Julian II (the Apostate) and his policies

[Nicholas Gaukroger]

Are you seriously suggesting that Ammianus is a credibly objective analyst of Contantius II? Sorry but that is just untenable.

One of his objectives when writing his Res Gestae was to magnify the importance and achievments of the (fellow) pagan Julian compared to Julian's contempories. His summary of Constantius deliberatley leaves out those successes that he himself describes in parts of his work where he is victorius in foreign wars such as against the Limigantes.

As for Julian's Persian campaign, just how realistic do you think it would have been to think that his invasion could in anyway remove the Persian threat on the eastern front?

Trajan, at a time when the empire was less pressured and against a weaker, less cohesive enemy in the Parthians, basically failed as his conquests were abandoned within a few years. The other major successes of the Romans against either the Parthians or the Persians were at times when the latter were internally weak and still they had not removed the threat. In Julian's reigh the Persian empire was both strong and cohesive under Shapur II.

So exactly the wrong time to invade and exactly the wrong time to expect to be able to remove any Persian threat - although the latter would I suggest have been impossible anyway. If Julian thought he could do it he was delusional.