The Emperor Julian, to whom I refer, was a nephew of Constantine the Great and was born in the new capital of the empire in the year 331. In 337 his famous uncle died. At once his three sons fell upon their common heritage and upon each other with the fury of famished wolves.
To rid themselves of all those who might possibly lay claim to part of the spoils, they ordered that those of their relatives who lived in or near the city be murdered. Julian’s father was one of the victims. His mother had died a few years after his birth. In this way, at the age of six, the boy was left an orphan. An older half-brother, an invalid, shared his loneliness and his lessons. These consisted mostly of lectures upon the advantages of the Christian faith, given by a kindly but uninspired old bishop by the name of Eusebius.
But when the children grew older, it was thought wiser to send them a little further away where they would be less conspicuous and might possibly escape the usual fate of junior Byzantine princes. They were removed to a little village in the heart of Asia Minor. It was a dull life, but it gave Julian a chance to learn many useful things. For his neighbors, the Cappadocian mountaineers, were a simple people and still believed in the gods of their ancestors.
There was not the slightest chance that the boy would ever hold a responsible position and when he asked permission to devote himself to a life of study, he was told to go ahead.
First of all he went to Nicomedia, one of the few places where the old Greek philosophy continued to be taught. There he crammed his head so full of literature and science that there was no space left for the things he had learned from Eusebius.
Next he obtained leave to go to Athens, that he might study on the very spot hallowed by the recollections of Socrates and Plato and Aristotle.
Meanwhile, his half-brother too had been assassinated and Constantius, his cousin and the one and only remaining son of Constantine, remembering that he and his cousin, the boy philosopher, were by this time the only two surviving male members of the imperial family, sent for Julian, received him kindly, married him, still in the kindest of spirits, to his own sister, Helena, and ordered him to proceed to Gaul and defend that province against the barbarians.
It seems that Julian had learned something more practical from his Greek teachers than an ability to argue. When in the year 357 the Alamanni threatened France, he destroyed their army near Strassburg, and for good measure added all the country between the Meuse and the Rhine to his own province and went to live in Paris, filled his library with a fresh supply of books by his favorite authors and was as happy as his serious nature allowed him to be.
When news of these victories reached the ears of the Emperor, little Greek fire was wasted in celebration of the event. On the contrary, elaborate plans were laid to get rid of a competitor who might be just a trifle too successful.