The Last Pagan: Julian the Apostate and the Death of the Ancient World Paperback – Illustrated, April 18, 2008

I have been interested in the Emperor Julian ever since I read the book by Gore Vidal.The book in question is a scholarly book written with vivacity and accuracy, and it gave me a very good sense of the difficult times in which such a difficult character as Emperor Julian lived. It is entertaining as well as informative. I recommend it.

It was a good read, a little quirky.

This is a biography of the Emperor Julian, nephew of Constantine who ruled Rome for a short period from 361 to 363 ACE. Perhaps best know for his attempt to hold back Christianity and bring back to the centre the old religion of the Graeco-Roman world, there was, however, a lot more to Julian than just his religious policy. Murdoch's biography brings back to life Julian in his many facets through his easy to read and sometimes racy prose. Though not an academic text and perhaps not really adding substantially to the scholarship on Julian, this is nevertheless an enjoyable read.Briefly, Julian was born into the family of Constantine and though brought up as a Christian, grew attached to the old religion though his study of the Greek and Roman classics. His entire family was murdered by Constantine's successor Constantius in a bid to eliminate rivals. Julian threw himself into scholarly pursuits perhaps to escape the attention of Constantius and to avoid being seen as a threat. He became an accomplished scholar but eventually was selected by Constantius to take up an administrative post in Gaul. Here he proved himself an able ruler, reforming the tax system. Though not having had military training, he showed that he was an effective military commander, defeating German invaders in 357ACE. Eventually, a revolt propelled him to challenge Constantius as Emperor but before the two could fight it out, Constantius died and Julian becomes Emperor. He attempts in the end unsuccessfully to restore to primacy the old religion. His reforms include the emulation of Christian organisational skills (where Christians excelled) and charitable giving, but in the end his attempt to hold back Christianity fails. He died on a disastrous (for the Romans) campaign against Persia.Murdoch deals with his subject sympathetically. Julian was one of those rare rulers who though deeply immersed in scholarship, was able to turn his intellectual training into success in the practical affairs of government. Even in our own times, such leaders are rare. Apart from Churchill and Nehru, few twentieth century leaders (not counting Marxist theoreticians such as Lenin, Stalin and Mao) have joined to their political successes, scholarly or literary achievements.Julian, as depicted by Murdoch, also stands out as an able ruler of Rome in very difficult times. It is indeed noteworthy that the era produced some of the most capable rulers of Rome, such as Constantine, Julian, Valentinian and Theodosius. By contrast, some of the rulers of Rome during the Golden Age of the First Century ACE were at best mediocre and in the case of Caligula, Nero and Domitian, plain crazy. Perhaps, sub par rulers can stay in power in good times and when the state is stable without doing much damage, but difficult times require able rulers.Biography as a genre is easily criticised as placing too much emphasis on the works of individuals rather than the broader processes and trends that shape and change societies. Good biography however will be more than the story of an individual and will be a canvass on which to study the bigger things at play. In this, Murdoch's biography is not wanting, capturing the essence of Julian and his times. The big picture story was the rise of Christianity againt a backdrop of Roman decline. However, this not an academic book and some of the other reviews criticise the author's journalistic style. GW Bowersock's "Julian the Apostate" is an excellent academic biography for those who are interested - but taking a more traditional (and hostile) view of Julian. One may both admire the courage of an individual who swims against the tide - or condemn the same individual for lack of wisdom in doing so. Murdoch does the former if Bowerstock takes the latter position.Christian writers not unnaturally are hostile to Julian. However, in their writings and condemnations, one can sometimes sense a secret admiration. Such feelings for an enemy such as Julian are perhaps not that suprising, given his undoubted intelligence and ability. Indeed, the legacy of Julian despite being an enemy of Christianity has come down to us through Christian monks over the centuries carefully preserving, copying and handing down the record, including many of Julian's own letters. This perhaps might be the the most telling tribute to Julian.

