: "ignorant as he was," Constantine believed "that it was enough to have a large number of children to keep the substance" that he had accumulated "without intelligence," not bothering "to see to it that the children were educated by wise people," so that each of his children continued to behave like their father, with a desire to "possess everything by himself to the detriment of others."

Formation of Julian

Constantine's three sons divided the kingdom, assuming the title of Augustus: the second-born Constantius II, who had placed a lien on the kingdom by having attended, the only one of his brothers, his father's funeral, obtained the rich eastern provinces; the eldest son Constantine II the western ones, excluding Italy, which with Africa and the Balkans were assigned to the third-born Constans I, subordinate to his older brother and deprived of the right to enact laws.

Constantius II removed the surviving cousins from the court: Gallus was sent to Ephesus, while Julian, deprived of his father's property, was transferred to Nicomedia, in whose environs his maternal grandmother owned a villa where the child spent his summers: "in that deep calm one could lie down and read a book and occasionally rest his eyes. When I was a child, that house seemed to me the most beautiful vacation spot in the world." It was one of the happiest periods of his existence: entrusted for a short time to the care of Bishop Eusebius, who as early as the fall of 337 was promoted to the chair of Constantinople, an encounter took place in Nicomedia that was to have great importance for his education, that with the eunuch Mardonius, formerly his mother's tutor, who was charged with providing for his education.

Mardonius was an old Scythian - as the Goths were called in the East - who had been perfectly integrated into late antique society for many years and who felt a genuine veneration for Greek culture: from him Julian learned classical literature and especially Homer, which opened his imagination to the fabulous world of the epic through constant and rigorous application. According to the pedagogical usage of the time, which was considered the most suitable for the formation of a truly cultured person, Julian had to memorize long passages from Homer and Hesiod, so that that poetic, moral, civil, and religious universe would become intimately imprinted in his spirit and, with the help then of the knowledge of the oratorical prose of Demosthenes and Isocrates, he would end up thinking and expressing himself according to the mentality and language of the classical tradition.

Giuliano himself will recall those years of apprenticeship: "my pedagogue taught me to keep my eyes on the ground, when I went to school he elaborated and almost sculpted in my soul what was then not at all to my taste but which, by dint of insistence, ended up making me seem agreeable, accustoming me to call seriousness being coarse, wisdom being insensitive, and strength of mind resisting passions he admonished me by telling me: - Don't let your theater-going peers drag you into being passionate about shows. Do you love horse races? There is a beautiful one in Homer. Pick up the book and read it. Do they tell you about mimes and dancers? Let them say. They dance far better than the young Phaeacians. And there you will find the citaredo Femio and the cantor Demodocus. And reading, in Homer, certain descriptions of trees is more pleasant than seeing them from life: I saw in Delos, by the altar of Apollo, a young palm sapling rising to the sky. And you will read of the wild island of Calypso, the lair of Circe, and the garden of Alcinous."

By now dead, in 341, both Bishop Eusebius and Constantine II, who had come into armed conflict with his brother Constant I, Emperor Constantius, perhaps suspecting that his surviving brother might use the two cousins to his own detriment, sent Gallus and Julian to the far end of Cappadocia, to the imperial estate of Macellum: deprived of his beloved tutor Mardonius, with a half-brother very different from him in character and interests, Julian was kept for six years in luxurious but oppressive isolation: "what should I say of the six years we spent on that estate of others, like those whom the Persians keep under guard in fortresses, with no strangers approaching, nor were any of our ancient acquaintances allowed to visit us? We lived excluded from all serious teaching, from all free conversation, reared in the midst of splendid servitude, practicing with our slaves as with colleagues." Their overseers also had the task of giving, of the tragic events that had marked their childhood, the "official" version, which naturally excluded any responsibility of Constantius.

The "little serious teaching" was probably the study of the Old and New Testaments, in which, moreover, he had to take an interest and make rapid progress, if it is true that soon there was nothing more to teach him. One of his teachers was Bishop George of Cappadocia, an Arian presented by ancient sources as a scheming careerist. Not, however, an ignoramus, as his orthodox rival Athanasius claimed, since George possessed an excellent library not only of Christian authors, of which Julian gladly took advantage and, after George's death in 362, tried to have himself sent from Alexandria to Antioch. While there is no doubt that Julian was sincerely Christian then, it is not known with how much intimate conviction Julian adhered to the Christian religion which he professed, as he says, until he was twenty years old, and it is unknown whether he ever received baptism.

In 347 the two young half-brothers received a brief visit from Constantius: the emperor was probably favorably impressed by their behavior, for at the end of the year he recalled Gallus to court and, shortly afterward, Julian as well. In Constantinople he was placed back in the care of Mardonius and began higher studies under the pagan grammarian Nicocles of Sparta, a learned Hellenist who interpreted the Homeric poems allegorically, who imparted to him not only lessons in metrics, semantics and literary criticism, but also teachings in history, geography and mythology.

Nicocles will be with Julian at the court of Antioch and, ever loyal to himself and the emperor, will mourn his death at his own risk, unlike the other rhetoric teacher Ecebolius, a Christian who became a pagan to please him, except to return to Christianity after Julian's demise. Perhaps Julian was thinking of him in writing that certain rhetoricians, "when they have nothing to say and nothing they can glean from their own subject matter, keep bringing up Delos and Latona with her children and then the swans with their shrill song echoing through the trees and dewy meadows thick with tall grasses When did Isocrates ever make use of them in his panegyrics? When did other authors of antiquity do so who, unlike those of today, were sincerely devoted to the Muses?"

Julian, in his early twenties, was "of medium stature, with straight hair, a shaggy pointed beard, with beautiful flashing eyes, a sign of lively intelligence, well-marked eyebrows, a straight nose and a rather large mouth, with a pendulous lower lip, a thick, curved neck, broad shoulders, well-built from head to toe, so as to be excellent at running." He was outgoing in character, simple-minded, and made himself approachable willingly, without showing the haughtiness and detachment common to high-ranking personages.

It was perhaps out of fear that Julian would become too popular in Constantinople that Constantius, in 351, removed him from the court by sending him to study in Nicomedia, with the prohibition, expressed by his teacher Ecebolius, of attending the lectures of his rival Libanius, the famous pagan rhetorician, whose lecture notes Julian nonetheless procured and became, as his youthful orations show, an open imitator of, and maintaining a clear trace of his style even in his more mature writings. The rival rhetoricians Proeresius, Acacius of Caesarea, and Tuscian of Phrygia did not hesitate to reproach Julian for his predilection for the archaizing atticism of a teacher who flaunted ignorance of the researches of modern rhetoric.

Still missing from the completion of his cultural education was the study of philosophy: among the philosophical schools in vogue at the time was Neoplatonic philosophy, inaugurated by Plotinus and continued with different outcomes by his direct pupils Porphyry and Giamblicus. All reality is conceived as an emanation of the absolute divine entity, the One: man's supreme task is to try to trace back to that unity, achieving mystical assimilation with the divine. There are, however, different means of attaining absolute knowledge, according to the distinct philosophical schools: through the rationality of thought, or through contemplation, or even by using, as the school inaugurated by Giamblicus, divination and magical practices.

Giamblicus, following in this Julian the Theurgist on whom he had written commentaries, had introduced into Neoplatonic philosophy a theurgy based on the ancient theology of the Chaldaean Oracles, popularized in the second century by Julian the Chaldean and his son Julian the Theurgist, a spiritual discipline in which the use of ritual actions, words and sounds was essential, with the magical power to evoke gods and demons, to purify the soul of the mýstes, enabling him finally to unite with the deity. However, mantics is not a science or an art that anyone can learn: it is a gift reserved for a chosen few.

In search of a man with such sapiential gifts, from Nicomedia Julian was directed to Pergamum, where there was the neo-Platonic school held by the successor of Jamblichus, old Edesius of Cappadocia, who, in turn, advised him to attend the lectures of two of his pupils, Eusebius of Mindo and Chrysantius of Sardis. From Eusebius' lectures he learned of the existence of a theurgist named Maximus, apparently capable of amazing wonders.

Convinced that he had finally found the man he was looking for, Julian traveled to Ephesus in 351 to meet him and was first instructed by him, along with Chrysantius, in Jambolic theurgy. As Libanius writes, from them Julian "heard about the gods and the demons, about the beings who, in truth, created this universe and keep it alive, learned what the soul is, where it comes from, where it goes, what causes it to fall and what raises it up, what depresses it and what exalts it, what imprisonment and freedom are for it, how it can avoid the one and attain the other. Then he rejected the nonsense he had hitherto believed in in order to settle in his soul the splendor of truth." and was finally initiated into the mysteries of Mithras.

The initiation rite constituted a very emotionally intense experience, of which it is only possible to imagine the setting: "darkness crossed by sudden flashes of light, long silences broken by murmurs, voices, shouts, and then the din of music cadenced by a repetitive rhythm, scents of incense and other fragrances, objects animated by magic formulas, doors opening and closing on their own, statues coming alive and lots of flashlight fire."

This was the first of the seven degrees of the initiatory path to the mysteries, the purpose of which was the pursuit of spiritual and moral perfection, to be carried out according to a planetary ascent that was to lead the initiate's purified soul to the sphere of the fixed stars, the "divine realm set beyond time and space that condition the cosmic and human spheres with their laws. Having arrived at the final stage of apogenesis, free now from the cycle of death and rebirth-or, in Mithraic terms, fully saved-the pater

Julian would one day want Maximus with him, electing him as his spiritual guide. With his initiation into the mysteries of the unconquered Sun, he realized an aspiration he had been tending to since childhood: "from childhood there was inherent in me an immense love for the rays of the god, and to the ethereal light I directed my thoughts so much that, not tired of always looking at the Sun, if I went out at night with a pure and cloudless sky, immediately, forgetting everything, I turned to the celestial beauties and at the same time believed to grasp, of one's own existence, the necessity that made it an essential part of the whole: "whoever does not know how to transform, inspired by divine frenzy, the plurality of this life into the unitary essence of Dionysus runs the risk of seeing his life flow away in multiple directions, and with that fraying and vanishing will be forever deprived of the knowledge of the gods that I judge to be more precious than the dominion of the whole world."

Meanwhile, in 350, new political and military scenarios had appeared in the West: the commander of the imperial guard Magnentius had ousted and killed the emperor Constant. In response to this unexpected threat, Constantius found it necessary to appeal to his closest relatives: on March 15, 351, he appointed Gallus as Caesar by having him marry, as a seal of an alliance, albeit a precarious one, his sister Constantia and entrusting him with the control of the eastern territories of the Empire, then setting out to confront in a difficult but ultimately victorious war the usurper Magnentius.

Gallus, on his way to Antioch, stopped at Nicomedia, where Julian had meanwhile returned, and became suspicious of his half-brother's new philosophical and religious suggestions: in order to get clearer information on this circumstance, he immediately sent to Julian the Arian Aetius, founder of the sect of the Anomeans, and therefore an advocate of the merely human nature of Christ, to report to him on his behavior. Julian, though intending to conceal his spiritual turn by passing himself off as a practicing Christian-so much so that he had himself appointed reader of the church at Nicomedia-amiably came to an understanding with this intelligent theologian who, though he probably understood the young prince's secret convictions, sent reassuring reports to Gallus about Julian, who, once emperor, would host him several times at court.

After all, it was well beyond precaution not to become aware of the opinions of Julian, who at that time entertained in the house in Nicomedia and in the nearby villa he inherited from his grandmother a numerous company of "friends of the Muses and other gods" in long conversations cheered by wine from his vineyard. From Julian's letters we know some of the names of his guests: Libanius; the rhetorician Evagrius, a friend of Maximus; Seleucus, who was to become high priest and wrote two books on his Parthian campaign; the writer Alipius; and "the marvelous Arete," a disciple of Jamblicus, who perhaps initiated Julian into the Phrygian mysteries. At those banquets they did not fail to formulate plans in the not impossible event that one day Julian should ascend to the throne of the Empire: "he aspired to give the people their lost perspective and above all the worship of the gods. What most moved his heart were the ruined temples, the forbidden ceremonies, the overturned altars, the suppressed sacrifices, the exiled priests, the riches of the sanctuaries distributed to wretched people."

These hopes seemed to come to an abrupt and final end. Constantius II, informed of the criminal excesses to which Gallus and his wife Constantina were indulging in Antioch, invited the couple to Mediolanum (Milan) in the fall of 354: while Constantina, stricken with fevers, died in Bithynia during the journey, Gallus, when he arrived in Noricum, at Petovio-the present Ptuj-was dragged as far as Phianona, near Pola, and beheaded in the prison where Crispus had already been made to kill by his father Constantine. As for Constantine, she was awaited by a curious posthumous fate: this "singular heroine, who made flow, she alone, more human blood than many ferocious beasts would have shed," was sanctified as a "virgin" and her remains deposited in a famous Roman mausoleum named after her, where her sister Helen, wife of Julian, would also be interred.

Julian, writing later about those events, mitigated Gallus' responsibility for the events for which he was allegedly responsible, considering that his brother had been provoked and not deeming him deserving of the death sentence; he also notes how he had not even been allowed to defend himself in a regular trial and emphasizes the nefarious influence of Constantius' court officials, praepositus sacri cubiculi Eusebius, first and foremost, tribunus scutariorum Scudilon, comes domesticorum Barbation, agens in rebus Apodemios and notarius Pentadius.

