Dovahhatty – Unbiased History of Rome XVII: Imperial Wrath

(15) JULIAN –
CONSTANTINIAN DYNASTY
(361 – 363 AD: 1 YEAR 7 MONTHS 23 DAYS)

“Thou has conquered, Galilean”

Julian the Apostate – or as fellow Julian fans call him, Julian the Philosopher. Opinions tend to be divided on Julian, then and since, although I fall on the positive side of that divide.

I was tempted to nominate Julian for a wildcard entry in my top ten, in a similar romantic vein to Majorian for emperors fighting against the odds. Where Majorian strove to restore the western empire as its last great emperor, Julian strove to restore classical paganism as the last pagan emperor – and a large part of me wishes he had succeeded. It’s all I can do to stop myself yelling “This isn’t over! Pan isn’t dead! Julian the Apostate was right!” in churches.

It is his status as the last pagan emperor and his attempted revival of classical paganism for which he is best known – and definitively known, with subsequent Christians remembering him as apostate for having ‘abandoning’ Christianity.

Julian particularly appeals to modern sensibilities in religion, as he mostly dealt with Christianity not by persecution to which the imperial state had so often resorted in the past, but by mockery and tolerance, the latter essentially as a form of freedom of religion, albeit with preferential treatment for paganism as the official state religion. He even went so far as to allow the rebuilding of the Jewish Temple as a counterweight to Christianity – or as modern critics might say, to troll it – although nothing came of such plans, due to the cost and time involved.

However, Julian didn’t simply strive to restore classical paganism but also the classical principate of the empire, although the two were probably intertwined – in essence, he was a traditionalist, looking back to the golden age of Rome in the second century, the Rome of the Five Good Emperors, and sought to restore it through its leading institutions. In particular, Julian was an admirer of Marcus Aurelius and sought to emulate him, above all in a philosophical approach to being emperor. And as proverbial philosopher-kings go, Julian did pretty well – if anything, he erred on the side of being too philosophical.

What restoring the principate meant was eschewing the dominate – that autocratic style of government instituted by Diocletian and apotheosized by Constantine – and instead seeking to revive the principate, with the ideal rule as princeps or first among equals, engaging with the Senate and citizenry. He saw the royal court and imperial bureaucracy that had proliferated under the dominate as “inefficient, corrupt, and expensive”, dismissing thousands of “servants, eunuchs, and superfluous officials”. This too perhaps appeals to modern sensibilities.

Julian’s attempts at the revival of classical paganism and principate – as well as his rise to emperor and reign in general – are even more impressive as somewhat like Claudius he had to hide behind feigning or at least presenting harmlessness to the reigning members of the Constantinian dynasty and loyal faithfulness to the Christianity they had adopted. A nephew of Constantine the Great, Julian was one of the few members of the imperial family to survive the purges as a child in the reign of his cousin Constantius II but was effectively raised under house arrest or close supervision by Constantius, albeit in reasonably privileged circumstances and obviously with good education, given his philosophical studies and writings. Indeed, Julian is the emperor for whom we have the most surviving writings by his own hand.

Ultimately however, as you can see, I did not rank Julian in my top ten or even my top tier of emperors. One thing that has to count against such a ranking is the brevity of his reign – less than two years – which also probably undermined his attempts to restore classical paganism, reversed by his successors. If he had reigned a similar length to Constantius II or the emperors he sought to emulate like Marcus Aurelius, he might well have ranked higher and achieved more for the revival of classical paganism – but alas, it was not to be.

In fairness, like other emperors with similarly brief reigns in these special mentions, the brevity of his reign is offset by it being the capstone of his achievements prior to and resulting in him becoming emperor – in particular, as junior emperor or caesar for the western empire under Constantius II. Julian proved himself a capable military commander and tactician against Germanic barbarian raids into the empire, notably the Alamanni and Franks – firstly defending and repelling them from the empire, and then campaigning beyond the Rhine into German territory to subdue them.

