Gods and Legions

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Of all the great figures of antiquity, few are so compelling yet enigmatic, few so admired yet vilified, as Flavius Claudius Julianus Augustus, the man known to history as Julian the Apostate. A Roman emperor who never set foot in Rome and spoke Latin only with difficulty, a brilliant and ruthless general who never picked up a sword until well into his adulthood, the richest and most powerful man in the world, yet a celibate who ate only vegetables and slept on the floor — he was a man of profound convictions and contrasts, and one whose beliefs were deeply disturbing to friend and enemy alike. In almost any other period of the Roman Empire his crusades and eccentricities might have been tolerated, perhaps even expected of an emperor; but this was no ordinary time.

The fourth century A.D. was one of the most wrenching periods in European history. After a series of weak leaders, barbarian invasions, and brutal religious persecutions, Rome suddenly produced an emperor — Julian's uncle, Constantine — who, astonishingly, became a Christian. Until that time Christianity had been a sect primarily of slaves and the poor, alternately derided and ignored, yet now it became the state religion. Ancient pagan temples were restored as churches, many men and women of the upper classes converted to the religion of their Emperor, and a new culture began to take root, but an empire as vast as Rome's could not change in a day. The Germans and Goths continued to wreak havoc in the West, the Persians in the East, and the Roman army, especially its powerful Eastern legions, remained largely pagan, faithful to such deities as the bloody and wrathful bull-god Mithras.

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