by David Potter
The victory over Magnentius gave Constantius only temporary respite from governmental crisis. Gallus forgot that his appointed role was merely to act as a figurehead for the regime, and began to quarrel with senior officials in the east, who refused to report to him. In the west, an effort to reward an officer named Silvanus for betraying Magnentius backfired when members of the court conspired against him, whereupon he declared himself emperor. Constantius ordered Gallus to leave Antioch and executed him for treason at the end of AD 354, then arranged Silvanus’ assassination in AD 355. Yet these crises convinced him that he needed more help. For this he turned to Julian, who was appointed Caesar in Gaul, with express instructions to prevent a recurrence of the troubles that had doomed Gallus.
In the course of his extensive education, Julian had secretly converted from Christianity to paganism under the tutelage of Maximus of Ephesus, a Neoplatonic philosopher, who had shown him how to make special contact with the gods through the theurgic arts. The central tenet of theurgy was the belief that humans could control the action of the gods through intense study of the divine world. The doctrine was based on the Chaldaean Oracles, texts allegedly written by a man named Julianus in the time of Marcus Aurelius (some historians now believe that they were composed much later). These writings disclosed ‘secret’ knowledge about the gods, imparted to mortals by the gods themselves. The actual practice of theurgy in the eastern empire was introduced at the end of the third century by Iamblichus (c. AD 245–325), a native of Syria, and promoted by certain philosophers who traced their ideas to those of Plotinus, the third-century AD founder of Neoplatonism. A great deal of magical ritual, sacrifice and invocation was involved in theurgical practice, and Maximus, who had been a student of Iamblichus, was a master of the art.
It seems to have been after Maximus introduced him to the flaming – and talking – statue of the goddess Hecate that he kept at his house, that Julian crossed the spiritual frontier and became a follower of the ancient gods. In another person, such a move might merely have been a local scandal, involving a certain amount of tutting by neighbours and the like. In the case of a man who was Constantine’s nephew and the emperor’s cousin, the move was tantamount to high treason. Maximus, Julian and a few others knew to keep the secret to themselves, but for how long would Julian be able to hide his true self from others?
Julian the schemer
Julian may have been eccentric, but he was by no means stupid. He understood the personal risks that he was taking and recognized that Constantius governed by sowing fear and suspicion among senior officials, who looked to him as the ultimate arbiter of all their affairs. One of the most telling anecdotes from Constantius’ reign concerns the general Ursicinus, who was sent to murder Silvanus. When he arrived at Silvanus’ headquarters, Silvanus greeted him as an old friend, assuming that Ursicinus was as disillusioned with Constantius’ reign as he was. Indeed, this was a fair appraisal of Ursicinus’ state of mind – Ammianus Marcellinus (c. AD 330–395), one of his staff officers, meticulously documented his incessant moaning about how badly treated he felt. Even so, he still feared Constantius enough that he thought it better to assassinate his friend than defy his emperor. In such circumstances, then, if Julian were to survive, he would need to find a way to exploit Constantius’ tyrannical style of rule to his own advantage.
In the wake of Silvanus’ murder, Ursicinus and an officer named Marcellus were put in command of military forces in Gaul. In AD 356 they were ordered to conduct manoeuvres to intimidate the Alamanni, an operation that went off tolerably well, while Julian played his role as imperial figurehead in the campaign. In the winter, however, Julian was cut off, well within Roman territory, by a band of Frankish raiders. He escaped, but thereafter histrionically dramatized the incident, suggesting that his near-death experience was the result of a dereliction of duty by his senior military commanders. Ursicinus and Marcellus were duly replaced by an officer named Barbatio, who was ordered to coordinate an operation with Julian in AD 357 similar to that of the previous year. Julian did as little as he could to help, perhaps hoping that Barbatio would run into trouble and retreat, which is indeed what happened. Julian, however, had reckoned without the consequences of his own subterfuge, and suddenly found himself confronted by an army of Alamanni near Strasbourg.
