WI: Julian the Apostate lived

Zebra Cakes

I'm listening to the awesome podcast The History of Rome and he did a couple of episodes about Julian the Apostate. He made huge reforms, but was only in power for a year and a half before he was killed in battle.

The most impactful emperors usually were in power for a couple of decades, so I want to ask

What if Julian the Apostate had lived?
Say he isn't killed in battle and lives another 15 or 20 years in power.

What would have happened to the Roman Empire?

What would have happened to the Western world?
 

Shawn Endresen

A pretty contentious question :) as an intelligent, gifted reactionary, lots of people look to him as a champion to keep Byzantium more Rome-like and less Greek. The contrary opinion holds that Julian was so astonishingly bad at diplomacy and interpersonal relationships that he would have been killed by one of his subordinates inside of two years if he hadn't fallen in battle, for little net change.

If the goal is more Roman Byzantium, I think the objective needs to be to take Julian down a peg, and keep him in charge of civil administration while diplomacy is handled by someone else. Possibly crippling but not killing him?
 

Malta

If his campaign in Persia went off better, say he managed his objective of replacing the king of Persia he would have been able to solidify the border with Persia hopefully and gain the loyalty of the Eastern Army of the Roman Empire. With this he may have had the manpower to be able to continue his reconstruction of the Roman Empire, namely reform its bureaucracy and create a earlier ''Renissance' of sorts with the earlier Rome, still a Empire but more merit based.

If he is able to do this, he might be able to add years to the Roman Empire but this is unsure. It is quite likely though that he may have faced a few Christian revolts, as while he was not brutal to them he was highly apathetic and would have continued a roll back of Christian influence in the Roman Empire, some say even create a hierarchial church for his brand of Neoplatonism. His aim was to divide the Christians sects and keep them from gaining power, this would have either inspired a popular Christian revolution or surpressed it if the success of the government leads to sway people to Julian.

Amongst us Modern Pagans he is reffered as Julian the Great.
 
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Zebra Cakes

Well, if he had lived longer and been successful the first thing on my list would be
He'd be called Julian the Great instead of JtA. Also, rather than being Constantine the Great, Constantine might be the Apostate.
 

Saepe Fidelis

Bit of a side-note: If Julian's campaign in the East is more successful (well, it didn't really have many concrete objectives, but let's say he defeats Shapur and throws the Persian Empire into turmoil for another generation) then could it not be conceivable that, with the loyalty of the Eastern legions behind him, he could have supplemented his forces with Arab and Armenian auxiliaries rather than doing what his successors did and press Germanic tribes into service? My guess would be that relying on Eastern mercenaries although not much better in the short run would mean that you probably wouldn't have the massive migrations which followed the Germanic tribes.

Just a bit of thinking, it's probably stupid...
 

mailinutile2

Zebra Cakes said:
What if Julian the Apostate had lived?
Click to expand...
Made a mess of pretty much everything he touched.
Was despised by most of non-pagan subjects and embarassed even his pagans ones.
Known with the nickname of "the butcher".
Read the accounts with both eyes open and you see the inevitable knife sliding through his ribcage
 

Elfwine

mailinutile2 said:
Made a mess of pretty much everything he touched.
Was despised by most of non-pagan subjects and embarassed even his pagans ones.
Known with the nickname of "the butcher".
Read the accounts with both eyes open and you see the inevitable knife sliding through his ribcage
Click to expand...

I've read, but I'm not sure, the nickname referred to being enthusiastically into (presumably due to its perceived by him importance) sacrifice, not killing people, but its still not flattering.
 

mailinutile2

Elfwine said:
I've read, but I'm not sure, the nickname referred to being enthusiastically into (presumably due to its perceived by him importance) sacrifice, not killing people, but its still not flattering.
Click to expand...
Actually it was far worse: it was (and was meant to be) making a laughing stock of him.
Animal sacrifices were out of date and while paganism was trying to restilish itself (Apollonius et similia), Julian gave the worst possible image of it, dragging the imperial position in ridicule as well
 

Elfwine

mailinutile2 said:
Actually it was far worse: it was (and was meant to be) making a laughing stock of him.
Animal sacrifices were out of date and while paganism was trying to restilish itself (Apollonius et similia), Julian gave the worst possible image of it, dragging the imperial position in ridicule as well
Click to expand...

