Julian the Apostate

Julian, who lived from 331 to 26 June 363, served as Caesar of the western Roman Empire from 355 to 360 and as Roman emperor from 361 to 363, and was also a philosopher and author in Greek; his rejection of Christianity and public conversion to paganism and Neoplatonic Hellenism earned him the epithet Julian the Apostate in Christian tradition, and he was the last non-Christian ruler of the Roman Empire. A nephew of Constantine the Great, he survived the purges carried out under his cousin Constantius II despite being orphaned when his father was executed in 337; Constantius appointed him governor of Gaul in 355, where he won military successes against Germanic forces and restored provincial prosperity, and in 360 his soldiers proclaimed him emperor at Lutetia, present day Paris, triggering a civil war that was averted when Constantius died before the two could meet in battle. In 363 Julian launched an ambitious expedition against the Sasanian Empire with an army of roughly sixty five to ninety five thousand troops, won a tactical victory near Ctesiphon but chose not to besiege the city, and was mortally wounded during the retreat north at the Battle of Samarra on 26 June 363; his successor Jovian was forced to cede territory, including Nisibis, to secure the army's safe withdrawal. His attempt to restore traditional Roman religious practice at Christianity's expense did not outlast him.