Even allowing for the fact that most of what we know comes from Ammianus, whose critical faculties were occasionally impaired by his partiality for Julian, the result of this encounter exceeded Julian’s wildest hopes. His victory was total, including the capture of the king of the Alamanni, and established his reputation as a commander to be reckoned with. Even Constantius, who was in the Balkans at the time, seemed genuinely impressed, and began to entrust Julian with real authority.
Watch, learn and strike
Over the course of the winter, Julian won further credit, this time at the expense of the praetorian prefect in Gaul in a dispute over tax collection. This matter was dealt with by correspondence. In his dealings in Gaul, Julian emulated his cousin in avoiding personal entanglements with senior officials. Constantius had come to realize that maintaining a certain aloofness bred exactly the kind of constructive fear that was needed to keep officials in line. Julian did likewise, surrounding himself with a few close friends and staying clear of day-to-day administration.
All the while, as he built his own group of supporters and won the loyalty of select units of the army, Julian knew that he only had a limited amount of time to play with. Dreams revealed to him that he was destined to overthrow his cousin, and he entered into treasonous correspondence with his spiritual gurus. Constantius grew suspicious and so, in AD 358, he replaced a number of Julian’s closest advisers with his own placemen. But then larger problems obtruded and demanded his attention, as Shapur II once again threatened war in the east. At the same time, he became embroiled again in doctrinal debate. In these circumstances, it would have been counterproductive to remove Julian, who was at least efficient and, as far as Constantius knew, not openly disloyal.
The Persian invasion ground to a halt before the city of Amida in the summer of AD 359. Ammianus, who was present, recorded the scene as the enemy carefully prepared his siege lines around the fortress for over two months. Meanwhile, Constantius was idle, awaiting the outcome of discussions on the Holy Trinity at Sirmium. Even when Amida fell, Constantius did not act. Yet the garrison’s courageous stand had so seriously delayed the Persians’ timetable for a summer offensive that they now withdrew. This would only be a temporary reprieve, however. If Constantius was to defeat Shapur, he would need more men, and the only person who was in a position to supply troops, having successfully pacified the Rhine frontier, was Julian.
Julian saw his chance. Antipathy to Constantius ran high both in the western army and among influential opinion-makers in Gallic society. Mainstream Christians in particular – now rejoined once more by Athanasius, who had been exiled from Alexandria for a third time in AD 355 – had come to regard the emperor as the Antichrist. Western troops were all too aware that units transferred east as a penalty for supporting Magnentius never came home – five were wiped out at Amida alone – and so refused point-blank to leave Gaul. These were disciplined soldiers, but they saw their loyalty as being primarily to the areas from which they came. Julian exploited their discontent, and in March AD 360 allowed himself to be proclaimed Augustus by troops who were in transit to the eastern front. Constantius’ authority in Gaul collapsed and the new Augustus wrote saying that he would be content to split the empire with his cousin, who had no choice but to concede while Shapur threatened his borders.
Julian did not wait for Constantius to regroup. In the summer of AD 361 he invaded the Balkans and reached Naissus, where he stopped to gather his strength and bombard the cities of the east with propaganda leaflets justifying his rebellion. He now began to worship the old gods openly, and after 3 November had even more reason to put his faith in them. It was on that day that Constantius suddenly died of a f
ever in southern Turkey.
Desperate ploys
The brief reign of Julian is most noteworthy for his abortive attempts to revive traditional cult. If he had not combined this effort with a spectacularly ill-advised invasion of Iraq, it is conceivable that he might even have reversed the steady trend towards Christianization begun by Constantine. On the other hand, Julian’s brand of religious fundamentalism was as distasteful to thinking pagans as it was to Christians. In dealing with the Christians, he held back from conducting persecutions, and tried instead to foment discord within their communities. He did this by recalling various bishops to the sees from which Constantius had exiled them for doctrinal nonconformity. Thus it was that Athanasius returned as archbishop of Alexandria after a pagan mob there had murdered the former incumbent (and Julian’s former guardian) George of Cappadocia. Julian did not punish the Alexandrians for their act, but in various other places, when violence broke out between Christian communities, his response was to impose heavy sanctions upon them. Julian also created new provincial priesthoods to raise the profile of traditional pagan worship by engaging in lavish public sacrifices. The intention was that his new priests should mount a challenge to the Christian establishment, which, for all its internal divisions, had won genuine credit for dispensing charity to widows and the sick. This initiative failed; not only were aristocratic pagan priests totally unused to doing charitable works, but they also simply lacked the infrastructure to compete.
