Julian: A Novel

Julian is a 1964 novel by Gore Vidal, a work of historical fiction written primarily in the first person dealing with the life of the Roman emperor Flavius Claudius Julianus (known to Christians as Julian the Apostate), who reigned from 360 to 363 A.D.

The remarkable bestseller about the fourth-century Roman emperor who famously tried to halt the spread of Christianity, Julian is widely regarded as one of Gore Vidal’s finest historical novels.

This is an unconventional biography of this little known Roman Emperor. Little known because his appellate 'the Apostate' put him outside of traditional biography. Christian orthodoxy demanded he be demonized by the church fathers forever after.

Julian the Apostate, nephew of Constantine the Great, was one of the brightest yet briefest lights in the history of the Roman Empire. A military genius on the level of Julius Caesar and Alexander the Great, a graceful and persuasive essayist, and a philosopher devoted to worshiping the gods of Hellenism, he became embroiled in a fierce intellectual war with Christianity that provoked his murder at the age of thirty-two, only four years into his brilliantly humane and compassionate reign. 

A marvelously imaginative and insightful novel of classical antiquity, Julian captures the religious and political ferment of a desperate age and restores with blazing wit and vigor the legacy of an impassioned ruler.