The Philosopher: The Julian Dynasty, and how they saved Rome

357: Julian starts a campaign against the Salian Franks. He started by leading a legion into lower germania. At around this time Constantius II, falls ill, and names Julian his regent. Even though the two are rivals, and hate each other for their religion, Constantius realizes Julian is the best successor to ensure his empire lives on. Julian makes extremely reckless, unpopular, and downright stupid choices, however these choices by some mean of luck turn out to save the empire. Julian settles, the salian franks, into britain, and negotiates, a treaty with the Angles, Visogoths, and saxons, to settle them into roman britain, and keep the territory, in exchange for coming to the roman's defense whenever needed, and eradicating the celtic pirates from hibernia. Constantius falls even more severely ill, and gives control of the empire, completely to Julian. Julian immediately stops, money from going to churches, and orders his armies to loot, and burn down the churchs. In their place he rebuilds the temple. However he learned that persecution was not going to work, and refrains from going on a Theodosius style massacre of christians. Julian is an extreme populist, and the poor, and unfortunate loved him. He took a few pages out of the christian book, and changed the roman religion. However he refrained from instituting a state religion, and called for a separation of church and state. However his new religious policies were somewhat popular in the west, only 10% christian, it faced massive backlash in the east, 50% christian. He knew he would not be loved in the east, unless he did something drastic. He named a christian co-emperor of the east. This was yet another decision stupid at the time, but that would end up saving the empire.
 
Maybe we will see some sort a pagan revival? How he will react towards Buddhism and hinduism?
There will not be a pagan revival, at least not a large or really state sanctioned one under Julian. Instead, we will see him change the faith akain to christianity, an promote a two faith system of a pagan west, and a christian east. Later his succesors will change that, but for now under Julian 1 christianity will decline, but still hold a large percentage 20-30% of romans. The empire will not have contacts with hindus for 100s of years, but later one of his succesors will have contact with buddhism. Dont want to spoil too much.
 
The empire already has contacts with Hindus and has had since they took Egypt, and the contacts are large enough to affect the economy as a whole- if you mean it’ll be a while until Hindu philosophies are popular in the empire that’s a different thing.
 
The empire already has contacts with Hindus and has had since they took Egypt, and the contacts are large enough to affect the economy as a whole- if you mean it’ll be a while until Hindu philosophies are popular in the empire that’s a different thing.
I actually did not realize the empire had contacts with hindus. However hinduism will not really become popular in the empire. However In northern Europe, the pagans will have "interactions" with hinduism.
 
358, Julian nominates his long lost brother Constantine gallus as ruler of the east. Constantine love Julian, but because Julian has no children, Constantine is the Imperial heir. His wife Aurelia, who was a very zealous christian, and hates Julian, personally decides that God has given her the divine mission, to end Julian, for rejecting God, and being a pathway for a rightful christian to become roman emperor. While extremely zealous, she is regarded as beautiful, smart, and likable, and neither Julian nor Constantine suspect anything of her. Aurelia hires an assassin to kill Julian. She expects it will be easy, since the praetorian guards regularly kill emperor, and very few have managed to gain their loyalty. However the attack on Julian fails. Julian is quite well liked by the praetorian guard, and they protect him this time. Constantine demands to find the person responsible. He also believes that an attack on his brother could lead to an attack on himself. However Julian decides not to worry about, telling Constantine that he is well suited in combat, and was leaving the palace. Julian declares war on the Armenians the next day. Constantine tries to convince him out of it, telling him, that nothing good will come from this. Julian ignores him and brings 10 legions to Roman Syria. He sends an envoy to the Armenian King telling him that they were going to wipe out the Sassanian threat once and for all. Arshak creates a massive army, and relinquishes command of it to Julian. Julian then tells Constantine to create a large army. He then Forks around through roman Syria Armenia and Judea, attacking the Sassanid capital from three directions. The sassanids, realize too late the roman attack, and Ctesiphon is burned, and Shapur is taken prisoner by Julian, However the remnants of the sassanid army attack Julian's army, as expected, and he uses pins the armenian army between the Romans and Persians, and as the Armenians are fighting the Persians and winning, Julian back stabs the Armenians, and destroys their army capturing Arshak. However, the Armenians had mostly destroyed the Persian army. Due to this, Julian's armies remained mostly untouched, and he negotiates surrender for the Persian armies. He installs Hormizd as Persian Emperor, and made Persia a vassal state. He also requests Hormizd relinquish control of he lands Trajan had held 200 years earlier. He annexes Armenia, and sends his soldiers home. He passes a law, allowing roman citizens to settle in Armenia for free, and the government would give them land. This is wildly popular, however armenians remember how rome betrayed them.
 
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