Julian the Apostate: The last pagin roman emperor,what if he survived?

Archon of Thessaly

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_the_Apostate

The last non-christian emperor and the last ruling decendent of constantine, Julian tried ( with varying degrees of success) to reverse christianities advane, abolishing christian edicts and restoring pagins to senior offices, as well as attempting to restore romes borders. He actually had initqal success in both respects, and managed to appease many people and roman generals ( not to mention the jews by making plans to rebuild the temple of solomon-an act for which he is muched praised.)

He was a scholer, statesmen and military commander, crushing the alamanii and their allies in several battles that saw many germaic tribes reassurt their loyalty to Rome. He then focused his attention on the biggest problem: Sassanid Parthia. He achieved inital success, winning a battle at ctistophon ( the persian capital) and recapturing cities along the euphrates. But then....he was mortally injured in an indecisive engagement and soon after died-possibly his death was aided by his christian officers. Without his leadership, the roman army fell back in dissaray and was forced to surrender much roman land in the east and christianity once again became the state religion.
Julian ruled for only 361-363 AD.

Yet......what if he wasnt killed? could he have bought the eastern campaign to a satisfactory conclusuion, reassurting roman dominence in the east? Could he then continue his reforms, returing paganism to the offical religion and reversing constantines reforms. Could he have temporerily stabalised the empire? its doubtful the empire would have still survived much longer then OTL, but his rteforms may have huge butterflies and repuccusions for us today.

But what do you think the results of a longer reign would be?
 

Grouchio

Short answer: Neoplatonic pagan revival party for everyone! YAY!!! :D
Long answer: Ask somebody who knows this stuff.
 

Basileus Giorgios

Julian will likely be overthrown. He annoyed both Christians and pagans with his moralising tone, and in any case, the Empire is two big for one man to rule in the fourth century. That, in short, is it.
 

carlton_bach

I doubt it. Julian was good, as fourth-century emperors went, but he wasn't the genius-cum-saint that later tradition made him out to be. If you look at the stuff he wrote and did, it sis obvious that he was quite confrontational and petulant. He would have engaged in infighting of the kind the empire didn't need, and taking on the church at the time would not have been an easy proposition. Someone with the personality of Diocletian or Theodosius could have, but Julian was not a Theodosius. He was too dam,n nice.
 

Archon of Thessaly

carlton_bach said:
I doubt it. Julian was good, as fourth-century emperors went, but he wasn't the genius-cum-saint that later tradition made him out to be. If you look at the stuff he wrote and did, it sis obvious that he was quite confrontational and petulant. He would have engaged in infighting of the kind the empire didn't need, and taking on the church at the time would not have been an easy proposition. Someone with the personality of Diocletian or Theodosius could have, but Julian was not a Theodosius. He was too dam,n nice.
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Ironic really. Perhaps if he took a page from the book of his ancestors he might have been able to battle the church authority more effectivly.
 

eliphas8

Depends really on how his anti-christian agenda plays out, Christianity is pretty much impossible to dislodge by that point in the east but I suspect the west could be pretty well brought back into the fold, this may actually cause further division in the empire when he dies though. He himself may be very competent but I doubt he could completely reverse the empires decline and with the possibility of a civil war with the east to reimpose christianity on the west. I actually quite like the idea of a christian east and neo-platoist west competing with each other in the long run and think it would be a fun AH story, I should put it on the pile of things I really should get around to writing when I'm not busy.
 

Archon of Thessaly

eliphas8 said:
Depends really on how his anti-christian agenda plays out, Christianity is pretty much impossible to dislodge by that point in the east but I suspect the west could be pretty well brought back into the fold, this may actually cause further division in the empire when he dies though. He himself may be very competent but I doubt he could completely reverse the empires decline and with the possibility of a civil war with the east to reimpose christianity on the west. I actually quite like the idea of a christian east and neo-platoist west competing with each other in the long run and think it would be a fun AH story, I should put it on the pile of things I really should get around to writing when I'm not busy.
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And another thing to add to my pile of planned works ( possibly.)
 

Duke 4

Would he bring back the games? Gladiator games, Olympus, etc? Would he pay off the nobility with giving them Church lands and riches , like Henry VIII of England did when he switched from Catholic too Protestant. Things like the above coud be very popular and help bring the people into the fold. He very easily could give people freedom of religion. Then give government benefits to his favorites. If he ruled for say 40 to 50 years, there could be a lot of changes.
 

Lysandros Aikiedes

Duke 4 said:
Would he bring back the games? Gladiator games, Olympus, etc? Would he pay off the nobility with giving them Church lands and riches , like Henry VIII of England did when he switched from Catholic too Protestant. Things like the above coud be very popular and help bring the people into the fold. He very easily could give people freedom of religion. Then give government benefits to his favorites. If he ruled for say 40 to 50 years, there could be a lot of changes.
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I do believe Gladiator games still continued for a couple of more centuries in Christian time. Probably disappeared from (eastern) Roman culture by the mid-500's CE.
 