Equally problematic was Julian’s attempt to encourage the Jews to restore the Temple at Jerusalem, destroyed in the revolt of AD 70. His sole motivation was to disprove Jesus’ prophecy, as reported in the gospels, that the Temple would remain a ruin. All of Julian’s plans ultimately turned to dust; in AD 362 work in Jerusalem was halted by an earthquake. That same year, Athanasius was again evicted from Alexandria when he dared to convert several prominent pagans to Christianity. Worse still, the people of Antioch, where Julian overwintered, displayed open contempt for him after he controversially removed the bones of a Christian martyr from the site of an oracular shrine he planned to reopen. He also tried to blame the Christians of Antioch when a famous local temple was consumed by an accidental fire. Ultimately, he concluded that the only way out of the impasse he had got himself into was to undertake a massive assault against Persia.
Outflanked in Iraq
Julian launched his invasion of Iraq in the spring of AD 363. His strategy was to force the Persian king to negotiate by threatening his capital at Ctesiphon. The ultimate plan was to install Shapur’s relative Hormizd (son of the former ruler Hormizd II), who was accompanying Julian, as a puppet ruler of some part of the realm. This was a foolish plan bedevilled by slapdash preparation. Julian brought with him no siege train, and was totally wrong-footed when Shapur refused to engage in a risky set-piece battle. Shapur had the luxury of being able to play a waiting game and win the war by exploiting Julian’s woeful logistics. And so, as Julian advanced down the Euphrates, the Persians flooded the irrigation canals behind him, making it impossible for him to withdraw the same way that he had come.
Things went from bad to worse. Ctesiphon refused to surrender to a general who lacked the proper equipment to lay siege to it. Julian was forced to beat an ignominious retreat up the Tigris, harassed all the while by Persian delaying tactics designed to slow his withdrawal as he ran desperately short of food and other supplies. On 26 June, Julian was mortally wounded during a Persian attack on his rearguard. A relatively junior officer, Jovian (c. AD 332–364), was chosen by the general staff to serve as emperor and continue the retreat. On 1 July, he reached an agreement with Shapur, whereby the starving remnant of his army would be granted safe conduct to Roman territory in return for certain concessions. These included restoring to Persia the provinces seized by Diocletian and surrender of the fortress of Nisibis, which Shapur had failed to capture three times in the reign of Constantius. The emotions of the people of Nisibis, who seem to have been mostly Christian, when they saw Julian’s body coming back and learned that their city would be turned over to the enemy, are powerfully reflected in the words of a Christian leader named Ephraim. He wrote:
A wonder! By chance the corpse of the accursed one,
Crossing over towards the rampart, met me near the city!
And the Magus took and fastened on a tower
The standard sent from the east. So that this standard-bearer would declare to the onlookers
That the city was slave to the lords of that standard.
Brothers in power
Jovian might not have been a bad emperor. The surrender to Shapur was hardly his fault, and in his short reign he tried to bring confessional peace to the empire. Athanasius, the symbol of ecclesiastical resistance to imperial control, was permitted to return to Alexandria. At the same time, Jovian took only limited action against former supporters of Julian, and recognized that he could only secure power through negotiation with various entrenched interests in the bureaucracy.
