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Chapter 4 - A Life for a Life

from Part II - Making and Breaking Constantine: Julian Augustus

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 July 2023

Lea Niccolai
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
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Summary

Chapter 4 concludes the analysis of Julian’s reckoning with Constantine’s propaganda. It focuses on Julian’s strategy to disavow the public persona of the first emperor who had promoted the association between Christian sovereignty and ideals of philosophical leadership. The first section considers the efforts of Constantine’s propaganda to use the events of his (Constantine’s) life to prove that Roman history was guided by Christian providence. The engagement with autobiography in Julian’s final writings appears in this light as the culmination of his response to Christianity’s claims of intellectual dominance over Greco-Roman culture. The second section reconstructs Julian’s joint attempts to project his life as the token of his superior understanding of providential history (Against Heraclius) and to mobilise past Roman history as a source of counter-exempla disproving Constantine’s claims (The Caesars). In the process, Julian repurposed a fundamental element of Constantine’s propaganda – imperial iconography – to his advantage (Caesars; Misopogon).

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Chapter
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Christianity, Philosophy, and Roman Power
Constantine, Julian, and the Bishops on Exegesis and Empire
, pp. 166 - 206
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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  • A Life for a Life
  • Lea Niccolai, University of Cambridge
  • Book: Christianity, Philosophy, and Roman Power
  • Online publication: 07 July 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009299312.008
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  • A Life for a Life
  • Lea Niccolai, University of Cambridge
  • Book: Christianity, Philosophy, and Roman Power
  • Online publication: 07 July 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009299312.008
Available formats
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  • A Life for a Life
  • Lea Niccolai, University of Cambridge
  • Book: Christianity, Philosophy, and Roman Power
  • Online publication: 07 July 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009299312.008
Available formats
×