Antiquité Tardive - Late Antiquity - Spätantike - Tarda Antichità

When he prematurely and unexpectedly died in january 2007, Jean Martin, known as a fine editor and specialist of Greek texts (Aratos, Menander comicus, Libanios, etc.) was having in progress several works which he had been meditating for long: among them a commented edition of translated texts entitled Julian dubbed Apostate’s autobiographical writings. Convinced of the great interest of that unfinished research, we gladly acceded to his daughter’s wish that such a treasure of fresh science would not get lost. We even decided, contrary to our journal’s habits, to publish the translations of Julian’s autobiographical texts, planned to be the core of the intended book because, though deprived of their relative comment, let alone their intrinsic value, they provide us with interpretations of the texts which by themselves open views from new angles. The editors’ care has been to make best use of this preliminary, inequally wrought material, sometimes merely exploratory, but, even in such a uneven form, always full of suggestions or questioning. Could this unusual kind of publication be the living testimony of higher intellectual probity, demanding method and scientific perseverance on some overabundantly treated arguments which can still be renewed, as demonstrated by Jean Martin’s unfinished achievements.

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.

This article intends to scrutinize in what ways Julian’s stay in Gaul as a Caesar were decisive in Julian’s political and military education, and whether a specific ruling style and manner may be detected in the Parisian years of Julian’s government. Relying on a critical analysis of the documentation (Julian himself, Mamertinus, Ammianus, Libanios), the author examines the military and civilian aspects of Julian’s training as an apparently inexperienced ruler but quick learner. She carries out a prosopographical study of the Caesar’s circle and the administrative staff which was then on duty, combining friendly and hostile persons. Gaul offered him a training ground and he became even the experimenter of Paris as a capital. An attempt is made at reconstructing Julian’s vision of and attitude towards barbarians, Celts and Romans, and how he perceived Gaul and Paris (taking in account what was Paris like in his days in the light of recent archaeological research). The Parisian years are a valuable test for checking Julian’s adaptability — and its limits — to life in a non hellenic world.

This paper considers the epigraphic evidence about Julian’s titulature and the specific discourse which can be analysed from that point of view in order to account for what was Julian’s conception of imperial power. Building upon a limited but significant number of inscriptions (less than two hundreds), we can ascertain in Julian’s and his chancellery’s discourse a much more traditional statio principis than usually surmised. It can be assumed that the most important aspects of the imperial titulature and its evolution during the 3^rd and 4^th centuries AD are relevant to Julian’s identity. The “Apostate” is much more an “Augustan” princeps, even if some texts can present peculiar aspects of his personality: the master of Philosophy and the pagan devout. The emperor is always presented as the protector of the Empire, an orbis terrarum identified with a single Vrbs, the eternal Rome, but now the new Romè, Constantinopolis.

This paper examines the respective value of literary, epigraphic, numismatic sources relating to a central theme of emperor Julian’s propaganda: his theocratic conception of power. He makes use of all available means of communication to propagate the idea that his empire had been wanted by the gods and that he himself had accepted the throne as a mission to fulfil for everyone’s good. The emperor shows himself as a righteous and pious man who totally places his trust in the destiny that has been traced for him: he wants to make people think that he had never desired power, but he had to obey superior will. From Julian’s propaganda comes also the identification with a series of heroes (Heracles, Achilles, Empedocles) who in the late antiquity had assumed a pagan and philosophic role, alternative to that of Jesus: during his life and even more after his death and apotheosis, Julian becomes a kind of pagan god in contraposition to the Christian God.

Le discours du Misopogon, composé par l’empereur Julien, constitue une invective contre les habitants d’Antioche qui s’étaient moqué de sa barbe. Une analyse rhétorique, littéraire et historique de ce discours examinera dans quelle mesure ce dernier est révélateur de l’esprit du vi^e siècle après J.-C. En effet, bien que la rhétorique grecque d’époque impériale soit dévalorisée, cela n’a pas affecté l’importance du Misopogon, discours qui incarne le pouvoir de la rhétorique comme instrument politique et religieux au temps d’un essor rapide du christianisme.

