The remarkable bestseller about the fourth-century Roman emperor who
famously tried to halt the spread of Christianity, Julian is widely
regarded as one of Gore Vidal's finest historical novels.
Julian the Apostate, nephew of Constantine the Great, was one of the
brightest yet briefest lights in the history of the Roman Empire. A
military genius on the level of Julius Caesar and Alexander the Great, a
graceful and persuasive essayist, and a philosopher devoted to
worshipping the gods of Hellenism, he became embroiled in a fierce
intellectual war with Christianity that provoked his murder at the age
of thirty-two, only four years into his brilliantly humane and
compassionate reign. A marvelously imaginative and insightful novel of
classical antiquity, Julian captures the religious and political
ferment of a desperate age and restores with blazing wit and vigor the
legacy of an impassioned ruler.