An interesting Roman Emperor ....... Julian the Apostate

This is one I am listening to.

It is from the Radio 4 series In Our Time

Julian

"Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the last pagan ruler of the Roman Empire. Fifty years after Constantine the Great converted to Christianity and introduced a policy of tolerating the faith across the empire, Julian (c.331 - 363 AD) aimed to promote paganism instead, branding Constantine the worst of all his predecessors. 

Julian was a philosopher-emperor in the mould of Marcus Aurelius and was noted in his lifetime for his letters and his satires, and it was his surprising success as a general in his youth in Gaul that had propelled him to power barely twenty years after a rival had slaughtered his family. 

Julian's pagan mission and his life were brought to a sudden end while on campaign against the Sasanian Empire in the east, but he left so much written evidence of his ideas that he remains one of the most intriguing of all the Roman emperors and a hero to the humanists of the Enlightenment.

With, James Corke-Webster, Reader in Classics, History and Liberal Arts at King’s College, London, Lea Niccolai, Assistant Professor in Classics at the University of Cambridge and Fellow and Director of Studies in Classics, Trinity College, and Shaun Tougher, Professor of Late Roman and Byzantine History at Cardiff University

Julian

Producer: Simon Tillotson"*

Picture; Julian, The Frigidarium in Cluny, Ash Crow, 2015, I, the copyright holder of this work, hereby publish it under the following license: attribution share alike This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license

*Julian the Apostate, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001xd7b