Emperor Julian achieved two important parts of his reform project in different times. The first part consisted in the renovation of the consistorium, aimed at forming a new ruling class to help him in administrative and military affairs, and he did this in the period between the Augustan proclamation and his arrival with the army in Illyricum (waiting for the final battle with Constantius II, his cousin: spring 360-November 361).

But soon after he had the news of his cousin’s sudden death (November 361), being free to act, he engaged himself in the re-institution of an Hellenic community, gathering around himself philosophers and other pagan intellectuals whom he had met at the time of his studies in Asia Minor and Athens, in order to help him restore traditional cults. This was his preoccupation until the time he left for the Persian expedition (March 363).

My paper traces back these phases and identify the people invited by Julian to collaborate with him in the two periods, identifying the reason behind his choices. Members of the consistorium can be identified and details can be given of their social background, culture and cursus honorum. Philosophers and rhetors can also be identified, focusing on the kind of collaboration they offered.

This research shows that the new consistorium was made up of Western pagan officials, competent administrators, and loyal to the emperor. The Hellenic community, on the other hand, was formed by philosophers and rhetors of Oriental origin, but its success was limited: some of the most prestigious personalities and masters of Julian refused to take part in it as philosophers did not take interest in active politics; there were different cultural, political and religious points of view; and, finally personal ambitions were high. Julian’s project wanted a reunion of Western and Eastern traditions within the Empire but the obstacles he found were very strong.

The future emperor Julian, educated as a Christian and soon a hidden pagan, associated during a period of time to the supreme power by Constantius II, had the opportunity to reflect about how the Church had become so successful. More specifically, the struggle between the mainstream Christians and the followers of Arius with its political and financial implications would not get lost to him, as he had to design a grand strategy of reconquest favouring the traditional gods. Julian tried to play the army and the intermediary curial classes against a ruling plutocracy he essentially viewed as financially and ethically corrupt. For that purpose, he logically emulated the various exemptions granted to the Church and to its clergy, favouring not only the ancient religio, but also the structure that had supported it for centuries: the classic and civic polis. Behind the supposed confiscation and restoration of the municipal properties that had been considered as granted by the classical historiography, lays hidden the cornerstone of Julian’s financial policy: the likely exemption of municipal and temples’ land from Imperial taxation. In doing so, he did not have to look much further than to his own predecessor and cousin who had tried to extricate himself from a religious conflict by playing with fiscal privileges. They both used taxation as a tool to promote their favoured ideology, a rather modern even if finally unsuccessful fiscal policy.

This essay is a first, partial skeleton of a larger work, currently under way, on the palingenesis of the Emperor Julian’s constitutions. The normative production of the last pagan Emperor requires a broader discussion leading to a comprehensive study, where a reliable reconstructive hypothesis can serve as useful background. This palingenesis covers the period from 355, when Julian was Caesar in Gaul, to his death (27 june 363), and will be conducted on all types of sources, legal, extrajuridic, epigraphic, relying on the works of the same Julian, in particular the letters, some of which are official documents with a clear normative value. In this work I have tried, for the meantime, to explain some problems of attribution emerged from a first reading of the Theodosian Code.

Historians never failed to look for a direct evidence of Julian’s government style in the series of his Letters. Nevertheless, the evidence from the legislative epistulae does not have the same significance whether one treats them as a “raw”, personal version later to be rewriten by the Chancellery under a “standardized” form for circulating through the provinces or whether one acknowledges in those epistulae the very form which Julian gave to his laws and which reached the inhabitants of the Empire. The first interpretation is the traditional one, which, in the case of the “scholastic law”, leads to completely dissociate Julian’s version from the text of the Theodosian Code version. Several analysts deny any direct link between these two versions and ignore or underestimate the degree of autonomy which was granted to the compilers by the specifications ascribed them by Theodosius: this latitude is particularly noticeable in the case of the choice — contradictory but easy to explain in a political perspective — of including Julian’s scholastic law into the Code’s chapter dedicated to education, that is the law whose main purpose was most in contrast to a Christianized Empire’s principles as endorsed and consecrated by the Theodosian compilation. The second interpretation — which is defended in the present article — takes into account the extent of the differences allowed between the original text of the imperial constitutions and the compiled version of the Theodosian Code, which was persuasively demonstrated by Volterra. From the moment one consider them to be original versions of Julian’s law-writing, the legislative epistulae disclose the political communication style of this emperor who carries out to an extreme level the confusion of enunciative and stylistic “genre”, being itself an effect of Julian’s unusual, overwhelming propension to theatrical performance of his self even in the use of imperial discourse.

