Julian the Apostate: Last Light of the Old Gods
Emperor Julian was No Saint.
Julian, known to history as The Apostate, was born in 331 CE into a Roman world already shackled to the rising dominance of Christianity. Nephew to Constantine the so-called “Great,” he should’ve been another imperial pawn, molded by bishops, hemmed in by doctrine. Instead, he became a rebel—Rome’s last pagan emperor and one of its most fearless intellectuals.
Raised Christian under duress—after most of his family was murdered during a political purge—Julian saw firsthand the hollow piety of an empire ruled by fear disguised as faith. When finally given space to breathe, in Athens and Asia Minor, he immersed himself in philosophy, poetry, and ancient ritual. He didn’t just read about the gods; he lived them. Where Christianity asked him to kneel, paganism demanded he stand up and engage—with nature, with beauty, with community.
When Julian finally became emperor in 361 CE, he didn’t waste time with polite toleration. He called Christianity what it was: a morbid death cult that feared the body, stifled imagination, and demanded passive obedience over individual thought. He wrote, “You have filled the world with tombs and corpses, and yet you claim you bring life.” He saw the Church’s power not as spiritual, but as bureaucratic—a machine fattening itself on conformity.
He worked to breathe life back into the bones of Rome, reopening temples, reinstating ancient festivals, and funding a revival of the Hellenic spirit. He wasn't content to just criticize; he built. His vision of paganism wasn’t nostalgic—it was defiant, dynamic, tactile. It called on citizens to know the land they lived on, to honor the gods through action, to see beauty not as vanity, but as a bridge between humans and the divine.
Julian didn’t hide behind altars. He led his troops into battle against the Germanic tribes and later Persia. He bled with them. And when he died in 363 CE—wounded in battle during a bold but doomed campaign—he left behind a legacy that terrified the Church. They feared his ideas more than his army. Because he proved that resistance was possible. That belief could be radical, rooted in the Earth, not floating in heaven.
Julian was no saint.
