Word: julians
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Secret Journal. The novel, which draws heavily on Julian's own letters (more than 80 have been preserved), is cast in the form of a secret journal presumably written by Julian and discovered in his tent the night of his death by a garrulous old counselor, one Priscus, who serves as a sort of chorus...
Novelist Gore Vidal has obviously read his Robert Graves. His ninth novel (and his first in a decade) is an attempt to apply to Julian's life the same smooth blend of erudition and dramatic flair, of scholarship leavened with wit that set the urbane tone for I, Claudius and Claudius, the God. Vidal is a resourceful writer, and he has mastered the manner to perfection. Only his subject eludes...
...Vidal sees him, Julian was the prototype of what a political leader should be-tolerant, intellectually curious, and equipped with a large sense of the absurdity of all humanity, including himself. It is probably no accident that, in some respects, he resembles John F. Kennedy, who Vidal thought had "the perfect temperament" for command...
Last Survivors. Julian's career was as spectacular as it was brief. Nephew of Constantine the Great, he was born in Constantinople and trained, by imperial edict, for a career in the church. But in the course of a visit to Nicomedia, he came under the influence of apostate theoreticians secretly working toward a return to the old faith-or rather, to an idealized amalgam of paganism and philosophy that they took for the faith of the ancient world. Julian wanted to be a teacher, and might well have been if his half-brother Gallus (whom Vidal paints...
...series of remarkable victories (the most notable being at Strasbourg in 357), Julian secured the frontier once more at the Rhine. When Constantius died in 361, he became emperor. He died in battle against the Persians in 363, at the age of 32, having been on the throne for only 18 months...