The legend of the soldier St Mercurius killing Emperor Julian gives a miraculous and providential view of the rumours that attributed the emperor’s death to a Christian soldier. The authors aim to trace the historical origins of this story — that was first included in John Malalas’s Byzantine chronicle (circa 570) — and to trace its political-religious context: Basil of Caesarea and Cappadocia, a region rich in military equestrian saints. From there, the legend would have spread to Syria, where it was heard by the Antiochian Malalas.

Controversée dès son époque, la politique religieuse de l’empereur Julien a continué à l’être par les générations suivantes. Nombre de païens ont jugé ses mesures «anti-chrétiennes» excessives, tandis que les Chrétiens les ont vécues comme des persécutions, une interprétation que l’historiographie moderne a suivi de manière générale. Cet article vise à examiner, à travers ses propres écrits, la conduite de Julien face à la coercition religieuse, en établissant une relation entre ses idées en matière de liberté religieuse, entre persuasion et contrainte, et les arguments en faveur d’une tolérance développée par les apologistes chrétiens à l’époque des persécutions.

Cet article examine la critique de la vénération chrétienne pour les martyrs à laquelle s’est livré l’empereur Julien. Dans son programme de réforme religieuse, ce dernier a tenté de rétablir l’hellénisme, en encourageant la renaissance des rites et des cultes païens et en discréditant le christianisme. L’attaque enflammée menée par Julien dans ses écrits contre le culte des martyrs entrait dans cette stratégie: il y exprime le plus souvent la réprobation et le mépris pour toutes les activités liées aux tombes et aux morts. Par ses lois, il établit une stricte distinction entre le monde des vivants et celui des morts; par son attitude permissive à l’égard des profanateurs de tombes et de reliques, il encouragea la violence contre les adorateurs des martyrs. Cependant, ses motifs semblent dépasser ses préférences personnelles et s’accorder avec sa politique religieuse.

L’empereur Julien n’a jamais été un adepte des Mystères de Mithra. F. Cumont et J. Bidez ont été parmi ceux qui ont soutenu le mithraisme de Julien: ils ont été suivis récemment par P. Athaniassidi-Fowden et J. Bouffartigue, mais les objections qui ont été soulevées contre cette thèse, d’abord par R. Turcan, puis par R. Smith, conservent toute leur validité. Cependant, ont peut y ajouter une autre argumentation au caractère plus général. Une rapide analyse de l’attitude de Julien à l’égard des ethne orientaux et, notamment, des Perses et des «sagesses étrangères» amène à écarter son adhésion à un rite persan, ce que confirme l’attitude des intellectuels qui l’ont connu, dont les témoignages ont été souvent utilisés à l’inverse, pour soutenir la thèse du mithraisme de l’empereur.

Le culte mysthérique de Mithra au temps de Julien n’avait rien perdu de son caractère «persan»; au contraire, d’après la nouvelle documentation archéologique provenant du site de Hawarte en Syrie, on peut affirmer que le mithraisme avait conservé toutes ses particularités ethniques et culturelles qui le distinguaient de tout autre culte pratiqué dans l’Empire. À l’appui de cette thèse, on analysera deux scènes découvertes dans le nouveau mithrée syrien de Hawarte: 1/la cité des tenèbres, 2/les «Dioscures».

