The Life, Reign, and Impossible Dream of Julian the Apostate

In the summer of 363 CE, a spear struck the last pagan emperor of Rome during a cavalry skirmish on the banks of the Tigris, and with him died the ancient world's most serious attempt to reverse the Christianisation of the Mediterranean. Flavius Claudius Iulianus, Julian the Apostate, had reigned for less than two years as sole Augustus, but in that time he had launched the most intellectually sophisticated religious restoration programme in Roman history, deploying the full resources of Neoplatonic philosophy, imperial administration, and personal example in an effort to reclaim the empire for the gods of Homer, Plato, and Helios.

This biography traces Julian's extraordinary life from its traumatic origins in the dynastic bloodbath of 337 CE, when the murder of his father by the Constantinian house first forged the connection between Christianity and violence that would define his apostasy, through his hidden philosophical formation, his brilliant Gallic campaigns, his accession as Augustus, and his doomed but remarkable attempt to build a pagan church capable of competing with the institution it was designed to displace. Drawing on Julian's own voluminous writings alongside the accounts of Ammianus Marcellinus, Libanius, and Gregory of Nazianzus, this is the full story of the man who almost changed everything.