Thought provoking

This book is a decent rational and disinterested biography of Julian, with chapter-head literary adornments of various ages, and a lengthy epilogue dwelling on various characterizations (mostly churchy demonizing) of Julian during succeeding centuries. The book's style, however, is a bit disconcerting in resorting to an excess of strikingly gratuitous and inelegant colloquialisms. And, lapsing repeatedly into the sorts of inferences that the conflicting and spotty ancient sources invariably require in a modern book, Murdoch among other things blithely asserts that Julian chose to invade Persia simply because he was ineluctably carrying forward the policies of his predecessors Constantius and Constantine; we have here only to considerer that Julian decidedly was not carrying forward the established Christianity-state power-consolidating union, and, with regard to frontier wars, that Hadrian provided obvious precedent in cutting the empire's losses in the east by halting wars of aggression and consolidating the frontier at a safe remove from Persia. Attempting finally to reconstruct particulars of the battle in which Julian was fatally injured, we come up with a less-than-operatic, most-plausible wound from a random arrow. For the most part, the book is, like most histories of Late Antiquity, a dry chronicle of war and politics. At least, though, so-called larger-than-life personages (whether traditionally deemed "great" or "evil") are, more and more, brought back to the status of mere mortals. Sic transit....

No enough background about Julian's opponents, but you can't have everything.

Nettes Buch, das ich wahrscheinlich nie fertiglesen werde. Für ein Buch mit diesem Titel hätte ich mir doch eher etwas mehr über Julians Heidentum gewünscht - sozusagen praktisch gar nichts darüber zu schreiben, erscheint mir dann doch etwas zu wenig. Das Buch von Gore Vidal über Julian war auch irgendwie lustiger zu lesen. Aber wer alles über Julian lesen will, der kann sich dieses Buch auch ruhig zulegen, schaden tut es direkt wohl nicht.

I have always been a Roman History fan but I didn't know much about Julian the Apostate, now I do and I would reccomend it.

No roman emperor has generated as much controversy as Julian. Either a pagan apostate or a brave philosopher fighting against the Christian tide, Julian has been cast a the devil or a hero depending on one points of view.Adrian Murdoch gives us a fair and insightful look into Julian's brief and tumultuous reign.

About two decades ago I read the somewhat scholarly work by  Bowersock  on this fascinating character, and a popular history had been long overdue. The story of this short but eventful period can be well told because of the richness of the sources, including  Ammianus  the army officer who served under Julian,  Libanius  the somewhat pompous and self-important rhetorician from Antioch who befriended Julian, and not least the copious surviving literary output from  Julian  himself, giving a valuable insight into the mind of an emperor not seen since that of  Marcus Aurelius  two centuries previously.Whilst for much of history being a hate figure, in recent times Julian seems to have become something of a hero figure amongst the left-wing anti-Christian intelligentsia, seemingly on the basis of nothing other than your enemy's enemy being your friend. Murdoch however invites us, as he says in his closing remarks, to see "a ruler as a man", and his excellent biography serves this aim well in presenting us with a portrait of the character of Julian, neither hagiography nor hatchet job.Despite what some people might suppose, Julian was not quite as tolerant of Christians as has been at times made out by people trying to present him as the very antithesis of Christian intolerance. Granted, violent persecution was minimal, but discriminatory actions and laws such as bypassing Christian soldiers for donatives and banning Christians from teaching classics were very much the order of the day.This book doesn't really go into detail about the exact nature of Julian's pagan beliefs. If anything his religious outlook seems to have been somewhat non-standard compared to paganism at large, and it's debatable to what extent Julian really stood for paganism as it was commonly understood and practiced.If I have one real criticism about this otherwise outstanding book, it's in its trying to present the notion (most notable in its title and subtitle and the back cover blurb, undoubtedly designed to increase sales) that had Julian lived then the history of Europe would have remained pagan ever since, and that with his death somehow paganism suddenly lost the fight. This is frankly tosh. The eventual rise of Christianity as the sole state religion was probably inevitable by this time. Had Julian lived he would not have founded a pagan dynasty of emperors (he resolved to not remarry after the death of his wife), and just about all the rest of the Constantinian dynasty was dead, not least by them all murdering each other. All Julian could have done was to delay it. Inevitably, succeeding emperors would have arisen from powerful Christian family dynasties, as Valentinian and  Theodosius  and their relatives did. The only question might have been whether it would be Arian or Catholic Christianity which succeeded. The death of Julian didn't mean the sudden death of paganism either, it was just a continuation of its gradual decline. (My own personal feeling is that, if in an alternate history Europe had managed to remain pagan, it would have been unable to stand up to the advance of Islam, and Europe would have in fact been Islamic for the past 1300 years)Just ignore the "alternate history" notion but read it for what it is, an excellent popular account of a short but colourful period of Roman history. BowersockAmmianusLibaniusJulianMarcus AureliusTheodosius