On This Day In Roman History, March 5
Flavius Claudius Iulianus Augustus departs from Antioch along with some 90,000 troops for a campaign against Shapur II on March 5, 363 CE. The most common reason Julian, or Julian the Apostate as he is referred as, made his way south for a Persian campaign was to replace Shapur II with his brother Hormisdas. It is known that the Persians were suing for peace with envoys, but Julian refused any offers and decided to take the "glory of war" as his route according to the Roman and soldier Ammianus Marcellinus' personal diary. After gaining a tactical advantage outside the Persian capital city Ctesiphon, Julian and his army made an eastward push to meet with the main Persian force. They were harassed by guerrilla attacks so severely that a council of war held on June 16 found the best course of action was to retreat northward to Roman territory towards Corduene. On one of the guerrilla attacks, Sassanids harassed the marching column. Julian received wounds resulting from a thrown spear. The help of Julian's personal physician named Oribasius of Pergamum did little to save him, and Julian died from a hemorrhage a few days later in his personal tent on the night of June 26.
Did you know?
Libanius, a Greek rhetoric teacher and pagan Hellene, wrote that Julian was killed from a spear thrown by a Christian mercenary on the side of the Romans. John Malalas, a Greek chronicler from Antioch, wrote that the order to assassinate the pagan Emperor came from Basil of Caesarea. This was all speculated because the reported wound looked to be from Lakhmid auxiliaries' spear, commonly found in Persian service. For some time, Christian historians perpetrated the rumor Julian was killed by a Christian martyr named Saint Mercurius.
Pictured: Detail on a high-relief depicting Mithra, Shapur II, and Ahura Mazda (left to right). Foudn beneath their feet dead is the Roman emperor Julian. Photo by Philippe Chavin, via Wikimedia Commons.
Today's quote is from Julian as he lay bleeding from his recent wounds suffered in Battle of Samarra. "Most opportunely friends, has the time now come for me to leave life, which I rejoice to return to Nature, at her demand, like an honorable debtor, not (as some might think) bowed down with sorrow, but having learned much from the general conviction of philosophers how much happier the soul is than the body, and bearing in mind that whenever a better condition is severed from a worse, one should rejoice, rather than grieve"
Opinion
Welcome to my daily opinion! I personally believe that while Julian was killed from a friendly fire, it was probably accidental. In the chaos of battle, it is easy for things like this to happen, especially under the constant ambushes that probably cause Roman resistance to be somewhat haphazard already. The later pagan inventions of how the Emperor died were made years after the actual death, and it is likely they are all false. With the intensity of Christianity increasing, it probably influenced contemporary pagans writing about Julian's death. Also, I just could not leave out the name John Malalas.
Sources
Dodgeon, M. H. (2003). The Roman eastern frontier and the Persian wars. London: Routledge.
Goldsworthy, A. K. (2009). How Rome fell: death of a superpower. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Marcellinus, A., & Rolfe, J. C. (1950). Ammianus Marcellinus. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Further Reading:
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