The Early Life of Julian the Apostate

Author(s): Norman H. Baynes

Source: The Journal of Hellenic Studies, Vol. 45, Part 2 (1925), pp. 251-254
Published by: The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/625049
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 THE EARLY LIFE OF JULIAN THE APOSTATE
SUPPOSE that you are writing a highly eulogistic obituary notice of a well-
known statesman who has recently died, and suppose further that you wish
to suppress all reference to one period in that statesman's life which lasted for
six years, how are you going to proceed ? It is clearly a ticklish matter. But
if your hero left X at the beginning of that period of six years to go to Y, and
then at its close returned from Y to X, it might be possible to telescope the two
residences at X into a single visit, and to cover your suppression of the six
years' absence by a discreet lack of definition in your chronological statements.
If you are successful, others may follow your lead, and centuries later your
evasions may escape the notice of the historical student. I would suggest that
this is precisely what has happened in the case of the ErtT0~4o XAbyos of
Libanius upon his hero Julian the Apostate. Libanius suppressed all reference
to the six years of Julian's banishment to Macellum; Julian as a boy of ten or
eleven was at Constantinople: from Constantinople he was sent to Macellum
in Cappadocia by Constantius: from Macellum, as a youth of seventeen, he
returned to Constantinople. Libanius has telescoped into one these two
residences in the capital. Socrates, writing in the following century the history
of Julian's early years, has composed his chapter with the 6ertTad cow XAdyos
of Libanius before him, and has naturally followed the account of Julian's friend
and contemporary. The story told alike by Christian and by Pagan has been
accepted by modern writers. But Sozomen, engaged upon his history after the
publication of the-work of Socrates, followed an independent authority, and thus
enables us to reconstruct the true chronology and to detect the artifice which
imposed upon his predecessor. That is the thesis which I would seek to justify
in this note.
At present it would seem that the chronological scheme of Julian's early
years proposed by Seeck bids fair to be generally accepted : it has, for instance,
been adopted by Geffcken in his biography of Julian.' That scheme may be
tabulated as follows :

Julian's birth at Constantinople.

Early in 338: Murder of his father and removal to Nicomedia.
About 342 : He moves to Constantinople, where he begins his studies.
344: Returns to Nicomedia, and-
345 : Is banished to Fundus Macelli.