Immediately after Gallus' execution, Julian was summoned to Mediolanum. One can imagine in what spirit he embarked on the journey, during which he wanted to visit a place dear to his imagination, the Ilium sung of by Homer, where Pegasus, a bishop who called himself a Christian but secretly "worshipped the Sun," favored the worship of Hector, whose bronze statue "shone, all shining with oil," and accompanied Julian to visit the temple of Athena and the supposed tomb of Achilles.

From Anatolia he embarked for Italy: having arrived in Mediolanum, he was imprisoned and, without being able to obtain an audience with the emperor, he was accused of plotting with Gallus against Constantius and even of having, as a teenager, left Macellum without permission. The insubstantiality of the charges, the intercession of the influential rhetorician Themistius and the intervention of the generous and learned empress Eusebia ended Julian's imprisonment after six months, and he was ordered to reside in Athens, where he arrived in the summer of 355. No "imposition" could have gratified him more: it was "as if Alcinous, having to punish a guilty Phaeace, had put him in prison in his own gardens."

The great city, though stripped during the centuries of most of its masterpieces of art and deprived of the extraordinary figures who had made it the intellectual capital of the Western world, nevertheless retained intact the fascination derived from its memories and remained a center of culture favored by the many students who attended its schools. Much success was had by the teaching of rhetoric, already given by Julian the Sophist, and now by his old pupil, the Armenian Christian Proeresius, a prodigious orator whose rival was the pagan Imerian, who had settled in Athens from the original Prusias, and had been initiated with his son into the Eleusinian mysteries.

As Maximus had already advised him in Ephesus, Julian in September went to Eleusis, where in the temple of Demeter and Persephone, having performed the ritual purifications and crowned with myrtle, he partook of the symbolic meal, drank the ciceon and met the famous hierophant who explained the complicated symbolism of the ceremony and introduced him to the mysteries. He then visited the Peloponnese, saying he was convinced that philosophy had abandoned "neither Athens, nor Sparta, nor Corinth, and its springs bathe the thirsty Argos."

In Athens he especially frequented the Neo-Platonic philosopher Priscus, the student of Aedesius, who invited him to his home and introduced him to his family: as emperor, Julian wanted him with him, and Priscus, who would be present with Maximus at his deathbed, consoling him at his final hour, "having come of age, disappeared along with the Greek temples."

He also met, but in passing, the Christians Basil of Caesarea and Gregory of Nazianzus, who left a venomous portrait of Julian: "I did not foresee anything good by seeing his ever-moving neck, his shoulders jerking like plates of scales, his eyes with an exalted gaze, his uncertain gait, his insolent nose, his boisterous and convulsive laughter, the movements of his head without reason, his hesitant speech, the questions asked without order or intelligence, and the answers that overlapped one with another like those of a man without culture." But if one disregards, in this portrait, the intended caricature, there remains simply the common image of a shy man, awkward when he feels he is being observed and who gets excited and blushes when he has to speak in public.

Already in the fall of that 355 he was unexpectedly ordered to report again to Mediolanum. It is understandable that the command of a capricious and suspicious tyrant like Constantius should have troubled him deeply: "What torrents of tears I have shed" - he will write to the Athenians - "what groans, hands raised to the Acropolis of your city, calling upon Athena The goddess herself knows better than anyone that in Athens I asked her to die rather than return to court. But she did not betray her supplicant and forsake him She guided me everywhere, and everywhere she sent me the guardian angels of Helios and Selene."

Julian Caesar

While Julian sailed for Italy in October, Constantius II got rid of General Claudius Silvanus, commander of the legions stationed in Gaul, the sixth usurper of his kingdom, by deception and assassination. But problems with the fearsome Germanic tribes in that border region had worsened: the Franks and Alemanni were overrunning the frontiers by conquering Roman strongholds, while to the east the Quadi entered Pannonia and in the east the Sasanians pressed on Armenia, and once again Julian was made to wait at the gates of Mediolanum, as if the court were deciding his fate in those days.

In a night spent in the anguished uncertainty of a fate he feared sealed, he appealed to the gods, who in his thoughts spoke to him, rebuking him, "You who consider yourself an estimable man, a wise man and a righteous man, will you shirk the will of the gods, will you not allow them to dispose of you at their pleasure? Where is your courage? What do you do with it? There's a laughing matter: here you are ready to grovel and flatter for fear of death, while it is your power to throw everything behind you and let the gods do as they will, entrusting them to take care of you, just as Socrates suggests: to do, to the extent possible, what depends on you, and everything else defer to them; not to try to get anything but to receive with simplicity what they give you."

And Julian attributed to this abandonment of him to the divine will the decision the court made regarding him. On the advice of Eusebia, Julian was granted the purple of Caesar, which Constantius dressed him on November 6, 355, in Mediolanum before the deployed troops: "A just admiration greeted the young Caesar, radiant with splendor in the imperial purple. One did not cease to contemplate those eyes at once terrible and fascinating and that physiognomy to which emotion gave grace." Then he took his seat in Constantius' chariot to return to the palace, murmuring, in remembrance of Gallus' fate, Homer's verse, "Prey to purple death and inflexible fate."

As long as he remained at court, though Caesar, his guarded status did not change: "locks and guards at the doors, examine the hands of the servants so that no one would hand me notes from friends, foreign servants!" However, he also had at his disposal four trusted servants, including the physician Oribasius and the secretary Evemero, "the only one who was aware of my faith for the gods and secretly practiced it with me," who also took care of the library given to Julian by Empress Eusebia. Almost nothing is known about the African Evemero, while Oribasius was always at her side and kept a diary later used by the historian Eunapius. Equally little is known of Helena, Constantius' sister whom he gave in marriage in those days to Julian: she passed like a shadow in the life of her husband, who hardly ever speaks of her. She had one stillborn child and at least one miscarriage: a Christian, she died in Vienne in 360 and was buried in Rome, next to her sister Constantina.

On December 1, 355, Julian, with an escort of 360 soldiers, set out for Gaul. He had had no specific military training: he tried to gain at least some theoretical experience through reading Caesar's Commentaries-also a way of refining his not high knowledge of Latin-and Plutarch's Parallel Lives. His powers were strangely limited: military command would be exercised by Marcellus, while the prefecture went to Florentius and the questura was exercised by Salustius, all of whom would be accountable solely to Constantius. It is clear that the emperor continued to distrust his cousin and had taken away as many of his powers as possible in fear of his usurpation. The procession passed through Turin, crossed the Alps via the Monginevre Pass, disgorged at Briançon, and finally reached Vienne, where Julian established his residence.

Having survived the winter, in June 356 he marched to Autun, then to Auxerre and Troyes, where he dispersed a group of barbarians and from there joined Marcellus' army at Rheims. Suffering a defeat by the Alamanni, he recovered by pursuing them as far as Cologne, which was abandoned by the enemy. Winter having set in, he retreated to the entrenched camp of Sens, where he had to endure a siege without Marcellus bringing him aid. Having denounced the behavior of that magister militum to the emperor, Constantius II removed Marcellus from office, replacing him with Severus and finally entrusting the command of the whole army of Gaul to Julian.

The following summer he decided on an attack across the Rhine frontier, preparing a plan to outflank the enemy to be carried out with the help of the 30,000 men who had come from Italy under the command of General Barbation, but the plan failed because of the severe defeat suffered by the latter, following which the general left the army and returned to Mediolanum. The Alamanni, commanded by Cnodomarius, tried to take advantage of the favorable moment by attacking Julian near Strasbourg: after Julian himself reorganized and brought back into battle the routed Roman heavy cavalry, the Alemanni, superior in numbers, tried to break through the center of the Roman array, which resisted with difficulty: then, the disciplined Roman infantry recovered and won the battle, putting the Alamanni on the run across the Rhine. The commander Cnodomarius, taken prisoner, was sent to the Milanese court as a war trophy: he died a few years later, a prisoner in Rome, in an imperial house on the Caelian Hill.

Julian took advantage of the victory at Strasbourg by crossing the Rhine and ravaging enemy territory, eventually reoccupying the ancient Roman garrisons that had fallen into enemy hands for years. Then he concluded a truce, obtained the return of prisoners, and turned against the Frankish tribes that were meanwhile raiding the northern territories of Gaul, forcing them to surrender after a long siege at two forts near the Meuse. Finally, the Romans were able to retreat in late winter to the encampments established at Lutetia Parisiorum, present-day Paris.

This is how Julian describes it: " The Celts call the town of the Parisii. It is not a large island, placed on the river, and a wall encircles it all around, wooden bridges allow passage on both sides, and rarely does the river wane or swell, in general it remains the same in summer and winter, offering very sweet and pure water to those who wish to see or drink it. Precisely because it is an island, from there especially the inhabitants have to draw water at them grows a good vine, there are also some fig trees which they have arranged protecting them in winter While on the right bank there was a forest, in addition to the islet on the Seine, the left bank of the river was also inhabited and there stood houses, an amphitheater and the troops' camp.

In the following spring of 358 Julian resumed hostilities against the Salian Franks in Toxandria - present-day Flanders - on whom he imposed auxiliary status and, having crossed the Meuse, drove the Camavi Franks back across the Rhine. When it came to marching again against the Alamanni, the army refused to obey, protesting that they had not been paid wages. In reality, Julian had few resources: he was able to quell the protests and cross the Rhine, recovering Roman prisoners and requisitioning material-iron and timber-to rebuild the destroyed old garrisons. A fleet, partly rebuilt and partly from Britain, enabled supplies by sailing up the two major rivers of the Meuse and Rhine from the North Sea.

The following year he continued the work of defending the borders and crossed the Rhine for the third time to obtain the submission of the last Alemannic tribes: his historian writes that Julian "after he had left the western provinces and for as long as he lived, all the peoples kept quiet, as if they had been pacified by Mercury's caduceus."

Historians of the time agree in giving Gaul, prior to Julian's arrival, an image of desolation, due as much to the frequent raids of the barbarians, which Roman defenses were unable to counter, thus causing the abandonment of territories close to the eastern frontiers, as to the exuberance of taxation, which affected the entire nation, and to the general crisis of the slave economic system, aggravated from the third century onward, which involved the entire Roman world and in particular the Western Empire.

Large landowners and wealthy citizens abandoned the cities, letting artisan and commercial activities decay, preferring safer provincial residences and investing in the latifundium, which grew larger to the detriment of small property. The less wealth produced by the provinces made the taxation that was set by the state by fifteen-year decree-the indictio- intolerable, and the lower revenues provoked the imposition of a new taxation, the superindictio.

This land tax, the capitatio, was set per capita, that is, per family unit, and amounted in those years to 25 solids, and was often evaded by large landowners, who could secure impunity or, at most, enjoy favorable remissions over time.

In 358 the prefect Florentius, faced with the lower revenues collected than expected, imposed an additional tax to which Julian objected, declaring that he would "rather die than give his consent to such a measure." Having re-counted the necessary revenue, Julian proved that the taxes collected were sufficient for the province's needs and opposed, on the one hand, the prosecution of defaulting taxpayers in Gallia Belgica, which was particularly hard hit by the invasions, and, on the other, the granting of pardons to wealthy evaders in other provinces.

According to Ammianus, Julian ended up reducing the capitatio by two-thirds: when Julian arrived in Gaul, "the testatum and land tax burdened each person to the extent of twenty-five gold pieces; when he left, seven pieces were more than enough to meet the exchequer's requirement. Therefore, as if the sun had begun to shine again after a dreary period of darkness, there was dancing and great gladness."

He was also involved in the administration of justice, presiding over appeals trials in the ancient imperial tradition, and showing the scrupulousness necessary for plaintiffs to provide evidence for their accusations: in fact, "who will be innocent if it suffices to accuse?" he replied to the exclamation "who will be guilty if it suffices to deny?" uttered by the accuser and sending the official Numerian acquitted. In 359, however, he did not want to favor the prefect Florentius in a trial involving him, leaving the case to his friend and adviser, Quaestor Salustius, whom the imperial court ended up dismissing at the instigation of Florentius himself.

Salustius' departure was a blow to Julian: "What devoted friend is left for the future? Where will I find such frank simplicity? Who will invite me to prudence with good advice and affectionate rebuke, or incite me to do good without arrogance, or know how to speak frankly to me after putting aside all rancor?"

The one for his friend Salustius is the fourth of the panegyrics composed by Julian. The other three were composed, also in Gaul, one for the empress Eusebia and two for Constantius. To Eusebia he had expressed in 356 his gratitude for the protection she had given him and for the interest she had shown in what he loved: the opportunity to settle in Athens, his philosophical studies, the books he had received as gifts.

If the oration for Eusebia is sincere, the two orations dedicated to Constantius, which nevertheless retain equal interest, certainly cannot be considered such. In the first, composed at the same time as the one for Eusebia, he portrays Constantius as "a citizen subject to the law, not a monarch above it": a statement of blanket irony that not only does not correspond to reality, but expresses a conception opposite to that set forth by Constantius himself, who in his Letter to the Senate had theorized a society without laws-which he considered expressions of the perversion of human nature-sufficient in the figure of the emperor, the embodiment of divine law, to regulate according to justice the civil human assembly.