Not a good thing. I don't know if "paganism" could have been revived at all, but Julian seems to be the sort who would remembered as a quixotic failure whether he reigned two years or twenty.
 

PaganMonarchist

Elfwine said:
Not a good thing. I don't know if "paganism" could have been revived at all, but Julian seems to be the sort who would remembered as a quixotic failure whether he reigned two years or twenty.
Click to expand...

I think Julian would have likely succeeded in re-establishing paganism, which most people were behind at this point in time. He would hardly have been remembered as a quixotic failure, especially if his Persian campaign succeeded, as it likely would have had he simply put his armor on in the battle which killed him IOTL.
 

mailinutile2

dreadnought jenkins said:
Wait what? He was only in power for a year and a half. How does that make him deserving of the title "Great."
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Basically the fact that he was in charge only for a year and a half.
That way, Ammianus and Zeno were able to wash papers (or papyrs) with rivers of ink about how great would he have been, without having to deal with the blunders that one have to face when living the "real life"
 
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mailinutile2

PaganMonarchist said:
I think Julian would have likely succeeded in re-establishing paganism, which most people were behind at this point in time. He would hardly have been remembered as a quixotic failure, especially if his Persian campaign succeeded, as it likely would have had he simply put his armor on in the battle which killed him IOTL.
Click to expand...
with all respect, the point where "most people were behind paganism" was gone by 70 years.
Paganism was still followed in the elites (at least for tradition's sake), and we have a number of pagan historians, but they do not represent a veritable sample of the population.
Things like tombstones and buildings tell a very different tale for the population, both in the towns and in the army.
Look what happen to the would-be usurper of Valens (I think name's Procopius but I'm not 100% sure) which tried to present himself as a continuator of Julian's politics

That does not exclude a possible revivial, though
 
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Elfwine

Julian, even if he wins, is the kind of guy to die as he did OTL, and do what he did OTL.

I tend to subscribe to the theory that character is fate - and he has the character of a well meaning, enthusiastic, energetic failure, who never quite manages success.

Even if he wins the battle against the Persians, he's doing it while withdrawing from a busted campaign, not in an advance, if I'm not mistaken.
 

Malta

mailinutile2 said:
with all respect, the point where "most people were behind paganism" was gone by 70 years.
Paganism was still followed in the elites (at least for tradition's sake), and we have a number of pagan historians, but they do not represent a veritable sample of the population.
Things like tombstones and buildings tell a very different tale for the population, both in the towns and in the army.
Look what happen to the would-be usurper of Valens (I think name's Procopius but I'm not 100% sure) which tried to present himself as a continuator of Julian's politics

That does not exclude a possible revivial, though
Click to expand...

Thats not right, because Worship were still a majority in the Western Empire and certain areas in the Eastern Empire such as Gaza and Egypt. Christanity only had influence amongst the Urban Poor, it was stills trong amongst the rural areas throughout the entire Roman Empire.

dreadnought jenkins said:
Wait what? He was only in power for a year and a half. How does that make him deserving of the title "Great."
Click to expand...

He wasn't killed by a Christian Roman, and ruled as a Pagan, and upheld the 'Pagan' legacy.
 

mailinutile2

King of Malta said:
Thats not right, because Worship were still a majority in the Western Empire and certain areas in the Eastern Empire such as Gaza and Egypt. Christanity only had influence amongst the Urban Poor, it was stills trong amongst the rural areas throughout the entire Roman Empire.
Click to expand...
Tombstones tell a different tale, expecially in the army
 
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