Before he had a chance to get a firm grasp on the reins of power, however, he died on 17 February, AD 364. The official line was that a coal fire asphyxiated him in his bedroom. The fact that there was no investigation of his death hinted at murder. But if this were the case, those responsible had no clear plan for the future. It was not until 26 February that another comparatively junior officer, Valentinian (AD 321–375), was presented to the army as the general staff’s candidate. The soldiers duly proclaimed him emperor, and, a few weeks later, as Valentinian realized that he would be spending a great deal of time in the west, he requested that they proclaim his brother, Valens (AD 328–378), as his coemperor.
Constantius and Julian were strong personalities who had constantly reassigned senior officials to prevent the formation of powerful patronage networks. Yet, like the rank-and-file soldiers, senior bureaucrats tended to come from the regions where they served. Imperial authority simply set the seal on the power they had already acquired by cultivating connections within each bureau of government. All power was now centralized within the palace and was no longer based on the principle of collegiality. This meant that emperors were now obliged to negotiate with various diverse local power structures masquerading as representatives of a central government. The men who surrounded the throne had a vested interest in preventing effective imperial interference in their fiefdoms. They got exactly the emperors they wanted in Valentinian and Valens.
The nature of the new regime became apparent in September AD 365 when Procopius, a distant relative of Julian, whom Julian had allegedly designated as his successor before invading Iraq, staged a coup in Constantinople. In line with his lenient treatment of Julian’s former confederates, Jovian had allowed Procopius, who did not press his claim, to retire to his estates in central Turkey. Valens now stirred things up by ordering Procopius’ arrest. Procopius evaded capture and reappeared in the capital to win control of two legions. For several months, it looked as though he would unseat Valens. When Valentinian learned of the revolt, his advisers dissuaded him from intervening, emphasizing that it was vital he should remain in Gaul to repel any barbarian invasion. If Procopius prevailed, they would work out a way to deal with him later.
In the end, though, Valens was saved by the intervention of Arbitio, a member of Constantius’ inner circle whom Julian had cashiered. Arbitio, whose personal authority was plainly far greater than that of Valens, convinced many of Procopius’ men to switch sides prior to the battle that would decide who became emperor. In the course of the battle even more of Procopius’ men deserted his ranks, and he was captured and executed.
The message of Procopius’ coup was loud and clear. Valens and Valentinian were welcome to rule, but if they wanted to stay in power, it was essential that they respect the interests of their top civil servants. Valens’ success was largely due to the fact that, once the western armies had returned home, most eastern officials were still Constantius’ appointees, who hated Procopius for his links with Julian.
Corrupt sinecures
Valentinian remained on the throne for 11 years, and Valens for 14. In the west, Valentinian ruled through a small circle of associates who had supported his rise to power. Many abused their privileged position for years. In North Africa, for instance, a major scandal erupted at the start of Valentinian’s reign, when the region’s long-serving military commander, Romanus, arrived in the city of Leptis Magna to deal with the problem of ongoing attacks by desert raiders. After remaining there for 40 days, he suddenly demanded 4000 camels from the city’s long-suffering inhabitants and, when these were not forthcoming, simply abandoned them to their fate. The people of Leptis Magna protested, but Romanus exploited his connections at court to ensure that no action was taken against him, even as the nomads resumed their raids. The issue dragged on for years, and Romanus continued all the while to feather his own nest. Indeed, Romanus’ corruption only became the subject of scrutiny in a massive shake-up of government after Valentinian’s death.
Similar corrupt practices flourished in Rome, where members of the senatorial aristocracy were charged with a range of offences of a largely personal nature (e.g. consulting magicians and adultery). Senators lodged vigorous protests, but were delivered a rude snub, as the official they most detested was promoted to the praetorian prefecture. The most significant feature of this incident is not that the representations of the senate failed to achieve their desired effect, but that this body now clearly saw itself as quite separate from the imperial court. The Roman senate had once been the pool from which future emperors were drawn, and a partner in the governance of the realm. Now, with only limited access to key posts, and the emperor living far away in Constantinople, it was reduced to acting as just another civic petitioner.