The second panegyric for Constantius was composed shortly after the victory at Strasbourg, which Constantius attributed to his own merit: in fact, the oration opens by mentioning the Homeric episode of the confrontation between Achilles and the supreme leader Agamemnon who, "instead of treating his generals with tact and restraint, had resorted to threats and insolence when he had taken from Achilles the reward of his valor." On the other hand, Julian both admonishes himself and at the same time assures Constantius of his loyalty when he recalls that "Homer admonishes the generals not to react to the insolence of kings and invites them to bear their criticism with self-control and serenity."

The panegyric also addresses the question of the legitimacy of the ruler, which Julian expresses in an apparently contradictory way. On the one hand, in fact, the legitimacy of royal power derives from dynastic descent: for if Zeus and Hermes had legitimized the Pelopides who had ruled over a part of tiny Greece for only three generations, all the more reason why the descendants of Claudius the Gothic - among whom Julian includes himself - who have now ruled over the whole world for four generations, must be considered legitimate sovereigns.

On the other hand, however, the law is born from Dike and is therefore the "sacred and fully divine fruit of the most powerful of deities," while the king is not the "embodiment of the law," but only the guardian of the divine word. Therefore, since the ruler is not the embodiment of law, i.e., virtue, the legitimacy of sovereignty does not have its source from birth, which cannot in itself guarantee the virtue of the ruler: he "should keep his gaze fixed on the king of the gods whose servant and prophet he is." The good sovereign has three basic tasks to perform: administer justice, ensure the welfare of the people, and defend them from external aggression.

The panegyric also contains an open profession of faith, which also sounds like a threat: "Often men have stolen Helium's votive offerings and destroyed his temples: some have been punished, others have been left to their own devices because they were deemed undeserving of the punishment that leads to repentance." He is right, according to Julian, for popular religion to claim the real existence of deities, but the sage does better, neo-Platonistically, to consider deities symbolic expressions of spiritual realities and truths. Julian concludes by urging Constantius not to give in to hubris and not to give credence to the slanders of advisors, "Terrible thing is slander! It devours the heart and wounds the soul, more than iron can wound the flesh!"

In January 360 Constantius II, in order to cope with the pressure of the Persians in the eastern frontiers, sent tribune and notarius Decentius to Gaul to request not directly from Julian but from General Lupicinus auxiliary troops fighting under the Roman insignia composed of Celts, Eruli, Petulants, and Batavians, and from tribunus stabuli Sintula part of Julian's personal guard, to employ them against the constant Persian threat. More than half of the army of Gaul would thus have been placed at Constantius' disposal.

Because of the absence of Lupicinus, who was engaged in Britain, it was Julian who had to deal with Decentius. While pointing out that he had promised those troops that they would not be deployed in other regions of the Empire, Julian apparently cooperated with Decentius: the chosen troops would concentrate in Lutetia before leaving for the East. The reaction of the soldiers and their families was not long in coming: "the population believed that they were on the eve of a new invasion and the revival of the evils that had been extirpated with great effort. The mothers who had given children to the soldiers showed them the newborns who were still breastfeeding and begged them not to abandon them."

Greeting the assembled army in the Field of Mars, Julian then entertained the commanders for a farewell banquet. That night, great clamors rose up to the windows of the palace in which Julian still lived with his wife Helen: "as the cries grew louder and louder and the whole palace was in turmoil, I asked the god to show me a sign, and he immediately acquiesced and commanded me to yield and not to oppose the will of the army." The sign sent to him by Zeus would appear that very night, during sleep, in the form of the Genius Publicus, the Genius of the Empire: "For a long time I have been watching the threshold of your house, eager to increase you in dignity. Many times I have felt rejected and turned away. If you drive me away again, I will leave forever." From the account of Ammianus Marcellinus it seems that the rebellion was imposed on Julian by the soldiers, but according to Eunapius things were otherwise: "Sent to Gaul with the title of Caesar not so much to reign there as to find death there under the purple, plotting against him a thousand intrigues and a thousand plots, Julian brought from Greece the hierophant of Eleusis, and having celebrated with him certain of their rites, he felt encouraged to overthrow the tyranny of Constantius. He had for confidants in this enterprise Oribasius of Pergamum and a certain Evemerian," and he used six other conspirators to stir up the revolt of the soldiers.

The next morning, hoisted on shields-a barbaric ritual-and with the torc (decorative collar) of an insignia-bearer on his head to serve as an imperial diadem, he was carried in triumph by the soldiers, to each of whom he promised the customary handout of five solids and a pound of silver. As Florentius, Decentius and the men who remained loyal to Constantius left Gaul, Julian began to negotiate with the emperor. In a letter sent to Constantius, signing himself Caesar, he gave an account of events, pointing out that he had had no part in the uprising, which had been provoked by the request for the transfer of troops: he equally promised cooperation in the Parthian war, offering a limited military contingent, and asked that he be granted full autonomy in the government of Gaul; he would also write a second letter to him, openly accusing him of being responsible for the massacre of his relatives.

Constantius rejected any agreement, ordering him not to overstep his prerogatives and, at the same time, incited Vadomarius, king of the Alemanni, to invade Gaul: according to Julian, Constantius "raises us against the barbarians; he proclaims me to them his open enemy; he disburses denarii so that the Gallic nation may be destroyed; writing to his own in Italy, he orders them to guard against those who come from Gaul; on the frontiers, in various cities, he has three million medimmi of wheat collected; he sends me a certain Epictetus, a Gallic bishop, to give me assurances of my personal safety."

Julian, after leading a surprise attack on the Frankish Actuaries in order to make the Rhine frontier more secure, went up the river to Basel and settled in Vienne, where on November 6 he celebrated the fifth anniversary of his election as Caesar. At the same time he had the mint of Arles mint a gold coin with his effigy and the imperial eagle: on the reverse was a tribute to the "virtue of the army of Gaul." Meanwhile, in those days his wife Helena died-following by a few months the death of Empress Eusebia-so that now the two rivals had nothing in common. Having issued an edict of tolerance for all cults, Julian still maintained a feigned devotion to the Christian denomination, praying publicly in church on the feast of Epiphany.

In the spring of 361 Julian had Vidomarius arrested and deported to Spain: believing that he had secured Gaul, he drew auspices for the decisive venture against Constantius, which were favorable to him, so that in July he began the advance toward Pannonia. He divided the troops into three sections, placing himself at the head of a small but extremely mobile force of about 3,000 men, which crossed the Black Forest, while General Jovian traveled through northern Italy and Nevitta crossed into Rhaetia and Noricum. Without encountering resistance, Julian and his troops embarked on the Danube and on October 10 landed at Bononia, from where they reached Sirmio, one of the court's residences, which surrendered without a fight.

The garrison of Sirmio was sent to Gaul but rebelled, stopping at Aquileia, which was besieged by Jovian forces. Julian proceeded, together with Nevitta's army, to Naissus, in Illyria, Constantine's birthplace, and thence to Thrace: leaving general Nevitta in charge of guarding the strategic pass of Succi (Succorum angustia) near Mount Emo, he returned to Naissus, establishing winter quarters there. From here he sent messages to Athens, Sparta, Corinth, and Rome, explaining, from his point of view, the events that had provoked the conflict. The message to Rome, then plagued by a famine against which Julian took action, was not welcomed by the Senate, which was scandalized by the irreverence Julian showed toward Constantius. The message to the Athenians, the only one preserved to us in its entirety, concludes by wishing for an agreement by which Julian would consider himself "paid for what I presently possess"; if, on the other hand, Constantius wants to decide, as it seems, for war, "I will also know how to operate and suffer."

There was no need: in Naissus he was joined in mid-November by a delegation from the Eastern army, which announced the death of Constantius on November 3 at Mopsucrene, Cilicia, and the subjugation of the eastern provinces. It is said, without certainty, that in extremis Constantius had designated Julian as his successor; Julian addressed letters to Maximus, his secretary Eutherius, and his uncle Julius Julianus, to whom he wrote that "Helios, to whom I turned for help before any other god, and the supreme Zeus are my witnesses: I never wished to kill Constantius, on the contrary, I wished the opposite. Why then did I come? Because the gods commanded me, promising me salvation if I obeyed, the worst misfortune if I did not."

With the conviction that he was the bearer of the mission of restorer of the empire assigned to him by Helios-Mithras, he immediately set out for Constantinople: as soon as he arrived in the capital, on December 11, he ordered a mithraeum to be erected inside the imperial palace, giving thanks to the god who would be the inspiration for all his actions from this point on. At the end of the year he proclaimed general toleration of all religions and cults: pagan temples could thus be reopened and sacrifices celebrated, while those Christian bishops whom mutual disputes between Orthodox and Arians had driven from their cities returned from exile. While religious toleration was in keeping with the demands of his spirit, it is probable that in regard to Christianity Julian had calculated that "toleration favored disputes among Christians Experience had taught him that there are no beasts more dangerous to men than Christians are often to their co-religionists."

Julian Augustus

Warmly welcomed by the capital of the Empire, Julian paid homage to Constantius' body by accompanying it to its final resting place in the Basilica of the Holy Apostles. He thus performed the formal act of an apparently legitimate succession so much so that he now allowed himself to call his predecessor "brother," elevated by the Senate to apotheosis, wishing that "the earth would be light" to the "most blessed Constantius."

He used deference to the Senate of Constantinople, making them ratify his election, granting tax exemptions to its members, appearing at their assemblies and refusing the title Dominus, while with his own friends he maintained traditional camaraderie.

Pious toward the late emperor, Julian was, however, inflexible toward the "dark souls" of his advisers. After the investigation conducted by the magister equitum Arbizione, a tribunal assembled at Chalcedon and presided over by Salustius condemned to capital punishment the chamberlain Eusebius, the delators Paulus Catena and Apodemius-the latter two were burned alive-the comes largitionum Ursulus, the ex-prefect of Gaul Florentius, who nevertheless managed to escape, and officials Gaudentius and Artemius, while Taurus got off with exile in Vercelli and Pentadius was acquitted.

At the same time he established the court staff to the bare minimum: drastically reduced the notarii, the staff of the bureaucracy, removed eunuchs, confidants and spies - the agentes in rebus and the so-called curios - to the chancery he called Maximus' brother Nymphanidianus, and his collaborators were Salustius, Euterius, Oribasius, Anatolius, Mamertinus and Memorius. In addition to his spiritual guides Maximus and Priscus, he entertained or invited to court his old masters Mardonius, Nicocles and Ecebolius, his uncle Julius Julian, the Christians Caesarius, physician and brother of Gregory of Nazianzus, Aetius and Proeresius. His military lieutenants were magistri equitum Jovianus, Nevitta and Arbition, and magister peditum Agilon, an Alemannic.

The thinning of the central bureaucracy went in the direction of decentralizing the administrative machinery and revitalizing municipal functions. Already the highest expression of classical Greek civilization, the polis had continued to enjoy, still in the Hellenistic kingdoms and then in the Roman Empire, administrative autonomy through the curiae, their own municipal councils, which had also ensured the development of the social and cultural activities of the local populations. Beginning in the third century, however, economic crisis, inflation, tax aggravation and the trend toward the centralization of central power, with the gradual growth of the state's bureaucratic staff and the avocation of local prerogatives to it, had caused a slow decline of urban centers.

The administrative councils of the municipalities were made up of the noble citizens, the curiales or decurions, who were to be in charge of finances, apportioning the land tax and ensuring its collection with their personal property; construction, with the maintenance of roads; the recruitment of soldiers and the supply of foodstuffs and military housing; post stations; worship; civil status; and the criminal jurisdiction of the city, with the task of providing for the arrest and imprisonment of offenders.

The decurions preferred to escape such obligations, the better-off procuring employment in the high state bureaucracy, the Senate and the court, the less favored in the lower administration and the army and both, from the fourth century onward, in the ranks of the Church in which they were guaranteed exemptions and privileges-so much so that Constantine himself had to take steps to curb the exodus of curiales into the ecclesiastical ranks-others still by selling their property and making themselves clients of landowners, or even by emigrating among the "barbarians."

Faced with the depopulation of the curies, Julian included noble citizens also by maternal descent and enriched plebeians in the curial rolls, while lowering the burdens placed on the curies. On March 13, 362, six laws were published establishing the restitution of land confiscated from the municipalities in favor of the state and by the church together with compensation for the damage suffered; non-trading curiales were exempted from the tribute in precious metal-the collatio lustralis; Christian priests and other citizens who had joined guilds to avoid civic duties were invited to rejoin the curiae, under penalty of a heavy fine; and tax collections were entrusted to the decurions, taking them away from the senators. In April Julian made the aurum coronarium, a tax that burdened the decurions, optional, setting its maximum at 70 gold staters, cancelled back taxes, with the exception of collatio lustralis, and transferred the care of post stations and the cost of road maintenance-the de itinere muniendo-from the municipalities to the possessores.

He tried to combat the corruption of the numerarii, the accountants of the municipal administrations, and the system of suffragium, the clientelistic practice of buying public offices from influential people, the so-called suffragatores: but that this practice was so deep-rooted and widespread as to be almost impossible to eradicate is shown by the fact that Julian had to limit himself to decreing that those who had paid money without obtaining the requested favor could not claim the return of the money or gifts disbursed. He also sought to shorten the judicial process of trials, the length of which was often a condition of illicit compromises, by repealing the possibility of obtaining frequent adjournments and decentralizing the judiciary itself.