Again, this is particularly impressive, as due to his background he had no prior military experience and instead acquired it through study of military texts or on the ground in campaign – the former depicted humorously by Dovahatty with Julian as a rare transformation from wojak to chad by sheer power of will.

Indeed, Julian did a little too well as junior emperor or caesar – with his troops declaring him augustus or emperor, he luckily averted civil war with Constantius II only through the fortunate timing of the latter’s death from illness, with the added bonus that the latter had to recognize there was no one other than Julian to succeed him as emperor.

Back to my ranking, apart from the brevity of his reign, there’s also the small fact that he did not succeed in restoring classical paganism, with all his attempts to do so reversed by his successors. Somewhat similarly to Majorian with the fall of the western Roman empire, it is not clear whether Julian could have decisively reversed the substitution of Christianity for classical paganism as the imperial religion, although a longer reign would almost certainly have stalled it for a time.

I’ve seen all sorts of contradictory arguments for this – ranging from Julian being too hardcore towards Christianity (not having “a little less venom and a little more tact”) to not being hardcore enough. Julian may well have added to this with a few apparent contradictions of his own – he was very philosophical in his approach to paganism, leaning heavily into Neo-Platonism, but there was also his participation in animal sacrifice, unpopular even among pagans.

Personally, the contradiction strikes me is his asceticism, reminiscent of Chesterton’s jibe at ascetic atheism in The Song of the Strange Ascetic – “of them that do not have the faith, and will not have the fun.” I mean, if you’re going to go pagan, go Dionysian or go home.

However, mostly I think that, again similarly to the situation of Majorian (and the Germanic states or influence within the western empire), that Christianity was simply too entrenched within the empire to be removed. For one thing, Christianity had an intellectual unity that the more amorphous paganism did not – indeed, there wasn’t really a coherent pagan ‘religion’ comparable to Christianity – as well as an institutional strength quite apart from its beliefs, as sociologist Rodney Stark has opined. Even Julian implicitly conceded the latter, as he sought to remodel pagan religion on Christianity, notably in its priesthood and public charity.

Youtuber Spectrum may well have summed it up best – “Great tactical dude, effective administrator, stupid-ass ideals – Christianity had some forty-odd years entrenching itself into the imperial fold. Did this guy think it was just going to go away, because he wanted it to?”

However, he was not quite the “great tactical dude” in the other fact that must detract from a higher ranking – and which also led directly to the brevity of his reign – namely his defeat and death in his ambitious campaign against the Sassanid Persians. It’s also why I’ve decided to rank him just lower than Lucius Verus and Carus, who after all led successful campaigns against the Parthians and Sassanids respectively.

He almost certainly would have been better off avoiding the campaign altogether but was another Roman undone by dreams of Alexander, albeit with the solid domestic motive of shoring up the support of the eastern army he had inherited from Constantius II. His tactical sense served him well enough at the outset of the campaign, which was initially successful but foundered as the army found itself in that common predicament of having to retreat from lack of supplies under constant attack.

Tactical skill born out of a textbook approach to military affairs and emulation of the past may have been all well and good against German barbarians, but the Persians were another matter, with the Sassanids and their scorched-earth tactics being very different from the Achaemenids of Alexander’s time or even the Parthians of Trajan’s. To the end however, Julian did not lack for personal courage – dying from a wound inflicted when he rushed out without his armor to pursue a Sassanid raid on the Roman camp.

DID DOVAHHATTY DO RIGHT

Given that I’m a Julian stan, I’m not going to object to Dovahhatty depicting Julian as a chad. What’s more interesting is that Dovahhatty depicted him as a unique chad – the only chad in the Unbiased History of Rome to transform from wojak to chad through sheer force of will (and all that study of military textbooks). Yes – Hannibal also transformed into a chad but that’s because he was buffed by the gods to challenge Rome.

RANKING: 4 STARS****
B-TIER (HIGH TIER)
RATING: EMPIRE-BASER (or perhaps would-be restorer would be more apt?)