The Last Pagan Emperor: Understanding Julian the 'Apostate'

Few figures have exercised as much fascination in Western history as Julian the ‘Apostate’, the last Roman emperor to believe in the Greek gods. Hated in the Middle Ages, loved by the Enlightenment, he continues to feature in contemporary fiction from Erik Ibsen and Gore Vidal to Julian Barnes’ Elizabeth Finch (2022). But who was Julian? What drove his resistance against the final and perhaps most radical of the transformations of Roman power, its Christianisation?

Join Dr Lea Niccolai (Faculty of Classics) to challenge conventional readings of Julian as a figure of towering isolation, as she argues that a reading of Julian ‘in context’ can cast an unexpected light on the causes and dynamics of the Christianisation of the Roman Empire.

Image, gold coin of Emperor Julian. © The Trustees of the British Museum.

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