On the whole, Julian conducted a deflationary economic policy, aimed at uplifting the conditions of the humiliores by reducing the prices of basic necessities, while at the same time trying not to displease the interests of the privileged classes - merchants and landowners - by distributing the burdens of city administrations among a greater number of possessores and reducing their taxes.

Julian and the myth of heroes: toward the eastern campaign

In classicism, historical figures who had accomplished great feats were assimilated from time to time as gods (theòi), heroes (héroes) or demigods (hemìtheoi), a product of the descent of the deity to earth, or epiphany, which Julian, taking upPlotinus and Jacoblichus, refers to as "pròodos," the procession from heaven to earth accomplished by Asclepius, begotten by Zeus and manifested among men through the life-giving energy of Helios.

Dionysus, Heracles, and Achilles, as paradimatic figures and examples to be imitated, had exerted great appeal on Alexander the Great and Caesar, inspiring them to great feats. The former succeeded in completing the conquest of the Middle East, the latter died while preparing for war against the Parthians. In both cases the feats were also the product of a desire to realize a myth, to give substance to the epiphany, and in the Alexandrian project Alexander-Achilles-Herakles-Dionysus are the different persons of one nature: the divine.

To Dionysus and Heracles Julian is equated by Themistius of Constantinople, and Julian writes to him that "you have made my fear greater and have shown me that the undertaking is in everything more arduous, saying that by the god I have been assigned to the same place where previously Heracles and Dionysus stood, who were philosophers and at the same time reigned and cleansed almost all the land and sea of the evil that infested them." Libanius also compared Julian to Heracles, and for Ammianus Julian was "vir profecto heroicis connumerandus ingeniis."

Julian himself in the oration Against the Cynic Heraclius associates Mithras with Heracles, guided in his undertakings by Athena Pronoia, the savior of the world and thus interprets his own mission, in imitation of that model, in a soteric key as mediator and "savior of the inhabited world." Heracles and Attis, starting from a semi-divine condition, come to achieve perfect union with the divine, and Heracles' soul, once freed from the carnal envelope, returns whole to the totality of the Father. War, interpreted from a soteriological perspective, takes on the aspect of a purifying mission of the land and sea entrusted by the gods to Heracles and Dionysus. In this context, the project of conquering Persia matures as an adaptation to a divine will that has already been revealed and of which there is a trace in Virgil's Aeneid, which thus interpreted Rome's expansionism.

As the summer solstice approached Julian, rejecting the advice of those who would have him deal with the Goths, left Constantinople moving slowly in the direction of Syria. It was from these frontiers that the greatest threat to the empire had loomed for centuries now, that of the Persians, the enemies never vanquished by the Romans, who two years earlier, under the command of Sapore II, had put Constantius II's legions to flight and conquered Singara and Bezabde. Only the news of the arrival of a new emperor on the shores of the Bosphorus, preceded by the fame of his victories over the Germans, had been able to arrest the ambitious King of Kings on the banks of the Euphrates, waiting perhaps to understand the real worth of that new adversary and for favorable auspices to prompt him to resume his advance.

For his part, Julian was convinced that the omens could not have been more favorable to him: the theurgist Maximus had interpreted oracles that designated him a redivivivus Alexander, destined to repeat his exploits as the destroyer of the ancient Persian Empire, to reach as ruler those lands from which the cult of Mithras, his tutelary deity, came, to eliminate once and for all that historic threat, and to boast the title "victor of the Persians."

Julian crossed Chalcedon and stopped at Larissa, where Hannibal's tomb could still be seen. Arriving in Nicomedia, he realized the destruction caused by the earthquake the year before, tried to alleviate the plight of its inhabitants with handouts, and saw some friends again. He then went to Nicaea and Ancyra, where a column still commemorates his passage, and reached Pessinunte to pray to Cybele at her famous shrine. Here two Christians vilified the altars of the goddess, and Julian left the city, outraged by such an affront. He returned to Ancyra and from there to Tyana, Cappadocia, where he wanted to meet the pagan philosopher Aristoxenes, having specifically invited him so that he could finally see, as he wrote, "a pure Greek. So far I have only seen people who refuse to make sacrifices or people who would have liked to offer them but did not even know where to begin." He also met Celsus, his old fellow student and governor of Cilicia, with whom he continued on to Tarsus and from there reached Antioch.

Antiochus festively welcomed Julian, who saw him again and wanted Libanius with him, celebrated the Adoniae festivities there, and, to please the antiochesians, lovers of feasts and amusements, ordered against his customs a spectacle at the hippodrome, decreased taxes by one-fifth, pardoned unpaid arrears, added 200 curiales, chosen from among the wealthiest, to the city council so that public expenditures would be better apportioned, and granted state land to private cultivation.

But the harmony between the austere emperor and the inhabitants of the frivolous city was destined to break down. His hostility to licentious spectacles, devotion to the gods and frequent sacrifices could not be welcomed in a city with a Christian majority. Even the calming imposed on food prices did not achieve the hoped-for results, for falling prices irritated merchants and caused produce to thin out in the markets, harming everyone; to the scarcity of grain, on the price of which he imposed a decrease of a third, Julian provided at his own expense with large imports from Egypt, but speculators hoarded it, selling it outside the city at increased cost or leaving it in their warehouses, waiting for its price to rise.

Soon epigrams began to circulate that mocked his appearance, which appeared bizarrely neglected to be that of the most powerful and feared man, his unfashionable beard, shaggy hair, behavior that was not at all hieratic rather, strangely down-to-earth, "democratic," austere habits, lack of a sense of humor, a seriousness that appeared excessive in their eyes, and his very pagan faith.

For that matter, Julian himself seemed to change in the course of his stay in Antioch. According to Ammianus Marcellinus, he habitually let his friends and advisers moderate his emotional nature, which dragged him to impulsiveness; as preparations for the Persian military campaign began and the expedition approached, he increased his propitiatory rites to ensure success: "He flooded the altars with the blood of innumerable victims, going so far as to sacrifice up to a hundred oxen at a time, together with flocks and white birds from all parts of the Empire causing an unprecedented and onerous outlay of money anyone who declared himself, rightly or wrongly, an expert in divinatory practices, was admitted, without any respect for the prescribed rules, to consult the oracles heeded the song and flight of birds and every other omen, and tried by all means to predict events."

Near the city lay, in a valley rich in woods and water, the suburb of Daphne, where stood a shrine dedicated to Apollo, represented by an ivory statue carved by Briassides, and lapped by the Castalia spring, which legend claimed was talking. Closed by Constantius and falling into disrepair, a chapel had been built there where the remains of Bishop Babylon had been buried. Julian, who even before arriving in Antioch had asked his uncle Julius Julian to restore the temple, when the feast day of the god fell in August, went to Daphne and had the bitter surprise to see that the city council, made up largely of Christians, had not prepared any celebrations. Even Julian's votive questions were not answered by the god's statue or the Castalia spring, until the theurgist Eusebius believed he understood the reason: the presence of the bishop's tomb was responsible for the silence of the gods. The remains of Babylon were thus exhumed, much to the scandal of Christians, and reburied in Antioch.

Shortly thereafter, on the night of October 22, the temple of Daphne was completely destroyed by a violent fire. Investigations to find out who was responsible came to nothing, but Julian became convinced that it was Christians who had destroyed the shrine and in reaction had the cathedral in Antioch closed to worship.

The events that pitted Julian against the citizens of Antioch, or at least the city's Christian notables, are set forth by him in the writing Misopogon (The Enemy of the Beard), composed in January or February 363. It is a writing that eludes precise classification according to traditional literary canons. The autobiographical hints, in which he recalls the rigorous upbringing he received as a child and the life of rough simplicity that made him appreciated by the barbarian peoples during his time in Gaul, are intended to emphasize the incompatibility of his person with a city like Antioch in which instead "revelry is made from morning and merrymaking at night."

This behavior is the expression and result of freedom, a freedom that Julian does not intend to repress, for that would run counter to his own democratic principles: what runs counter to Julian's principles is the Antiochians' use of freedom, which ignores the canons of classical balance and Hellenic wisdom, a freedom that repudiates "all servitude, first that of the gods, then that of the laws, and third, that of the keepers of the laws."

The Antiochians saw in him a bizarre character, the bearer of obsolete values and therefore an anachronistic ruler, thus reacting to his initiatives, even those intended to favor them, now with indifference, now with irony, now with contempt: "the majority, not to say the totality of the people, who profess disbelief in the gods and see me as attached to the dictates of the religion of the fatherland, hate me; the rich, whom I prevent from selling everything at a high price; all then, hate me on account of the dancers and theaters, not because I deprive them of these delights, but because I care less about these delights than the frogs of the swamps."

But Julian seems to believe that the behavior of the Antiochians is dictated solely by ingratitude and wickedness: his measures taken to alleviate the city's economic situation seemed to be intended to "turn the world upside down, because with such genius indulgence only fosters and increases innate wickedness." And so, "of all evils I am the author, for I have placed benefits and favors in ungrateful souls. My stupidity is to blame, not your freedom."

Sasanian campaign

On March 5, 363, Julian began his campaign against the Sasanids by setting out with an army of 65,000 men from Antioch, which had been abandoned in the hands of Adrastea: this time he was accompanied as far as the village of Litarba by a large crowd and by the Antiochian Senate, which tried in vain to obtain condescension from him. He appointed as governor of Syria a certain Alexander of Heliopolis, a hard and brutal man, because those "greedy and insolent people" deserved no better. He contemptuously rejected a letter from the Persian king Sapore, offering a peace treaty and, greeting Libanius, headed for Hierapolis, crossed the Euphrates and reached Carre, of sad memory, where he offered sacrifices to the god Sin, worshipped there. It is said that here he secretly appointed his cousin, "the handsome, great and sad Procopius, with his figure always curved, his gaze always downcast, whom no one ever saw laughing," as his successor. That night, as if to reinforce sad forebodings about the outcome of the war, the temple of Apollo Palatine burned in Rome; perhaps the Books of the Cumaean Sibyl also burned.

In Carre he divided the army: 30,000 men, under the command of Procopius and Sebastian, were sent north to Armenia to join King Arsace, descend through the Corduene, ravage Media and, skirting the Tigris, then rejoin Julian in Assyria, who meanwhile, with his 35. 000 men, would descend south along the Euphrates, where a large fleet under the command of Lucillian sailed by sight carrying provisions, weapons, siege machines, and barges.

On March 27, the feast day of the Mother of the Gods, Julian was at Callinicum, on the Euphrates: he celebrated the ritual and received the homage of the Saracens, who offered him the support of their celebrated cavalry. Having crossed the Syrian desert, Julian reached Circesium, the last Roman outpost before the Sasanian kingdom, at the confluence of the Euphrates and the Khabur River. A letter from Salustius begged him in vain to suspend the enterprise: all auspices were against it. A portico, which collapsed as the troops passed, had killed dozens of soldiers, lightning had incinerated a horseman, of ten bulls, led to sacrifice, nine had died before reaching the altar of Mars.

Having crossed the Chabora River, the invasion of the Sasanian kingdom began: 1,500 guides preceded the vanguard and arranged themselves on the flanks of the army. On the right, Nevitta skirted the left bank of the Euphrates, in the center was the infantry of Gaul veterans commanded by Julian, on the left was the cavalry commanded by Arinteus and Ormisda, the elder half-brother of Sapore who had passed to the Romans and was promised the kingdom; Victor, the Germanic Dagalaiphus and Secondinus of Osroene held the rear guard.

Reaching Zaitha on April 4, Julian paid homage to the mausoleum of Emperor Gordianus, penetrated Dura Europos, a town abandoned for years, and easily obtained the surrender of the fort of Anatha, which was destroyed; in the town they found an old Roman soldier with his family, who had remained there since the time of Maximian's expedition. Burned Diacira, evacuated by the inhabitants, entered Ozagardana and destroyed it. After a day's rest, the Romans spotted the Persian army in the distance, which was attacked and forced to flee. After passing Macepracta, they arrived in front of Pirisabora, which was surrounded by irrigation canals, and began the siege, which ended with the surrender, sacking and burning of the city. Each soldier was given 100 siliques: faced with the army's dissatisfaction with a currency that retained only two-thirds of its face value, Julian promised the riches of the Persian kingdom.

Having overcome the fields flooded by the retreating Persians, having set fire to Birtha, the rams were right with the fortifications of Maiozamalcha: having penetrated through breaches in the walls and through an underground tunnel, the soldiers slaughtered the inhabitants. The commander was held hostage and of the spoils, Julian took for himself a mute boy with "a graceful and elegant expression."

It was early June; Julian visited the ruins of Seleucia. The Tigris was only a few kilometers away; as the fleet, through a junction channel with the Euphrates, entered the Tigris, the army surged past the great river on whose left bank awaited Surena's troops, determined to take advantage of the superior strategic position: but they were defeated, vaulted into flight, and forced to take refuge within the walls of the capital Ctesiphon. Facing the city's imposing ramparts, the council of war was held and it was decided to abandon the siege: the army of Sapore could have surprised the Romans engaged in the siege, who would have risked being caught between two fires. Thus another ancient oracle came true: "no Roman prince can pass Ctesiphon."