Malta

eliphas8 said:
Depends really on how his anti-christian agenda plays out, Christianity is pretty much impossible to dislodge by that point in the east but I suspect the west could be pretty well brought back into the fold, this may actually cause further division in the empire when he dies though. He himself may be very competent but I doubt he could completely reverse the empires decline and with the possibility of a civil war with the east to reimpose christianity on the west. I actually quite like the idea of a christian east and neo-platoist west competing with each other in the long run and think it would be a fun AH story, I should put it on the pile of things I really should get around to writing when I'm not busy.
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He could have been defined as 'apathetic' I suppose. He personally didn't do anything like kill or imprison Christians, except bar them from important political and teaching positions. He just allowed the Pagan Mob to strike back against the Christian Mob.
 

Emperor Constantine

Julian the Apostate living longer does sound really cool:D. However, how he effects things depends on his reign. So lets say he defeats the Sassanid Empire, then what? There is several problems with restoring the old Roman Pantheon. First, organization. The Church was very well organized, the pagans not so much. There wasn't any real pagan equivalents to Pope, and Bishops. So Julian would need to make a pagan clergy, maybe Pontus Maximus as the head of the State Religion (no clue what a revived pagan religion would be called) and maybe High Priests in place of Bishops. Second, the empire's heart had moved to the east by this time, and there were more Christians then pagans in the east, so Julian would either have to give in insensitive to convert or he would have to attempt to move the heart of the empire back to the west. Duke 4 mentioned giving church land to nobles, like Henry VIII did. That would be a good incentive for the Nobility but what about the commoners. Comparing Henry VIII to Julian, Henry just changed the head of the Church from the Pope to himself, Julian wanted to go from worshiping one god to multiple gods. Perhaps embracing some of the Christian teachings would help, or adding some saints to the old pantheon. Third, the army. From what I've read, the Roman army seemed to be more Christian then pagan. Whats to stop a soldier from killing the Emperor in defense of Religion? Finally Julian lacks an heir. He died at either 31 or 32 so he could remarry and have a son or failing that, a daughter to marry to his chosen heir. Having an heir means its less likely that a civil war would develop after his death, thus undoing his religious policies.

The best bet would be to declare a freedom of religion and give intensives to those who convert but there needs to be a viable and visible alternative to Christianity for there to be any hope of success to last longer then his reign. Otherwise he would be a less bloody Mary I 1200 years earlier.
 

Elfwine

That would also require "church land" to exist in quantities significant enough to matter, which didn't happen until well after Christianity was too deep rooted to uproot by a Julian sort of guy.

So the "nobility" aren't going to have any interest in supporting him over small scraps.
 

Emperor Constantine

Elfwine said:
That would also require "church land" to exist in quantities significant enough to matter, which didn't happen until well after Christianity was too deep rooted to uproot by a Julian sort of guy.

So the "nobility" aren't going to have any interest in supporting him over small scraps.
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OK. I just repeated Duke's comment. I'm pretty sure Church land didn't develop in large quantities until after the fall of the Western Empire. I guess Julian could bribe them with land owned by the government but that seems like a waste of land.
 

Elfwine

Emperor Constantine said:
OK. I just repeated Duke's comment. I'm pretty sure Church land didn't develop in large quantities until after the fall of the Western Empire. I guess Julian could bribe them with land owned by the government but that seems like a waste of land.
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It would be.

Frankly, the problem is that no one except Julian is especially fond of his ideas of a "revived" paganism. It's not that there aren't still pagans of some sort or another, but Julian isn't exactly representing anyone's belief system but his own - well, maybe a few other odd ducks, but not enough to encourage people to join the Church of Jupiter or whatever he'd call it.
 
SlyDessertFox

SlyDessertFox

Emperor Constantine said:
Julian the Apostate living longer does sound really cool:D. However, how he effects things depends on his reign. So lets say he defeats the Sassanid Empire, then what? There is several problems with restoring the old Roman Pantheon. First, organization. The Church was very well organized, the pagans not so much. There wasn't any real pagan equivalents to Pope, and Bishops. So Julian would need to make a pagan clergy, maybe Pontus Maximus as the head of the State Religion (no clue what a revived pagan religion would be called) and maybe High Priests in place of Bishops. Second, the empire's heart had moved to the east by this time, and there were more Christians then pagans in the east, so Julian would either have to give in insensitive to convert or he would have to attempt to move the heart of the empire back to the west. Duke 4 mentioned giving church land to nobles, like Henry VIII did. That would be a good incentive for the Nobility but what about the commoners. Comparing Henry VIII to Julian, Henry just changed the head of the Church from the Pope to himself, Julian wanted to go from worshiping one god to multiple gods. Perhaps embracing some of the Christian teachings would help, or adding some saints to the old pantheon. Third, the army. From what I've read, the Roman army seemed to be more Christian then pagan. Whats to stop a soldier from killing the Emperor in defense of Religion? Finally Julian lacks an heir. He died at either 31 or 32 so he could remarry and have a son or failing that, a daughter to marry to his chosen heir. Having an heir means its less likely that a civil war would develop after his death, thus undoing his religious policies.

The best bet would be to declare a freedom of religion and give intensives to those who convert but there needs to be a viable and visible alternative to Christianity for there to be any hope of success to last longer then his reign. Otherwise he would be a less bloody Mary I 1200 years earlier.
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I thought Mithranism was popular with the soldiers.
 
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