which is described in Letter 19. Ammianus says that Julian's life was in danger at Milan from the plots of enemies, who accused him to Constantius of having met Gallus at Constantinople in 354, and of having left Macellum without permission. Julian denies the first of these charges in Oration 3. 121a, and in To the Athenians 273 a. He was saved by the intercession of the second wife of Constantius, the Empress Eusebia, who, after seven months of suspense, obtained for him his single audience with the Emperor and permission to go to Athens to study. We know little of his brief stay of about two months in Athens in 355, but he was almost certainly initiated into the Mysteries at Eleusis,2 and probably attended the lectures of the aged Christian sophist Prohaeresius, to whom in 361 or early in 362 he wrote Letter 14. Among his fellowstudents were two Cappadocians, Gregory Nazianzen, who after Julian's death wrote bitter invectives against the apostate and an unflattering description of his appearance and manners, and Basil the Great, to whom Julian addressed Letter 26. From Athens the Emperor recalled Julian in September to Milan, where after some delay he was raised to the rank of Caesar on November 6, 355, given the 'task of pacifying the Gallic provinces, and married to Helena, the sister of Constantius. She was much older than he, had little influence on his life, and died in Gaul, without issue, not long after Julian

1 15. 2. 7.

2 The evidence for this is Eunapius, Lives, p. 437, Wright.

For his grief at leaving Athens see Vol. 2, To the Athenians, 275 a.

had been proclaimed Augustus by the army. The motives of Constantius in making Julian Caesar are not clear. Eunapius says that he hoped his cousin would be killed in Gaul. Eusebia may have persuaded the Emperor that their childlessness was a punishment for his treatment of his relatives. The Gallic provinces were overrun by barbarians, and Constantius could not go there himself because he was occupied on the Danube with the Sarmatians and the Quadi, and by the threat of the Persians in Mesopotamia. Julian set out for Gaul on December 1, 355, with a small troop of 360 men who "only knew how to pray," as he says in frag. 5. Eusebia gave him a library of books which he took with him. His task was to expel the hordes of Germans who, having been invited by Constantius to assist in suppressing the usurper Magnentius, had remained to overrun and devastate the country, and had destroyed the Roman forts on the Rhine. In his five years of campaigning in Gaul,1 though he was continually thwarted by the officers whom Constantius had sent to watch his movements, Julian pacified the provinces and restored their prosperity, recovered 20,000 Gallic prisoners from Germany, expelled the Germans, defeated the Franks and Chamavi, restored the Roman forts, and crossed the Rhine four times. In August 357 he won the famous battle of Argentoratum (Strasbourg), which was fought somewhere between Saverne and Strasbourg, and sent Chnodomar, the king of the Alemanni, captive to Constantius. He spent the winter of 358-359 at Paris, whence he wrote to his

1 For the condition of Gaul and his achievements there see Vol. 2, To the Athenians, 278–280.

friend the physician Oribasius, at Vienne, Letter 4, of which the first part, with its dream,1 is highly sophistic but expresses vague fears that he and Constantius may be involved in ruin together; the second part describes his opposition to the pretorian prefect Florentius, his persistent enemy, whom he forbade to recommend to Constantius increased taxes on the Gallic provincials. In this letter Julian wishes that he may not be deprived of the society of Sallust, his pagan friend and adviser, but Sallust was recalled by the suspicious Constantius in 358.

While he was in Gaul, Julian continued his studies, corresponded with sophists and philosophers such as Maximus, Libanius and Priscus, wrote Oration 2, a panegyric of Constantius; Oration 3, a panegyric of Eusebia; Oration 8, to console himself for the loss of Sallust; an account of the battle of Strasbourg which has perished; and perhaps the treatise on logic which we know only from the reference to it in Suidas.2 To some of these works he refers at the end of Letter 2, To Priscus. That he wrote commentaries on his Gallic campaigns has been maintained by some scholars but cannot be proved.

Constantius, who had already suppressed four usurpers, either full-blown or suspected of ambition, Magnentius, Vetranio, Silvanus and Gallus Caesar, was alarmed at the military successes of his cousin, who had left Milan an awkward student, ridiculed by the court, and had transformed himself into a skilful general and administrator, adored by the Gallic

1 Julian's dream may be, as Asmus thinks, an echo of Herodotus, 1. 108, but the parallel is not close.

2 s.v. Ιουλιανός.

army and the provincials. The Emperor was on the eve of a campaign against Sapor, the Persian king, and needed reinforcements. It was an opportune moment for weakening Julian's influence by withdrawing the flower of his troops for service in the East. Accordingly, in the winter of 359–360, Julian received peremptory orders, brought by the tribune Decentius, to send to the Emperor, under the command of Julian's officers Lupicinus and Sintula, the finest of his troops, in fact more than half his army of 23,000 men. Many of these were barbarian auxiliaries who had taken service with Julian on condition that they should not serve outside Gaul, and the Celtic troops, when the order became known, were dismayed at the prospect of leaving their lands and families at the mercy of renewed invasions of barbarians. Florentius was at Vienne, and refused to join Julian in Paris and discuss the question of the safety of Gaul if the troops should be withdrawn. Meanwhile two of the legions requisitioned by Constantius were in Britain fighting the Picts and Scots. But when the others reached Paris from their winter quarters in February 360, on their march eastwards, their discontent resulted in open mutiny, and Julian, whose loyalty towards Constantius up to this point is unquestioned, failed to pacify them. They surrounded the palace1 at night, calling on Julian with the title of Augustus, and when, after receiving a divine sign,2 he came out

1 Julian was lodged in what is now the Musée des Thermes.

2 See To the Athenians, 284 c, and cf. Letter 2, p. 5. Ammianus 20. 4 gives a full account of the mutiny and of Julian's speeches to the army and letter to Constantius.

at dawn, he was raised on a shield and crowned with a standard-bearer's chain in default of a diadem. Julian sent by Pentadius and the loyal eunuch Eutherius a full account of these events to Constantius, who replied that he must be content with the title of Caesar. Constantius had already gone to Caesarea to prepare for his Persian campaign, and decided to meet the more pressing danger from the East before he reckoned with Julian. The prefect Florentius fled to the Emperor and was made consul for 361. Constantius sent Nebridius the quaestor to succeed Florentius in Gaul, and Julian accepted him as prefect. Julian left Paris for Vienne by way of Besançon, which town he describes in Letter 8. Thence he led his troops to another victory, this time over the Attuarii, who were raiding Gaul, and on November 6, 360, he celebrated his quinquennalia or fifth year as Caesar. He had not yet declared his change of religion, and in January 361 at Vienne, where he spent the winter, he took part in the feast of the Epiphany. In July he set out for the East, determined to win from Constantius recognition of his rank as Augustus, either by persuasion or by force. His troops were divided so as to march by three different routes, and he led the strongest division through the Black Forest (see frag. 2) and along the Danube. Sirmium (Mitrovitz) welcomed him with acclamation in October, and he went into winter quarters at Naissa (Nish). Thence he addressed to the Roman Senate, the Spartans, Corinthians and Athenians manifestos justifying his conduct towards Constantius and proclaiming his design to restore the Hellenic religion. Of these documents only the letter to the Athenians sur