It would have been necessary for Procopius' forces to have come to join Julian's, but there was no news of Procopius. Julian, determined to catch up with him and, if possible, surprise and confront Sapore in a decisive pitched battle, turned north, having had most of the fleet set on fire with arms and provisions, because the ships were having difficulty getting up the river, and having incorporated his 20,000 soldiers for use in the fighting ashore. The march was made tormenting by heat, guerrilla warfare, thirst, and hunger, because the Persians burned crops in the lands the Romans crossed.

On June 16 Sapore's army finally appeared on the horizon, but it merely followed Julian's troops from a distance, refusing open combat and engaging only brief cavalry raids. On June 21 the Roman army stopped at Maranga for a three-day halt. Julian spent as usual his free time from military occupations reading and writing. On the night of June 25, he seemed to catch a glimpse of a figure in the darkness of his tent: it was the Genius Publicus, the one who had appeared to him on the exhilarating night of Lutetia and urged him not to let the opportunity to seize power pass him by. Now, however, he has his head veiled in mourning, looks at him without speaking, then turns and slowly fades away.

The next morning, despite the contrary opinion of the haruspices, he had the tents lifted to resume the retreat to Samarra. On the march, near the village of Toummara, a fight broke out in the rear guard: Julian rushed in without wearing armor, threw himself into the fray, and a javelin struck him in the side. He immediately tried to pull it out but fell from his horse and fainted. Carried to his tent, he revived, thought he was better, wanted his weapons but his strength did not respond to the will. He asked the name of the locality: "it is Phrygia," he was told. Julian understood that all was lost: he had once dreamed of a blond man who had predicted his death in a place with that name.

The prefect Salustius rushed to his bedside: he informed him of the death of Anatolius, one of his closest friends. Julian wept for the first time, and emotion gripped all the onlookers. He recovered, Julian: "It is a humiliation for all of us to mourn a prince whose soul will soon be in heaven mingling with the fire of the stars." That night he took stock of his life: "I must not repent or feel remorse for any action, either when I was an obscure man or when I had the care of the Empire. The gods paternally granted it to me and I kept it immaculate for the happiness and salvation of the subjects, equanimous in conduct, contrary to the license that corrupts things and customs." Then, as is worthy of a philosopher, he conversed with Priscus and Maximus about the nature of the soul. His spiritual guides reminded him of his destiny, set by the oracle of Helios:

Feeling suffocated, Julian asked for water: as soon as he had finished drinking, he lost consciousness. He was 32 years old and had reigned less than 20 months: with him, the last Greek hero died.

Salustius refused the succession, so the purple was granted to Jovianus. The latter stipulated peace with Sapore, by which the Romans ceded five provinces and the strongholds of Singara and Nisibis to the Persians. The retreat was resumed, during which they finally encountered Procopius' army: the latter was instructed to carry as far as the gates of Tarsus the body, which, according to Julian's wishes, was buried in a mausoleum beside a small temple on the banks of the river Cydnus. Opposite stood the tomb of another emperor, Maximinus Daia. The following year, Jovian passed through Tarsus and had an inscription carved on the tombstone:

Some historians believe that the sarcophagus containing the emperor's remains was later transported from Tarsus to Constantinople, or before the end of the 4th century, The burial urn was placed in the Church of the Holy Apostles, where emperors were buried at that time. In the 10th century, Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus (912-959), in a book describing ceremonial procedures, to the catalog containing a list of the sepulchres of the distinguished deceased, includes that of Julian with commentary:

A porphyry sarcophagus preserved in the city's Archaeological Museum is still identified with that of Julian; the relocation of the Julian remains from the Tarsus tomb is still debated among scholars.

"Letter to Themistius"

As soon as he heard that Julian was the new emperor Themistius, the rhetorician and philosopher of Constantius's court who had already benevolently interceded on his behalf during the difficult years of the relationship between the two cousins, sent him a letter in which, not failing to offer him his services-perhaps fearing that the planned renewal of court offices might jeopardize his career-he reminded Julian that his subjects expected legislative works from him even greater than those accomplished by Solon, Pittacus and Lycurgus.

Of course, Julian, in his reply, declares that he "is aware that he neither has by nature nor has subsequently acquired any eminent qualities at all, except the love of philosophy," from which he has learned, however, that it is fortune, týche, and chance, autómaton, that dominate individual life and political events. Quoting Plato, Julian believes that a ruler will therefore have to avoid pride, hýbris, by trying to acquire the art, téchne, of seizing the opportunity, kairós, offered by fortune. An art that is such as to be proper to a demon rather than a man, and therefore we must obey "that part of the divine within us" when we administer "public and private things, our houses and cities, considering law an application of Intelligence."

Of Aristotle Julian cites the condemnation of government based on hereditary law and despotism, in which one citizen is "master of all others. For if all are equal by nature, all are necessarily entitled to equal rights." To put a man in government is to be ruled by a man and a ferocious beast together: rather, reason must be put in government, which is as much as saying God and laws, because law is reason free from passions.

In practice it follows, as Plato states, that the ruler must be better than the governed, superior to them in study and in nature, who by all means and as much as he can must pay attention to the laws, not those created to meet momentary contingencies, but those prepared by whom, having purified the intellect and heart, acquired a thorough knowledge of the nature of government, contemplated the Idea of justice and understood the essence of injustice, transpose the absolute into the relative, legislating for all citizens, without distinction and regard for friends and relatives. Better would be to legislate for posterity and foreigners, so as to avoid all private interests.

Julian refutes Themistius's claim that he preferred the man of action to the political philosopher, mistakenly basing himself on a passage from Aristotle: between the active life and the contemplative life, the latter is certainly superior, since "by training not many, but as few as three or four philosophers, you can bring greater benefits to mankind than several emperors put together can." Thus Julian, not without irony, could also decline the offer of cooperation made to him by the philosopher Themistius. As for himself, "aware that he possessed no special virtue except that of not believing that he had the finest virtues," Julian put everything back into God's hands, so that he could be excused for his own shortcomings and appear discreet and honest about the eventual successes of his governing work.

In fact, his conception is different from what may appear in his letter to Themistius, or, at least, it will be expressed differently in his slightly later writings: the good ruler is not simply the philosopher who knowing the idea of good is able to make good laws, but he is the one who is invested with a mission that only the gods can have conferred on him. Why he expressed the classical idea of power here, rather than the contemporary idea of absolute and hereditary monarchy, has been interpreted as the result of the fear provoked in him by the immense power that fortune had placed in his hands: "the loneliness of power did not fail to frighten him. To recover a sense of his own identity he resorted to what was most his: his education and cultural background. Alone and confused as he was, he could indeed feel a strong bond of solidarity with the countless generations who, like him, had made use of Homer and Plato to give full consciousness to their emotions and acquire a deeper awareness." Fearful of the blind power of Tyche, he tried to exorcise it, left aside contemporary political doctrine and "turned to the great masters of his youth."

"Against the Cynical Heraclius": the theocratic conception of government.

The opportunity to present his doctrine was given to him by a public speech given in Constantinople in March 362 by Heraclius, an itinerant philosopher of the Cynic sect, which Julian himself had attended. Heraclius, irreverent as all Cynics are, expounded a myth, presenting himself as Zeus and Julian-who famously grew a goat-like beard on his chin-as Pan, alluded to Phaethon, the son of Phoebus who, inexperienced in driving the chariot of the Sun, had crashed miserably, and involved in his allegories Heracles and Dionysus, two figures very dear to Julian.

In one myth, Julian replies, it is said that Heracles had challenged Helios to a duel, and the Sun, recognizing his courage, gave him a golden cup over which the hero had crossed the Ocean: Julian writes in this regard that he believed that Heracles had rather "walked on water as if he had been on dry land," and pointing out that "Zeus with the help of Athena Pronoia had created him savior of the world and had placed this goddess at his side as his guardian later raised him to himself, thus commanding his son to come to him," explicitly denouncing Christians of copying in favor of Christ the Hellenic myths. Another example of Christian imitation is drawn from the depiction of Dionysus, whose birth "was not actually a birth, but a divine manifestation," who appeared in India as a visible god "when Zeus decided to grant all mankind the principles of a new state of affairs."

Julian knows well that myths are not real tales, but a disguise of the doctrine of the substance of the gods, which "cannot bear to be thrown with bare words into the unclean ears of the profane. Precisely the secret nature of the mysteries, even if not understood, is useful, for it cures souls and bodies and causes gods to appear." In this way, "divine truths are insinuated by means of riddles in the disguise of myths." Not only that, but "what in myths is presented as improbable, is precisely what opens the way to truth for us: for the more paradoxical and portentous the enigma, the more it seems to admonish us not to rely on the bare word, but to toil around the truth reposed, without tiring ourselves before this mystery, illuminated under the guidance of the gods," does not enlighten our intellect to the point of bringing our souls to perfection.

Equal concepts are expressed by his friend Second Salustius in his On the Gods and the World: myths "incite us to search imitate the whole of things inexpressible and ineffable, invisible and manifest, evident and obscure, present in the essence of the gods. By veiling the true meaning of figurative expressions, they protect them from the scorn of fools the apparent absurdity of such fables makes the soul realize that they are only symbols, for pure truth is inexpressible."

In contrast, the myth told by Heraclius was, in Julian's view, not only improper and ungodly but also lacking in originality, and Julian intends to present him with an example of how to construct a myth that is both new, instructive and relevant to historical facts. It is a story that takes its starting point from Constantine, whose ancestors worshipped Helios, but that emperor and his sons believed they were guaranteeing themselves eternity of power by betraying tradition and relying on the Christian god: "the temples of the ancestors were demolished by the sons, already despised by their father and stripped of their gifts, and along with the divine were profaned human things. Zeus was moved to pity for the sad plight of men who had fallen into impiety: he promised his daughters Hosiótes and Díke, Religion and Justice, to restore them on earth, and pointing Julian to Helios, he entrusted him, saying, "that child is your son."

Helios, the patron god of the Flavians, and Athena Pronoia, Providence, raised him, and Hermes, god of eloquence and psychopomp, the conductor of souls who introduces the initiate to the mysteries of Mithras, acted as a guide to the young man who lived in solitude and "advanced along a flat road, solid and all clean and filled with abundant and good fruit and flowers, such as the gods love, and with plants of ivy, laurel and myrtle." When they reached a mountain, Hermes said to him, "On the summit of this mountain the father of all the gods has his throne. Be careful: there is great danger. If you know how to worship him with the greatest piety, you will get from him what you want." One day Helios told him to return among mortals to win and "purge all the ungodliness of the earth and call to the rescue me, Athena and all the other gods," and pointing from above to the land where herds and shepherds were, he revealed to him that most of the shepherds-the rulers-were wicked "because they devour and sell the cattle" bringing back little profit of the much that was entrusted to them.

At last the young man agreed to melt away from a life hitherto devoted only to study and contemplation by showing himself ready to commit himself to the mission entrusted to him. Helios, after equipping him with a torch, the symbol of eternal light, the helmet and aegis of Athena and the golden caduceus of Hermes, guaranteed him the assistance of all the gods as long as he remained "devoted to us, faithful to friends, humane to subjects, commanding and guiding them for the best. But never yielding to the point of enslavement to your and their passions persuade you to forget our precepts. As long as you abide by them, you will be worthy and acceptable to us, an object of respect to the good who serve us and of terror to the wicked and ungodly. Know that the mortal body was given to you so that you might fulfill this mission. Out of respect for your ancestors, we desire to purify the house of your fathers. Remember then that you have an immortal soul descending from us, and if you follow us, you will be a god and with us you will contemplate your father."

Julian's writing thus expresses, through myth, a theocratic conception of government and also reveals how Julian does not conceive of the role of the emperor as émpsychos nomos, a personified law that, as such, is above laws that are imperfect because they are human: for Julian, laws have divine origin and, through Plato, he emphasizes that "if there is one who is distinguished by fidelity to the prevailing laws and in this virtue wins over all others, he must also be entrusted with the function of servant of the gods."

"Against the Ignorant Cynics": the cultural unity of Hellenism.

In Heraclius Julian had attacked the figure of certain modern philosophers, "stick, cloak, mop, and then ignorance, conceit, effrontery," because of whom "philosophy had become contemptible," and they had appropriated, in his view illegitimately, the name of a doctrine, that of Diogenes of Sinope and Cratetes of Thebes, of a quite different and noble nature.

A few months later, another of those itinerant philosophers attacked the figure of Diogenes, painting him as a boastful fool and mocking certain anecdotes circulating about that philosopher. Julian's response is intended to re-evaluate the dignity of Cynic philosophy, "which is neither the vilest nor the most despicable, but on the contrary comparable to the most illustrious," placing it in the Greek cultural tradition and showing how it can stand on a par with the most renowned Hellenic schools.

In fact, Helios, by sending through Prometheus the divine gift of fire, intended to make all beings partakers of "incorporeal reason" and therefore of divinity itself, albeit in varying degrees: to things by granting mere existence, to vegetables life, to animals the sensory soul and to humans the rational soul. This impels man to philosophy, which, though defined differently - art of arts or science of sciences - consists in "knowing oneself," which is equivalent to knowing that part of the divine present in every man. And just as one can get to Athens by taking the most diverse paths, so one can obtain self-knowledge through different philosophical speculations: "therefore no one should separate philosophy into many parts or divide it into many species, or rather, of one philosophy he should not make many. As there is only one truth, so there is only one philosophy."

