Julian: An Intellectual Biography, first published in 1981, presents a penetrating and scholarly analysis of Julian's intellectual development against the background of philosophy and religion in the late Roman Empire.
Professor Polymnia Athanassiadi tells the story of Julian's transformation from a reclusive and scholarly adolescent into a capable general and an audacious social reformer. However, his character was fraught with a great many contradictions, tensions and inconsistencies: he could be sensitive and intelligent, but also uncontrollably spontaneous and subject to alternating fits of considerable self-pity and self-delusion.
Athanassiadi traces the Emperor Julian's responses to personal and public challenges, and dwells on the conflicts that each weighty choice imposed on him. This analysis of Julian's character and of all the issues that confronted him as an emperor, intellectual and mystic is based largely on contemporary evidence, with particular emphasis on the extensive writings of the man himself.
Frequently asked questions
Simply head over to the account section in settings and click on “Cancel Subscription” - it’s as simple as that. After you cancel, your membership will stay active for the remainder of the time you’ve paid for. Learn more here.
At the moment all of our mobile-responsive ePub books are available to download via the app. Most of our PDFs are also available to download and we're working on making the final remaining ones downloadable now. Learn more here.
Both plans give you full access to the library and all of Perlego’s features. The only differences are the price and subscription period: With the annual plan you’ll save around 30% compared to 12 months on the monthly plan.
We are an online textbook subscription service, where you can get access to an entire online library for less than the price of a single book per month. With over 1 million books across 1000+ topics, we’ve got you covered! Learn more here.
Look out for the read-aloud symbol on your next book to see if you can listen to it. The read-aloud tool reads text aloud for you, highlighting the text as it is being read. You can pause it, speed it up and slow it down. Learn more here.
Yes, you can access Julian (Routledge Revivals) by Polymnia Athanassiadi in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in History & Ancient History. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.
όν ἐστιν ἄνθρωπος φύσει πράξει καὶ ἐπιστήμῃ. IX. 190a
In the autumn of 355 Julian was summoned from Athens to Milan. This time a mounting feeling of revolt overcame the young prince. He obeyed the imperial command, knowing there was no alternative, but it was in a state of great—if momentary—disillusion with life, which stirred in him a genuine wish for death, that he started on his journey. For the second time within a year Julian was to be held prisoner in a Milanese suburb, unsure of what the future held for him, while his fate was being deliberated at the palace.
The emperor’s chief preoccupation at that moment was the fate of the western provinces; sacked by the barbarian,1 and wracked by internal religious discords,2 they had of late proved a fertile breeding-ground for usurpers, who had vainly sought to pacify them.3 After so many unhappy experiments, it became clear that only the prestige of a legitimate representative of the imperial power could carry the day.4 The empress Eusebia, an intelligent woman who both understood politics and knew how her husband’s mind worked, pointed out the only satisfactory solution that could save her from having to set out for those barbarous lands: Julian should be made Caesar and sent to Gaul.5 The first round of the game had been won and Julian was recalled from Athens.
But in her obstinate attempt to persuade her husband Eusebia was opposed by all the courtiers, who naturally feared the sudden elevation to power of one who was most unlikely to be well disposed towards them.6 Day followed day and the pressure on Constantius increased, till Eusebia’s final assault proved decisive.
Meanwhile, the news of what was happening in the palace filtered through to Julian (V. 275b). The state of excited indignation in which he had left Athens proved a more lasting disposition than philosophical indifference, and he soon fell prey to the deepest depression. The fear of death seized him and in his agony Julian turned away from the ungraspable sphere of divinity and sought comfort in the immediacy of human warmth. He wrote an imploring letter to Eusebia asking her to arrange a quick return home for him. But the hysterical tone of his text struck even Julian himself; he had hardly finished it when he began to wonder whether he ought to send such a compromising missive to the empress. As the night advanced, his hesitation changed into an intolerable agony. Summoning his remaining forces at last, Julian urgently addressed a fervent prayer to his protectors. And once more the voices of his gods were heard threatening the most ignominious of deaths, should Julian send the letter (V. 275c).
