Julian: An Intellectual Biography

by Polymnia Athanassiadi

"Julian" tells the story of the transformation of a reclusive and scholarly adolescent into a successful general and an audacious social reformer. The author traces the sequence of the Emperor Julian's responses to inner and outward challenges and dwells on the tensions and conflicts that each new choice created for him. Julian knew how to cope both with success and with those misfortunes for which he was not personally responsible, but he was not able to face failure. The shock of realizing a few months before his premature death that as a statesman he had indeed failed caused him to withdraw into a private world of visions and illusions, and rendered him incapable of sustaining any longer his contact with reality.

Genres: Biography, History

272 pages, Paperback

First published August 14, 1992

About the author

Polymnia Athanassiadi est professeur d'histoire ancienne à l'université d’Athènes et membre du Conseil scientifique de l’École Française d’Athènes. Spécialiste de l’Histoire intellectuelle et religieuse du monde méditerranéen à l’époque hellénistique et romaine, elle a donné des cours dans plusieurs universités et institutions d’enseignement supérieur (entre autres, Oxford, Moscou, Berkeley, Columbia, Harvard, Princeton, Collège de France, EPHE - Ve Section).

Reviews

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating, in-depth exploration of the religious, philosophical, and psychological influences of Julian as discerned in his surviving writings. The portrait of Julian created by this scholar is sympathetic without trying to make a pagan 'saint' out of him. Julian comes across as a deeply thoughtful, gifted intellectual who, unwillingly thrust into a position of power, takes his obligations very seriously. He also comes across as someone who lives in an 'ivory tower' of his own creation, out of touch with the changing currents of his society ... even while he is very much affected by them at the same time. Toward the end of the book, Julian takes the path of the tragic hero and falls victim to hubris.

Aside from Julian, the book does a good job of introducing the reader to these very currents of thought that were still so much in flux at the time. The emphasis is on what is changing regarding Neoplatonism, and the theurgical thought of Iamblichus, as well as the direct influence on Julian by his teachers at various points. Surprisingly little is discussed regarding Christianity in favour of pagan influence, and yet it would be interesting to explore further Julian's reaction against Christianity and how that developed over the course of his life (along with why).

[Tony Gualtieri]

Julian was the only Neoplatonist who engaged with Plato's political writings. As such, his thoughts and actions have great interest as a glimpse of what might have been had Christianity not become the state religion of the late Roman Empire. The book is a sympathetic portrait that doesn't hide Julian's flaws. After a promising start, the ridicule he was greeted with in Antioch was decisive and suggest that his rule would have ended in failure if it hadn't ended in his early death.

My sole complaint is the large number of untranslated Greek terms that are often undefined. While one sympathizes with the author in that exact translations do not exist for these words, it becomes tiresome for someone not versed in the original language to infer their meaning.