Therefore, Cynic philosophy rightfully belongs to this one movement of seeking truth, which is "the greatest good for gods and men," the knowledge of the "intimate reality of existing things": in spite of the crude simplicity of its appearance, Cynicism is like those statuettes of Silenus which, trivial in appearance, conceal within them the image of a god. And finally, the creator of Cynic philosophy was not Antisthenes or Diogenes, but was the one who created all philosophical schools, "the one who for the Greeks is the author of all good things, the common guide, the lawgiver and king, the god of Delphi."

As for Diogenes then, according to Julian "he obeyed the god of Pytho, and of his obedience he had no repentance, and one would be mistaken to take as an indication of impiety the fact that he did not attend temples or worship images and altars: Diogenes had nothing to offer, neither incense, nor libations, nor money, but he possessed a just notion of the gods, and that alone was enough. For he worshipped them with his soul, offering the most precious possession, the consecration of his soul through his thought."

It may seem singular that an emperor would feel compelled to intervene in a seemingly trivial controversy triggered by an obscure sophist: in reality, the issue that was close to Julian's heart was the reaffirmation of the unity of Hellenic culture - literature, philosophy, mythology, religion - embedded in the legal-institutional apparatus of the Roman Empire. The defense of the unity of Hellenic culture is the condition of the maintenance of the political institution, and an attack on the unitary values expressed by that culture is perceived by Julian as a threat to the foundations of the Empire itself.

"Hymn to the Mother of the Gods"

That the unity of the Empire was fostered by the ideological and cultural unity of the subjects had already been understood by Constantine who, convening the Council of Nicaea in 325, had intended Christianity to be founded on dogmas shared by all the faithful constructed with the tools made available by Greek philosophy. Likewise, Julian intended to establish the principles of Hellenism, seen as a synthesis of the traditions inherited from ancient Roman religion and Greek culture, elaborated in the light of Neoplatonic philosophy. In this respect, Julian's program understood this hymn, along with the one dedicated to Helios, as two foundational moments on which to hinge the refounding of the empire's religious and cultural tradition. The Hymn to the Mother of the Gods was entrusted, therefore, with the role of an exegetical revisitation of the Greek myths on the basis of the mystery doctrines that Julian had explored in depth in his Athenian studies.

The Hymn to the Mother of the Gods, Cybele, also called Rea or Demeter, the Magna Mater of the Romans, is addressed to those who are to be responsible for educating the faithful: it is the writing that a pontifex maximus addresses to the priests of the Hellenic cults. The hymn opens with a description of the arrival in Rome from Phrygia of the statue of the goddess, after her cult had already been welcomed in Greece, "and not by any race of Greeks, but by the Athenians," Julian writes, as if to emphasize the extreme credibility of the cult of the goddess. And credible also appears to Julian to be the miracle that occurred when the priestess Clodia made the ship that had remained motionless despite every effort of the sailors sail again on the Tiber.

The figure of Cybele is associated, in a well-known myth, with that of Attis. Everything, as Aristotle had taught, is a union of form and matter: in order for things not to be generated by chance, a view that would lead to Epicurean materialism, it is necessary to recognize the existence of a higher principle, that is, the cause of form and matter. This cause is the fifth essence, already discussed by the philosopher Senarchus, which gives reasons for becoming, the multiplication of the species of beings and the eternity of the world, the "chain of eternal generation." Well, Attis represents that principle, according to Julian's personal conception: he is "the substance of the generating and creating Intellect that produces all things to the extreme limits of matter and contains in itself all the principles and causes of forms conjoined with matter."

Cybele is "the motherless Virgin, who has her throne next to Zeus, and is really the Mother of all gods." The myth of her union with Attis, judged obscene by Christians, is actually meant to signify that she, as the Providence "who preserves all things subject to birth and destruction, loves the creative and producing cause of them, and requires her to procreate preferably in the intelligible world and demands that she be addressed to her and cohabit with her, demands that Attis not mix with any other being, so as to pursue the preservation of what is uniform and to avoid inclining into the material world."

But Attis lowered himself to the extreme limits of matter, mating in a cavern with a nymph, a figure in whom the myth adumbrates "the moisture of matter," more precisely "the last incorporeal cause subsisting before matter." Then Helios, "who shares the throne with the Mother and creates everything with her and provides for everything," commanded the Lion, the principle of fire, to denounce Attis's degradation: the emasculation of Attis is to be understood as the "restraint placed on the unlimited drive" to generation, so that it is "restrained within the limits of definite forms." The self-viraction of Attis is the symbol of purification from degradation, the condition of the ascent upward, "to that which is definite and uniform, possibly to the One itself."

As the myth outlines the cycle of the degradation and purification of the soul, so corresponds the cycle of nature and the religious rituals that are associated with it and celebrated on the spring equinox. On March 22 the sacred pine tree is cut down, the next day the sounding of trumpets reminds us of the need to purify ourselves and rise to heaven, on the third day "the sacred harvest of the god is cut down," and finally the Hilarities, the festivals that celebrate the successful purification and the return of Attis to the Mother's side, can follow. Julian links the cult of Cybele to the Eleusinian mysteries, which are celebrated at the spring and autumn equinoxes, and explains to the priests the meaning of the precepts that the initiate must observe in order to approach the ritual with a pure soul.

Having reaffirmed the inherent unity of the Hellenic cults by juxtaposing Heracles and Dionysus with Attis, recognized in Attis the Logos, "gone out of his mind, because he married matter and presided over creation, but also wise, because he was able to order and mutate this filth into something so beautiful that no human art and skill could ever equal," Julian concludes the writing by raising a hymn to Cybele:

Edict on teaching and religious reform

In his writings Julian had implicitly shown that it was necessary to maintain a close link between Hellenism and romanitas as a condition of the health of the Empire, such as seemed to have been fully realized in the age of the Antonines. Since then, however, there had followed a long period of slow decline during which new religious instances, originating in a world largely alien to traditional Hellenic values, had asserted themselves until they gained full legitimacy with Constantine. The Christian bishop Eusebius himself had extolled the new order constituted by the Empire's political institutions and evangelical doctrine, the fusion of which had been arranged by God for the good of all mankind.

This conception presupposed a rupture in the historical evolution of the Greco-Roman world and, together with the abandonment of ancient cults and the temples where those were celebrated, called into question all Hellenic culture, the destruction of which could be feared. Julian's conception is exactly equal and opposite to that of Eusebius: all Greco-Roman culture is "the fruit of divine revelation and its historical evolution had taken place under God's watchful gaze. Thanks to the revelation of Apollo-Helius, the Greeks had worked out an admirable religious, philosophical and artistic system, perfected later by the kindred people of the Romans, who enriched it with the best political institutions the world had known."

The health of the empire corresponds to that of the citizens, which is substantiated, on the spiritual and intellectual level, by epistéme, authentic knowledge, which is attained through proper education, paideia. The knowledge of Greco-Roman culture elevates human beings to self-knowledge, which is the condition for higher knowledge, that of divinity, which corresponds to individual salvation. In this path, Hellenic culture is conceived by Julian in its totality, without distinction between sacred and profane culture: "the study of sacred texts makes any man better, even the most inept. If then a gifted man is initiated into the study of literature, he becomes a gift of the gods to mankind, for he will rekindle the flame of knowledge, or establish public institutions, or put the enemies of his people to flight, or travel by land and sea, thus proving that he has the temper of a hero."

In application of these principles on June 17, 362 Julian issued an edict by which he established the incompatibility between the profession of the Christian faith and teaching in public schools. Julian's idea was that public teachers should be distinguished first of all by morality and then by professional ability. The mechanism that was supposed to ensure the aforementioned morality was through the city councils, which were to produce a certificate of the candidates' qualifications. Such a certificate would then, eventually, have to be ratified by the emperor.

Giuliano's law was followed by a circular letter explaining more fully the content and meaning of the rule:

The law was prepared to defend the arguments of Hellenism from Christian polemic and was particularly insidious because, without being open persecution, it persuasively presented the reasons for incompatibility between Greco-Roman culture and Christianity that were actually shared by a substantial representation of Christian intellectuality.

At the same time Julian was concerned to establish a pagan "church," organized according to hierarchical criteria that recalled Christian ones: at the top was the emperor, in his capacity as pontifex maximus, followed by high priests, each responsible for each province who, in turn, chose priests from the different cities. We know from his letters some of the names of the provincial leaders appointed by Julian: Arsacius was the religious leader of Galatia, Chrysantius of Sardis, with his wife Melita, of Lydia, Seleucus of Cilicia, and Theodorus of Asia, as well as the names of some local priests, a Theodora, an Hesychus, a Hierarchus at Alexandria in Troas, a Calligena of Pessinunte in Phrygia.

The first requisite of every priest had to be morality, without any preclusion of origin or census: one of the causes of the backwardness of the Hellenic religion in the consideration of the populations was precisely the poor morality of many priests, who thereby caused the ancient rituals to lose credibility. If those priests were thus despised, they remained feared, however, by virtue of the reputation they had acquired as dispensers of anathemas of terrible efficacy: a dubious virtue this, since it contributed, however, to their isolation, which Julian himself tried to challenge by arguing that a priest, as such, could not be a representative of a demon, but of god, and therefore was a dispenser of benefits obtained through prayer, and not of curses cast through an obscure demonic power.

Priests should therefore be honored "as ministers and servants of the gods, because they perform, on our behalf, duties to the gods and it is to them that we owe much of the gifts we receive from the gods. For they pray and sacrifice in the name and on behalf of all humanity. Therefore, it is right to honor them even more than the magistrates of the state, and although there are those who believe that equal honors should be bestowed on priests and magistrates, since they are the custodians of the laws and therefore in some way servants of the gods, nevertheless the priest is due greater consideration since he celebrates sacrifices on our behalf, brings offerings and stands before the gods, we should respect and fear the priest as the most precious thing belonging to the gods."

The second requirement of a priest is to possess the virtue of episteme, knowledge, and the capacity for asceticism, for wisdom and holiness make the man a priest-philosopher, as Plotinus' pupil, the Neoplatonist Porphyry, argued: "The ignorant defile the godhead, while offering prayers and sacrifices. Only the priest is wise, he alone is loved by god, he alone knows how to pray. He who practices wisdom practices the epistéme of god, not dwelling in endless litanies and sacrifices, but practicing divine pietas in everyday life." Conversely, even those who believe in the gods and intend to honor them, "if they neglect to be wise and virtuous, they deny and dishonor the gods." To these precepts Giamblicus had added the necessity of theurgical practice, by which the priest establishes direct contact with the divine world, thus making himself an intermediary between the faithful and the god.

Wisdom, theurgical practice, virtue and devotion are necessary qualities for a priest, yet they are still not enough. For Julian, the practice of charity is also indispensable: "the gods have not given us such immense wealth to deny them, neglecting the poor who are among us we should share our possessions with everyone, but more generously with the good, the poor, the derelict, so that they can meet their needs. And may I add, without fear of appearing paradoxical, that we should also share food and clothing with the wicked. For it is to the humanity that is in everyone that we must give, not to the individual." And in fact, unlike his predecessor Licinius, who had forbidden assistance to prisoners, Julian observed that since "all men are of the same blood, our solicitude should extend to those in prison as well; let our priests therefore show their love for their neighbor by putting the little they have at the disposal of all the destitute." And Julian put his charitable intentions into practice, establishing shelters for beggars, hostels for foreigners, asylums for women and orphanages.

In his letter to the priest Theodore Julian also clarifies his opinion on the function of votive images: "the forefathers wished to erect statues and altars and arranged for the maintenance of the everlasting flame and, in general, passed on to us all sorts of symbols of the presence of the gods, not so that we might worship them as such, but so that we might worship the gods through images." And like the icons of the deities, "the depictions of the emperors are not mere pieces of wood, stone or copper, much less do they identify with the emperors themselves."

With those words Julian attested to the importance attached to images as vehicles of devotion to divinity and respect for imperial authority in which he intended to sum up the political, cultural and religious unity of the state. It is known that he had himself depicted as Apollo, with the figure of his deceased wife as Artemis beside him, in two gilded statues erected in Nicomedia, so that the citizens would honor the gods and the Empire in those, and generally "he always wished to be depicted with Zeus beside him, who had specially descended from heaven to offer him the imperial insignia, crown and purple robe, while Ares and Hermes kept their gaze fixed on him, indicating his eloquence and skill in arms."

"Hymn to Helium King"

During his unhappy sojourn in Antioch Julian wrote in three nights, just before the winter solstice, the Hymn to Helios the King, dedicating it to his friend Salustius, prefect of Gaul, himself already the author of a short treatise on the gods; Julian's intention was to equip the Hellenic religion with a clear and solid doctrinal apparatus, to dictate a kind of catechism for that "pagan church" of which he, as emperor and pontifex maximus, was at that time the head. This writing followed the Hymn to the Mother of the Gods in which Julian formulated an exegesis of Greek myths on the basis of the mystery doctrines to which he had devoted himself during his time in Athens. In this case, solar monotheism, using the same philosophical tools that Christianity was taking hold of, was to be contrasted with the monotheism of the Galileans, which, according to Julian, had the serious defect of being completely foreign to Roman culture and tradition and therefore disrupting the structure of the Empire from its foundations.