During that night Julian had reached a cas limite: he had known the horror of excessive fear,7 and had overcome it. After such an experience life took on a new aspect of utter simplicity: ἐξ ἐκείνης δέ μοι τ
ς ννκτòς λογισμòς εἰσ
λθεν, ο
καί ὑμ
ς ἴσως ἂξιον ἀκο
σαι—‘from that night a thought entered my head which perhaps it is worth your while to hear too: what is human wisdom when compared with divine omniscience? As the servant of the immortals one should submit to their will in the certainty that whatever they decide is in one’s best interest.’8E
ξα καὶ ὑπήκουσα—‘I yielded and obeyed’ (V. 277a), and the slavery of Caesarship began.9
Yet the realities of office were sadly remote from the dreams Julian and his friends had nurtured in Bithynia and, despite his brave assertion, that he would accept whatever the gods sent him with equanimity, Julian did not succeed in steeling himself to perfect resignation: inwardly he still reacted against the μο
ρα κραταιή—the mighty destiny—that had so unexpectedly seized him, and it was with an air of utter sullenness that he stood before the army as it acclaimed him.10 Receiving with the purple a royal bride, whose existence Julian hardly ever noticed, he set out for Gaul in December 355 escorted by 360 soldiers.
In the year 355 Gaul, once a rich province, was a devastated land.11 Forty-five towns along the banks of the Rhine had been occupied by the Alamanni, while the tax-collector was competing with the barbarian in contriving the ruin of the rest of the province.12 In urban centres and countryside alike the problem of depopulation was becoming acute,13 while for those who saw themselves condemned to end their lives in the province the only alternative to complete resignation seemed to be adherence to ‘the moral insurrection’ led by Hilary of Poitiers.14 The utter demoralization of these men, whom experience had taught that nothing could be more fallacious than the belief of the ancient world in the immortality of cities, is well conveyed by Rutilius Namatianus who, referring to the cities of Gaul, observed: ‘Cernimus exemplis oppida posse mori’ (De reditu suo, 414). In his Greek way, Libanius described with equal bitterness the state to which the cities of Gaul were reduced by the time Julian set out for the West: ‘You were going to names of cities rather than cities, in order to create cities rather than to make use of ones that already existed’ (XIII. 23). What indeed the young Caesar found on his arrival in Gaul was a place ‘turned upside down’.15
If Julian did not know how to tackle the complex problems that confronted him, he was at least in a position to measure the full extent both of their magnitude and of his own incompetence. The sterile indignation that had overwhelmed him at the moment of his elevation to the Caesarship16 was now left well behind. During the winter that he spent in Vienne Julian became familiar with the distinctly Roman world of political power; he sweated under the daily discipline of military exercise, and acquired direct experience of provincial administration.17 At the same time, as was to be expected of a man of Julian’s character and upbringing, he chose to construct his empirical edifice on a firm theoretical foundation: a considerable amount of his time at Vienne was devoted to the study of Caesar’s Commentaries and Plutarch’s Lives.18 From this reading Julian emerged with a considerable understanding of the military and diplomatic history of Rome19 and with his self-confidence bolstered:
For many of those records of the experience of men of old, written as they are with the greatest skill, provide a vivid and brilliant picture of past exploits to those whom time has kept away from such spectacles. It is thanks to such readings that many a young man has acquired a greater intellectual and emotional maturity than a whole lot of old men put together, so that the only advantage that old age seems to confer on mankind, I mean experience, thanks to which an old man ‘can talk more wisely than the young’, even this the study of history can give to the diligent youth. (II. 124.bc)
In this passage we have the magic key that unlocks one of those transitory moments in Julian’s psychology when, almost unconsciously, he attempted to justify the peculiar circumstances of his life at a particular point in time by having recourse to his own unique thought-world. The at once more general and more specific question that such a passage provokes is to what extent Julian’s entire outlook at this period was affected b...