Julian’s Misopogon was posted in Antioch, according to Malalas’ Chronography, “outside of the palace, at the Tetrapyle of the Elephants, near the Regia”. A few years earlier, the sophist Libanios described the palace and its surroundings in his speech In praise of Antioch. The aim of this article is to bring to light the contribution of the literary sources to the knowledge of the palace district during the third quarter of the 4^th century. The first part is devoted to the study of the name “New (city)” which is, in the Late Antiquity, the name of the island where the palace is located. In the second part, the sources relating to the palace and its surroundings, and to the other buildings in the island are systematically analysed: the Tetrapyle of the Elephants, the Regia, the palace itself, the Romanesia Gate, the Campus, and the circus. The circus was excavated, and is still partially visible. However, the archaeological excavation could not date the building. The textual evidence shows that a hippodrome did exist on the island during the reign of Theodosius I, but gives no indication on the date of its construction. The specific contribution of the written sources is to allow the study of the meanings that are attached to the components of the urban space and the way they are embedded in the collective memory and used in the construction of a civic identity. These aspects are explored in the third part of the article. The proximity of the Campus to the palace shows the importance of the military function of the emperor, particulary when in residence in Antioch. The Tetrapyle might have been devoted to the posting of imperial pronoucements, and on the opposite side of the palace, the Romanesia Gate, through which the emperor goes to the Campus, might have been a favoured place for petitioners. The toponyms “Tetrapyle of the Elephants”, “Regia”, “Campus” and “Romanesia Gate” have a clear Roman and Imperial flavour. In such a context, the assessments of Libanios and Malalas concerning the hellenistic date of the urbanization of the island or the attribution of the ornam-entation of the Romanesia Gate to Seleucos must be taken as testimonies of the self-representation of the Antiochenes in Late Antiquity, not as sources about the pre-Roman history of the Island.

Ps.-Bas. epp. 40-41 (a letter supposedly written by the emperor Julian to Basil of Caesarea, and the response of the latter) are unanimously regarded as spurious, the work of a byzantine schoolboy. But this schoolboy is extremely well-informed about people, places, and situations. His main source is undoubtedly Gregory of Nazianzus, who is also the inspirer of the main idea the forger wants to credit: that Basil was an enemy of Julian. Such representation is groundless. On the contrary, some clues exist that seem to prove the opposite is true. The apocriphal letters are the product of a milieu determined to clear the famous bishop of Caesarea of blame of having been in good terms with the emperor soon labeled as Apostate.

Des textes bien connus arrivent quelquefois à échapper longtemps à une interprétation qui satisfasse tout le monde. C’est le cas notamment de quelques chapitres fameux du De gubernatione Dei de Salvien de Marseille, qui ont trait au patronage anti-fiscal et à l’état du colon. Le «colonat» est redevenu un sujet de débats depuis l’intervention, en 1982, de J.-M. Carrié, mais risque actuellement d’être perdu de vue. Ce qui importe le plus pour les huit chapitres de Salvien, c’est de les décharger de leur redites et d’en faire ressortir un récit en ligne droite. Une paraphrase du texte en question nous occupe tout d’abord. L’attention se porte ensuite vers cinq interprétations récentes dont aucune n’arrive à maîtriser le sens de Salvien. Une étude attentive des huit chapitres est alors proposée, traçant la route par laquelle un paysan propriétaire père se transforme peu à peu en un locataire fils, c’est-à-dire en un colon. De Salvien on passe à une lettre de Sidoine Apollinaire, s’occupant elle aussi de l’état colonnaire. On constate que les deux auteurs donnent une couleur nettement servile au colon. Ces études se complètent d’un examen du ius colonatus. Il jette un coup d’œil, pour commencer, sur la conception révisée de l’esclavage agraire sous le Bas Empire et sur la thèse de J.-M. Carrié, dont l’orientation fiscale est largement admise. Pour finir, l’attention se porte vers l’état du colon, en faisant ressortir l’absence de devoirs des colons-enfants ainsi que les droits de la cellule familiale colonaire vis-à-vis du propriétaire. Le témoignage de Salvien et de Sidoine est intégré à la discussion.