Every man is born of a man and the Sun, as Aristotle states, but the Sun is only the visible god: quite another difficulty is "to get an idea of the greatness of the invisible god," but with the help of Hermes, the Muses and Apollo Musagete "we will deal with the substance of Helium, its origin, its powers, its forces, both visible and invisible, the benefits it dispenses through all the worlds."

The providence of Helium," Julian writes, "maintains, from the top of the stars down to the earth, all the universe, which has always existed and always will exist. Superior to Helium is the One, or, Platonically, the Good, the cause of all things, who "raised from himself Helium, most powerful god, as a mediating being, in everything similar to the original creative substance." Julian here quotes Plato, for whom what the Good is to the intellect, Helium is to sight. Helios, who dominates and reigns over the other gods as the sun dominates over the other stars, shows himself in the form of the Sun, who in fact appears to all to be the cause of the preservation of the sensible world and the dispenser of every benefit.

Plato again had stated that the universe is a single living organism, "all filled with soul and spirit, a perfect whole made up of perfect parts": the unification between the intelligible and sensible worlds is accomplished by Helium, who stands "between the immaterial purity of the intelligible gods and the immaculate integrity of the gods of the sensible world," just as light spreads from heaven to earth keeping itself pure even as it comes into contact with material things.

The substance of Helium is summarized as follows, "Helium the King proceeded as one god from one god, that is, from the intelligible world which is one unifies the lowest with the highest, contains in itself the means of perfection, union, vital principle and uniformity of substance. In the sensible world it is the source of all benefits contains in itself the eternal cause of generated things

One cannot fail to see the consonance of these statements with the Christian dogma of the Christ-Logos, mediator between God and man and bringer of salvation, and here Helios appears to be the mediator of man's spiritual growth: "As to him we owe life, so by him we are also nourished. His most divine gifts and the benefits he gives to souls by dissolving them from the body and raising them to god-like substances, the subtlety and elasticity of divine light, granted as a sure vehicle to souls for their descent into the world of becoming for us it is better to have faith than demonstration."

Dionysus, celebrated as the son of Helios, together with the Muses alleviates human labors; Apollo, "who differs not at all from Helios," spreads oracles, gives men inspiration, orders and civilizes cities; Helios begat Asclepius, the universal savior, and sent Aphrodite to Earth to renew generations; and from Aphrodite descends Aeneas and from him all successions of world rulers. The Hymn concludes with a prayer to Helios:

"Against Galileans"

In Antioch Julian also wrote the satire The Caesars and three books of anti-Christian polemic, the Against the Galileans: the work has been lost and only part of the first book could be reconstructed on the basis of quotations in Contra Iulianum, the retelling composed by Cyril of Alexandria after the emperor's death, and a few other fragments in Theodore of Mopsuestia and Areta. Julian, writing the Against the Galileans, must have had in mind the work of Celsus - later reconstructed in part by Origen's Against Celsus - and the fifteen books Against the Christians by the philosopher Porphyry, of which few fragments remain.

Julian is known to have promoted the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem, which did not come to fruition, however, because an earthquake interrupted the work that had just begun, which was not resumed after the emperor's death. Certainly Julian's initiative proceeded from a political calculation - pitting a renewed Jewish force against the expansion of Christian propaganda could come in handy - but it also stemmed from his belief that every people enjoyed the protection of a god, assigned by the superior divine will, who was the expression and guarantor of the specific cultural and religious identity of that ethnic group.

Indeed, Julian writes that the god common to all "distributed the nations to national gods and citizens, each of whom governs his own part in accordance with his nature." To the particular faculties of each god correspond the essential tendencies of the different ethnic groups, and thus, "Ares governs the warlike peoples, Athena those who are warlike and wise, Hermes those who are cunning," and similarly the courage of the Germans, the civilization of the Greeks and Romans, the industriousness of the Egyptians, the softness of the Syrians must be explained: those who would justify such differences by chance would then deny the existence in the world of Providence.

The God of the universe, just as he preordained to each people a national god, "with an angel under him or a demon or a kind of souls ready to help the higher spirits," so "he ordered the confusion of tongues and their dissonance, and also willed that there should be a difference in the political constitution of the nations, not by means of a pure order, but by creating us specially with this difference. It was necessary, that is, that from the beginning different natures were inherent in the different peoples."

Now, what is the god in charge of the Christians? They, Julian observes, having admitted that there was a god who solely cared for the Jews, by the mouth of Paul claim that the one is "god not only of the Jews but of all nations," and thus made an ethnic god the god of the universe in order to induce the Greeks to join them.

In contrast, Christians do not represent any ethnicity: they "are neither Jews nor Greeks, but belong to the Galilean heresy." In fact, at first they followed the doctrine of Moses then, "apostatizing, they took their own way," putting together from the Jews and Greeks "the vices that were bound to these peoples by the curse of a demon; they took the denial of the gods from Jewish intolerance, the light and corrupt life from our indolence and vulgarity, and dared to call all this perfect religion." The result was "an invention put together by human malice. Nothing having it divine, and exploiting the unreasonable part of our soul which is inclined to the fabulous and the puerile, it succeeded in having a construction of monstrous fictions held for truth."

That this god of the Galileans cannot be confused with the universal God seems to Julian to be proven by his actions, described in Genesis: he decides to give Adam help by creating Eve, who turns out to be the source of evil; he forbids them the knowledge of good and evil, which is "the only norm and reason of human life," and he drives them out of Paradise fearing that they will become immortal: "this is a sign of an even too envious and malicious spirit."

Differently Plato explains the generation of mortal beings: the creator God of the intelligible gods entrusted them with the creation of humans, animals and plants because, if he had created them himself, they would have been immortal: "so that they may therefore be mortal and this universe may be truly complete, deal with you, according to nature, with the constitution of the living, imitating my power that I put into action by generating you." As for the soul, which is "common to immortals, is divine and rules in those who wish to follow you and righteousness, I will provide the seed and the beginning. For the rest you, weaving the mortal to the immortal, produce animals and beget them, raise them by providing nourishment, and when they perish, receive them back into you."

To these intelligible gods also belongs Asclepius who, "descended from heaven to earth, appeared at Epidaurus under a unique species and in human form; thence, passing through every place, stretched out his salutary hand he is everywhere, on land and sea; without visiting any of us, he nevertheless heals sick souls and ailing bodies."

Asclepius is referred to by Julian in opposition to Jesus, who, on the other hand, is "named for just over three hundred years, without having done anything memorable in his life, unless one considers it great feats to have healed the lame and blind and to have exorcised possessed people in the little villages of Bethsaida and Bethany."

It is true, however, that Jesus is also considered by Christians to be a god, but this is a deviation from the apostolic tradition itself: "that Jesus was god neither Paul, nor Matthew, nor Luke, nor Mark dared to say so, but only the ineffable John, when he saw that already many people in many cities of Greece and Italy were taken by this contagion."

Hellenic culture, Julian points out, is incomparably superior to Judean culture, but only to this the Christians intend to refer, since they consider the study of Scripture sufficient: instead, superior in the arts, wisdom, intellect, economy, and medicine, "Asclepius heals our bodies; again Asclepius, with the Muses, Apollo and Hermes, protector of eloquence, cares for souls; Ares and Enius assist us in war; Hephaestus cares for the arts, and over all presides, together with Zeus, Athena virgin Pronoia."

That Christians were already profligate in origin is shown by Paul himself, when addressing his disciples, he wrote that "neither idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor misers, nor drunkards, nor backbiters, nor robbers will inherit the Kingdom of God. And you are not ignorant of these things, brethren, for you also were like this. But you have been washed, you have been sanctified in the name of Jesus Christ," an admission, Julian notes, demonstrated by the fact that the water of baptism, which they also had received, just as it cannot heal from any disease of the body, much less can it heal the vices of the soul.

"The Caesars"

The Caesars or The Saturnals is a satirical dialogue in which Julian tells a friend a tale of a party given by Romulus in the house of the gods, to which the Roman emperors are invited: it is a pretext for outlining the many vices and few virtues of each. The procession of invitees is opened by the "ambitious" Julius Caesar, who is followed by the "chameleon-like" Octavian, then Tiberius, grave in appearance but cruel and vicious, who is sent back to Capri by the gods; Caligula, a "cruel monster," is thrown into Tartarus, Claudius is a "soulless body," while Nero, who claims to imitate Apollo with his zither, is drowned in the Cocytus. They are followed by the "stingy" Vespasian, the "lascivious" Titus and Domitian, bound with a collar; then Nerva, a "handsome old man," greeted with respect, precedes the "pederast" Trajan, laden with trophies, and the stern and "engulfed in Mysteries" Hadrian. Antoninus Pius, Lucius Verus, and Marcus Aurelius also enter, welcomed with great honor, but not Commodus, who is rejected. Pertinace mourns his own death, but he is not exactly innocent either; the "intractable" Septimius Severus is admitted with Geta, while Caracalla is driven out with Macrinus and Heliogabalus. The "foolish" Alexander Severus is admitted to the banquet but the "effeminate" Gallienus and his father Valerian are not accepted; Claudius the Gothic, a "high and generous soul," is warmly welcomed, and Aurelian is allowed to sit at the banquet only for having done himself credit by instituting the cult of Mithras. Welcomed Probus, Diocletian, Galerius, and Constantius Chlorus, Caro, Maximian, "turbulent and disloyal," Licinius, and Magnentius are kicked out. Enter, finally, Constantine and his three sons.

Hermes proposes a contest to judge the best among all the emperors, and after Heracles demands and obtains that Alexander the Great also participate, the proposal is accepted. Alexander, Caesar, Octavian, Trajan, Marcus Aurelius, and Constantine are admitted to the eloquence contest, but he is kept on the edge of the threshold of the hall for the time being. First Caesar and Alexander try to outdo each other by boasting in the eyes of the gods of their exploits, then Octavian and Trajan extol their good government, while Marcus Aurelius, raising his eyes to the gods, merely says, "I have no need of speeches or competitions. If you did not know my things, I should instruct you, but since you know them because nothing can be hidden from you, go ahead and give me the place you think I deserve." When his turn came, Constantine, who had been all along ogling Lust, while realizing the pettiness of his deeds, tries to argue the reasons for his superiority over the other emperors.

While awaiting the verdict, everyone is invited to choose a patron god: Constantine "runs to meet Lust, who, tenderly welcoming him and throwing her arms around his neck, adorns him with women's garments all colored, smoothes him all over and takes him to the Empyrean where Jesus was also hanging around and preaching: - He who is corrupting, murdering, cursed, rejected by all, come with confidence: wash him with this water I will make him pure in a moment Marcus Aurelius is declared the victor and Julian, concluding the satire, has Hermes say to him, "I have made you acquainted with your father Mithras. Keep to his commandments and you will have in your life a sure anchor of salvation, and when you leave here you will find, with good hope, a benevolent god to guide you."

An attempt has been made to find in this text the reasons that had already determined in Julian the decision to wage war against Persia. This parade of emperors is a kind of summary of Roman history, and fortune plays a key role in assigning the success of the initiatives: "only when Pompey was abandoned by good fortune, which had so long favored him, and was left without any help, did you get the better of him," exclaims Alexander addressed to Caesar. But Rome did not set its boundaries to the limits of the Earth solely with the help of Tyche, of good fortune: pietas had been necessary, and the choice in favor of Marcus Aurelius confirms that that is the virtue favored by Julian and the gods.

Conceiving sovereignty according to a theocratic principle, Julian had to rely above all on his pietas for the happy results of his political initiatives: nothing could thwart him as long as he-the protégé of Helios-stood firm in his devotion to the gods. But the serious conflict with the citizenry of Antioch seemed to have shaken this conviction of his. In the Misopogon, he had mocked the freedom enjoyed by the Antiochians by paraphrasing a long passage from Plato's Republic, skipping, however, a sentence from the Athenian philosopher that concerned him directly: "a democratic state thirsting for freedom, when it finds bad cupbearers and goes too far in intoxicating itself with pure freedom, punishes its rulers." Julian probably felt, more or less darkly, that he had been a "bad cupbearer."

The choice to take war to Persia had already been established in Constantinople: it was therefore not an initiative decided on the spot to compensate for the bad Antiochian experience with success. But in that endeavor - an almost impossible feat, succeeded only by an Alexander the Great - he put his whole self on the line for the purpose of regaining self-confidence: he had to succeed, and to succeed he had to be Alexander. With the alienation of his own identity, Julian also lost contact with reality "to the point of completely alienating himself from his environment and time. The initial loss of confidence was followed by an extreme overestimation of his own abilities, which destroyed his critical sense and led him to ignore the advice of others. Only a few steps now separated him from hýbris."