In a review of the fourth volume of Seeck's Geschichte des Untergangs der

antiken Welt (1911) I endeavoured (in 1912) to show that his reconstruction
1 Johannes Geffcken: Kaiser Julianus (=Das Erbe der Alten Heft viii.), Leipzig,
1914, p. 128.
251
252 NORMAN H. BAYNES
of the chronology was impossible (English Historical Review, xxvii. pp. 755-
760); that negative argument may be assumed here, and we can pass at once
to the positive reconstruction.2
Julian, it would seem, was born in A.D. 331;3 until the massacre of his
relatives by the army he lived in Constantinople. The precise date of that
massacre is uncertain : it is to be placed either in the second half of A.D.337, as
I am inclined to think,4 or very early in A.D. 338 (so Seeck, Geschichte,etc., iv.
p. 391; cf. Hieron., Chron. 2354). Julian had just begun his education in the
Eastern capital (5Te T'?7 7rap' b;Liyv Julian, Ep. ad Them.
259 B) when the catastrophe occurred.?)pX•.•yqv 7ratelian,
After the massacre he was removed from
Constantinople to Nicomedia, where his relative Eusebius was bishop. While
in Nicomedia, as is well known, he was entrusted to the care of the eunuch
Mardonius, 'his spiritual father.' Eusebius was translated from Nicomedia
to the see of Constantinople c. 339-340 : his young charge probably returned
with him at this time to the capital (cf. Allard, Julien l'Apostat, i. 267).
When in Constantinople for the second time he is still under ?7rat8ayryol
(Libanius [Forster], ii. p. 241), and that one of these-the ebVoV'XO
/3p'1XT71TO ,vb a? of Libanius-was Mardonius, as Fbrster states,
aGo'CpoGi-V'c
there can hardly be any doubt. When Julian was banished to Macellum he
was parted from Mardonius. On his second visit to Nicomedia there is no
mention of Mardonius; we may therefore conclude that it was from Constanti-
nople, and not from Nicomedia, that Julian was exiled to Macellum. I have con-
tended as against Seeck (English Historical Review, xxvii. p. 758) that the exile
in Macellum terminated about 348 : we know that the young princes were still
at Macellum in 347 when Constantius paid a brief visit to their place of con-
finement. The stay at Macellum lasted six years: it thus began about 342.
Julian was therefore in Constantinople from c. 339-340 to 342. Libanius
was in Constantinople until 344: it is therefore to these years that his con-
fession refers: ijXyovv ob arrelpov abTEf Vl TV ov taVT71v 4rvX v (p. 241).
When Julian was torn away from school he was a mere boy (4E' &6
xo/Ltpj
LetpaKtov iEt TCov 8t~SacaXeotwv cTrayay6vTrev
271 B)-about eleven years
old. During his stay at Macellum, however (eleven to seventeen), he would
be quite capable of appreciating the books which he borrowed from the library
2 For the fact that Socrates wrote with the 0. Seeck, Das Epigramrm des Ger-
762;
Adyos before
&arL'dr4ros him, cf. Socr. iii. 23, manus und seine Ueberschrift; Rheinisches
p. 200. That his account was composed Museum, N.S. lxix. [1914], pp. 565-567), we
with the view of combating the repre- have Julian's own statement in his letter to
sentation of the motives of Constantius as the Alexandrians, written in the winter of
given by Libanius in the wtrLd-PLor hdyos
362 (cf. Seeck, Geschichte, etc., iv. p. 391):
has been already remarked by Firster (see obX haaprer8e 7E- ypa p0r s s 6s0o nEO8deuEvor
his notes in his edition of Libanius, ii. 7(^ropEVOeVTr Ka'iVc7V T?V 6•8b(6= Christianity)
[1904], pp. 241-242). That the account of 6XPis trwv E0oa Kairav'Tv- (=Vthe worship
Sozomen (v. 1) is independent of both of Helios) nJ abi'vOeo?s 7ropEvoyEv~ 8w8Karov
Socrates (iii. 1) and Libanius needs no proof. fros. Ep. 51. p. 434D (=Bidez and Cu-
3 Apart from the doubtful evidence of the mont, p. 172).
oracle (cf. C. Radinger, Das Geburtsdatum 4
Cf. N. H. Baynes, Athanasiana ; Jour-
des Kaisers Julian Apostata, Philologus nal of Egyptian Archaeology xi. [1925], at
1. [1891], p. 761; K. J. Neumann, Das p. 67.
Geburtsjahr Kaiser Julians, ibid. pp. 761-
 THE EARLY LIFE OF JULIAN THE APOSTATE 253
of George, later to become bishop of Alexandria (cf. J. Bidez, ' La Jeunesse de
l'empereur Julien,' Acadgmie Royale de Belgique, Bulletin de la Classe des
Lettres, etc., 1921, pp. 197-216 at p. 210). At the end of this banishment (c.
A.D. 348) Gallus returned to Ephesus, where he had property (Soz., v. 2. 15;
cf. Jul., Epist. ad Ath. 273 B), and thereafter was summoned to the Court, where
'he was kept a close prisoner' (Jul., ibid. 271 D) until he was created Caesar.
Julian went once more to Constantinople (Soz., 1.c.), and it is to this period that
we should refer his studies under Hecebolius and Nicocles of which Socrates
speaks. The reason for the chronological misplacement in Socrates is, as we
have seen, the fact that he is writing with the of Libanius
before him, and is therefore misled by Libanius' suppression •dyom
r'trd'toot of all reference to
the stay at Macellum. Julian was now (A.D. 348-349) an attractive youth of
seventeen or eighteen: it was no wonder that Constantius, always suspicious of
possible rivals, felt that it was dangerous to allow Julian to remain in Con-
stantinople, especially since the emperor was himself absent in Syria at this
time (cf. Seeck, Regesten der Kaiser und Piipste, p. 196). The passage in
Libanius (p. 242) and that in Sozomen (v. 2, 15) both have reference to this
period: as Libanius says of Julian, 8, q wprpoa~Bov iv : he is no longer a
child, he is free to pursue his own education: 7rat{8ecoOaL •8 6' cotv (sc.
Constantius) d~ovalav (Lib., p. 242, 12). We know from Eunapius that
Julian asked oi KaltpropEx&ov cat tkoao'obov
de'rtrpa7riival dapodaaa-at•
Xdycov (Eunap., Vitae Sophist. p. 473), and that Constantius consented,
repl 7a 8V 3Stfla Xav a-9at /ovXO/evov aVTOV xal (pyeLY ,iiXXov
I To0
ycvovv aca rlv a
7 PaQaLXEa i ia b7roT0t/v~pj-ceo•-at. Julian had ample means
(/3a9wov /aNl papvTadrwov7ro1CEtwov T ibid.). He was sent to
•7'•wOv,
Nicomedia, and one limitation only was imposed upon his freedom: he
was not to attend the lectures of Libanius : he was compelled to reinforce
his promise 'by many great oaths.' On the chronology of Seeck Julian was
a boy of twelve or thirteen at this time : surely at that age even a Roman
boy could be restrained by other means than 7roXXotv a Xov potLv!
/7eydhoe
Many modern writers have found the prohibition itself somewhat inexplicable;
but the explanation is surely not far to seek. Hecebolius, it would seem (cf.
Geffcken, op. cit. p. 8), accompanied Julian to Nicomedia, and Hecebolius
was a sophist of Constantinople : Nicocles had been Julian's teacher; but it was
precisely Nicocles and the other professors of Constantinople who had plotted
to drive Libanius from the capital (cf. Sievers, Das Leben des Libanius, pp. 51-
53). Those oaths were inspired, not by any Christian bigotry of Constantius,
but by the jealousy of a professorial cabal. Libanius was in Nicomedia from
c. 344 to 340: Julian returning from Macellum, probably in 348, may have
been sent to Nicomedia in the same year, or early in 349. The fact that
Julian was now independent with large means at his disposal fully explains the
language of Libanius : Julian by means of costly gifts to an intermediary was
able to procure notes of the lectures of the great sophist (wop9pa rvh
ca9' ~puppav Xeryo/.Lov J pea t9•ErydXatV KT7)oEde/voV): this is not the 7'&v
act
of a boy of thirteen; however precocious Julian may have been, a boy of
thirteen, inflamed with an insatiable passion for the sight of the notes of a
254 NORMAN H. BAYNES

university professor's lectures, is surely a very remarkable phenomenon!

It was here, in Nicomedia, that, according to Sozomen, Julian first met Maximus :
it was but natural that he should proceed from Nicomedia to Pergamum, to
Aedesius, the philosopher whose disciple Maximus was (Eunapius, Vitae
Sophist., p. 474). When he was twenty years old-in 351, the year that Gallus
was made Caesar-there followed his conversion to the faith of Hellenism.
I believe that on this chronology we can satisfactorily explain all our own
authorities, and can outline a consistent story of Julian's early years.
NORMAN H. BAYNES.