Julien entre biographie et analyse historique

The ratio of biographies among the scholarly works about Julian is comparatively high, and biography is an inevitable mean to get acquainted with the history of Julian. The biographical pattern presents some advantages which are praised by ancient writers like Plutarch, who particularly appreciates its capacity of defining the êthos of a historical character. Julian’s biographers are rather cautious in performing this kind of searching, but they do not entirely avoid excesses, ascribing to Julian (or to some others around him) feelings and thoughts about which our sources do not tell us anything. Scholarly biographies of Julian are nevertheless built on the results of an activity of historical analysis whose results can be published in their own way. Those publications gradually increase the knowledge about Julian, but they as well reveal a lot of uncertainties and difficulties. The biographical way, which fills gaps and condense identities is much more seducing, but we can observe a sort of reaction against this seduction, with the idea of an antibiography which could account for Julian while keeping up his questionable and contradictory features and his elusiveness.