Contemporaries

The news of Julian's death caused joy among Christians. Gregory of Nazianzus announced it triumphantly, "Hear, ye peoples! the dragon, the Apostate, the Great Intellect, the Assyrian, the common enemy and abomination of the universe, the fury that much frolicked and threatened on earth, much against Heaven worked with tongue and hand." Equal was the consternation among his followers, who largely dispersed and sought to be forgotten. Libanius, who lived in Antioch, at first feared for his own life, but the esteem in which his virtue as a scholar was held spared him danger and offense. Priscus retired to Athens; Maximus of Ephesus, warned against continuing his theurgical activities, was first fined and, a few years later, beheaded. The physician Oribasius left among the Goths but then the fame of his medical expertise caused him to be recalled to his homeland, where he lived honored and respected, Seleucus, Aristophanes, and Alipius lost their positions. Among others, Claudius Mamertinus, although the author of a panegyric dedicated to Julian, and Salustius, both valiant administrators, retained their posts.

The Christians, in addition to overthrowing altars and destroying temples, initiated the demolition of the figure of Julian: Gregory's orations, admirable for their polemical vigor but deplorable for the partiality of their assumptions, record, among other things, the accusation of secret human sacrifices. In his Historia Ecclesiastica, written almost a century after the events, Theodoret of Cyrrhus relates that Julian gathered with his hands the blood that came out of his wound and raised it to the sky, shouting, "You have won, Galileo!" Philostorgius, on the other hand, writes that Julian, after collecting his blood with his hands, threw it toward the Sun, shouting "Korèstheti" ("Be satiated!") and cursing the other "evil and destructive" gods.

When the controversy subsided, Julian's admirers ended up reacting: Libanius collected the testimonies of Seleucus and Magnus of Carre, the emperor's comrades-in-arms, and composed orations extolling Julian's character and accusing an unknown Christian soldier of his death; a certain Philagrius showed a diary in which he had described the Persian adventure, and other memoirs published by the officer Eutychianus and the soldier Callistus. His writings and letters were collected, to show the goodness of his personality, his culture and his love for his subjects. Ammianus Marcellinus gave him in the Res gestae an admirable portrait for fairness and balance of judgment, but without concealing some of his faults, imitated in the brief sketch that Eutropius dedicates to him in his Breviarium: "An eminent man and one who would have administered the state in a remarkable manner if fate had allowed him to do so; very well versed in the liberal disciplines, knowledgeable especially in Greek, and to the point that his Latin erudition could not balance his science of Greek, he had a brilliant and ready eloquence, a very sure memory. In some respects he was more like a philosopher than a prince; he was liberal toward his friends, but less scrupulous than was fitting for so great a prince: in this way certain envious people attacked his glory. Very fair to the provincials, he diminished taxes as far as could be done; affable to all, having mediocre concern for the treasury, greedy of glory, and, nevertheless, of an often immoderate ardor, he persecuted the Christian religion too earnestly, without, however, shedding its blood; he was very reminiscent of Marcus Antoninus, whom, moreover, he studied to model himself after."

The pagan Eunapius recounted Julian's life in his Histories, of which few fragments remain, however, and honored the philosophers, of whom Julian had been a friend in life, in his Lives of the Philosophers and Sophists. The ecclesiastical writers Socrates Scholasticus, Sozomenus and Philostorgius handed down a life of Julian reporting the attacks of Christian hagiographers, while Cyril of Alexandria refuted the Against the Galileans in his Against Julian.

However, there were also Christians who were able to distinguish the anti-Christian Julian from the governing Julian. Prudentius wrote of him, "Only one of all the princes, of what I remember as a child, did not fail as a most valiant leader, a founder of cities and laws, celebrated for rhetoric and military valor, a good counsellor for the country but not for the religion to be observed, for he worshipped three hundred thousand gods. He betrayed God, but not the Empire and Urbe." while John of Antioch, in the seventh century, called him the only emperor who had governed well.

In the Middle Ages

In Byzantine civilization, the figure of Julian provoked mixed reactions: although he was appreciated for his work as emperor and his literary output, nevertheless Julian's distinctly anti-Christian profile could not attract him favor in a civilization such as Byzantium, in which the Christian element was ideologically fundamental.

From the Middle Ages we learn that St. Mercury of Caesarea, invoked by St. Basil the Great, is said to have killed Julian, who was made the protagonist of gruesome episodes of quartering children and disemboweling pregnant women. A statue of a faun who allegedly persuaded Julian to deny the Christian faith was still being shown in Rome in the 12th century, while in the 14th century an edifying depiction was composed in which St. Mercury kills the emperor but, in return, the rhetor Libanius is converted, becomes a hermit, is blinded, and is then healed by the Virgin Mary.

In 1489 a play written by Lorenzo the Magnificent was staged in Florence, celebrating the martyrdom of brothers John and Paul, attributed by legend to Julian, who was otherwise seen by Lorenzo as a rich ruler. In 1499 the Romanae Historiae Compendium was published posthumously in Venice, in which the humanist Pomponius Leto celebrated the last pagan emperor, calling him a "hero" and mentioning his apostasy only in passing. With the Renaissance, the writings of Julian began to be rediscovered, from which emerged a figure quite different from the one handed down by the Christian portrait. In France, a pupil of Peter Ramo, the Huguenot Pierre Martini, discovered in the master's study a codex of the Misopogon, which he published along with a collection of the Letters and a biographical preface, dedicating it to Cardinal Odet de Coligny, who was at odds with the Church: Martini presents Julian as a virtuous emperor and his apostasy as the result of levity.

Modern Age

Michel de Montaigne called Julian a "great man," and in 1614 the Jesuit Denis Pétau published an extensive collection of Julian's writings in France, justifying the initiative with the consideration that knowing the critical "aberrations" of a pagan can only strengthen the faith of Christians. In 1642, François de La Mothe Le Vayer in his Virtues of the Pagans did justice to the polemical exaggerations that had flourished on the figure of Julian, followed by Claude Fleury's Histoire ecclésiastique in 1691, Tillemont's History of the Church and Lives of the Emperors in 1712, and Abbot de La Bléterie's Life of the Emperor Julian in 1755.

Voltaire-remembering the calumnies with which the emperor was covered by "writers who are called Church Fathers"-judged Julian "sober, chaste, unselfish, valiant and clement; but, not being a Christian, he was considered for centuries a monster he had all the qualities of Trajan all the qualities we admire in Julius Caesar, without his vices; and he also had the continence of Scipio. Finally, he was in all things equal to Marcus Aurelius, the first of men."

In Germany it was the theologian and scholar Ezekiel Spanheim who had published in 1660 The Caesars of Julian and, in 1696, the Opera omnia of Julian along with Cyril's Contra Iulianum. In the eighteenth century, Goethe and Schiller expressed admiration for him as, in England, did Shaftesbury, Fielding and historian Edward Gibbon.

The latter, in his work devoted to the Roman Empire, believes that whatever kind of life Julian had chosen, "by his intrepid courage, lively spirit and intense application, he would have obtained or at least deserved the highest honors." Compared to other emperors, "his genius was less powerful and sublime than that of Caesar, he did not possess the consummate prudence of Augustus, the virtues of Trajan appear more steadfast and natural, and the philosophy of Marcus Aurelius is simpler and more coherent. And yet Julian sustained adversity with firmness and prosperity with moderation" and was constantly concerned with alleviating miseries and raising the spirits of his subjects. He blames him for falling prey to the influence of religious prejudice, which had a pernicious effect on the empire's government, but Julian remained a man capable of "passing from the dream of superstition to arming himself for battle" and then again of "retiring quietly to his tent to dictate just and wholesome laws or to satisfy his taste for elegant pursuits in literature and philosophy."

The Catholic Chateaubriand reacted to this chorus of benevolent judgments by imputing them to the anti-Christian attitude in vogue in many intellectual circles of the 18th century, but he recognized Julian's spiritual superiority over that of Constantine. In his Daphné, the romantic de Vigny believes that Julian voluntarily sought death during his last military campaign because he realized the failure of his work to restore Hellenism.

With the flourishing of philological studies, which also invested Julian's work, the nineteenth century produced a wealth of studies on Julian that often highlighted a particular characteristic of his figure. On the whole, portraits resulted in which Julian appeared "at once mystic and rationalist, pro-Hellenic and steeped in Eastern superstitions, visionary and consummate politician, man of scholarship and soldier, emulator of Alexander and Trajan but also of Marcus Aurelius, a man who put the worship of the gods above all else, then got himself killed for his country ; sometimes a just spirit, sometimes factious to the point of persecution; now impulsive now calculating and circumspect; sometimes affable and courteous, sometimes intractable and stern; now full of bonhomie and spontaneity, now as solemn as the most pretentious of pontiffs."

In 1873 playwright Henrik Ibsen dedicated a ten-act play to him entitled Caesar and Galileo, a cumbersome drama in which Julian, having rejected both Christianity and paganism, chooses the mysticism of Maximus of Ephesus.

Contemporary age

In the twentieth century, the same Belgian Catholic philologist Joseph Bidez, who edited an important critical edition of Julian's complete works, which is still consulted today, and a biography whose definitive edition, which appeared in 1930, is still a point of reference for scholars, sought to debunk this complex of judgments, presenting a Julian as a child of his time: his faith and doubts, asceticism and love of literature also belong to a Synesius and the later Jerome; "in spite of his idolatry," Julian is imbued with Christian influences, resembling "a Platonizing Augustine as much as the representatives of the archaizing philosophy whose disciple he believed himself to be he reveres Giamblicus, rather than understanding him while Julian's restless and tormented soul is, on closer inspection, animated by the spirit of the new times."

In fact, the Catholic Bidez believes that Julian's religious sentiments were quite close to Christian ones: "as a Christian Julian first sought to secure the health of his soul; as a Christian he needed a revealed morality and dogma; he wanted to have a clergy independent of civil power and a strongly centralized Church; he remained insensitive to the joys of life and the splendors of the city of the world." His religious piety would differ from that of Christians - according to Bidez - in being accommodating to the integral preservation of Eastern Hellenic traditions. In this way, his new Church would end up being a Pantheon of all possible deities, "a kind of museum of theological archaeology" where "the soul of the simple is lost and curiosity risks replacing true piety."

What distinguishes Julian and makes him a great character, according to Bidez, is not his ideas and deeds but his intelligence and character: he was bold and enthusiastic about his faith and, following the commandments of Mithra, required courage and purity from himself and had for others a sense of justice and fraternity. The nobility of Julian's morality was worthy of the highest respect but his attempt at religious reform failed, beyond the short time he was given to implement it, because (according to the Catholic Bidez) only Christianity could be "capable of preventing the annihilation of culture and making us bear our miseries, attributing to manual labor and suffering the nobility of a moral duty."

Of course, all commentators emphasize the failure of pagan restoration: "He despised the Christians, whom he reproached above all for ignorance of the great works of Hellenic thought, without realizing that Christianization and democratization of culture were fatal aspects of the same phenomenon, against which the aristocratic cult of reason, wisdom, humanitas, would have been unable to do anything. Convinced thus of the superiority of pagan culture and the religion of the gods, he believed that it was enough to give an organization to oppose that of the Christian churches, to ensure its victory His was only a dream, destined to break against the young vitality of the new Christian world."

But his attempt at religious reform should not be regarded as the reactionary dream of an intellectual in love with ancient culture: it was rather the conviction of a politician for whom the classical paideia was the cement of the Empire's unity and prosperity. This conception is expressed in Against the Cynic Heraclius: it was Zeus himself, faced with the disaster of his immediate predecessors, who had entrusted him with the mission of restoring the state, as the Genius Publicus had revealed to him in Paris. His was a divine mission which, as such, made him a theocrat and whose fulfillment guaranteed him individual salvation.

The resulting political principles were by no means reactionary; on the contrary, they were "as foreign to classical culture as they were organic to Byzantine culture. Paradoxically, although he went down in history as the one who had dreamed of reviving obsolete religious practices and forms of government, it was Julian himself who made a definitive break with the religious and political patterns of the past. His worship of unity, integrity, and order were Byzantine in every way. He never thought, even for a moment, of associating anyone with his own power, for he considered himself the only representative of God on earth, and if God is immortal, so is his earthly representative." And just as God's power is not limited by any boundaries in the Universe, so can the power on Earth of his representative have no boundaries: hence the Persian enterprise, which in fact had no contingent political motives.

The Byzantine emperors took up the inspiring principles of his sovereignty and their bishops supported them in full: Patriarch Anthony II declared that "the Church and the Empire are united together, so it is impossible to separate them," and Justinian, by forbidding pagan teachers from teaching and dissolving the glorious Academy of Athens, reaffirmed Julian's cultural fundamentalism in an extreme form, with no one this time daring to advance any criticism. Even the emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus, at the end of the first millennium, criticized his predecessor and colleague Roman I Lecapenus for not adhering to "traditional customs in contrast to the principles of the ancestors" by not respecting the principle of the ethnic particularity of each nation, as stated by Julian in Against the Galileans.

But because in his lifetime Julian failed to achieve any of his projects-not the conquest of Persia, not the religious reform, not even the reform of the Empire, because the granting of broad administrative autonomy to the cities was revoked by his successors-history would have had little reason to remember him, and instead has elevated him among its major protagonists. Perhaps this was because "his fate knew how to touch the hearts and minds of men," and legend, "which is the language of the heart and imagination, has always portrayed him as a man who lived searching, struggling and suffering, presenting him now as a demon, now as a saint."

Sources

1. Julian (emperor)
2. Flavio Claudio Giuliano