Julian

Julian was the son of a half-brother of Constantine. Socrates says that he was eight when Constantine died, that he was educated at Constantinople and Nicomedia, where he was made a reader in the church, and that the philosopher Maximus of Ephesus drew him to the old religion (Socrates, Church History 3.1). Ammianus, who served under him, says that he kept this secret until he had sole power and then ordered the temples reopened and the sacrifices restored (Ammianus Marcellinus 22.5.1–2). His own rescript on teachers tells Christians who will not honour the gods of Homer to go and expound Matthew and Luke in their churches (Julian, Letter 36).

He was wounded in battle against the Persians and died on 26 June 363, in the thirty-first year of his age by Socrates’s reckoning (Socrates, Church History 3.21); Ammianus, who was on the campaign, says the thirty-second (Ammianus Marcellinus 25.3.6–23). See Julian Tries to Restore the Old Religion.