INTRODUCTIONthis formula was now represented by groups variously known as Anomoeans
or Homoeans. Constantine himself had veered away from the Nicene posi-
tion before his baptism and death in 337 and this continued under his son
and successor Constantius II. The disputes continued until the Council of
Constantinople called by Theodosius I in 381, the second ‘ecumenical’ coun-
cil, which returned to the Nicene formula, and after which the ‘Nicene’ creed
ceased to be questioned as the central statement of Christian belief.
Of the three sons of Constantine who gained power after their father’s
death in 337, Constantine II had been eliminated in 340 and Constans fell to
the usurper Magnentius at Autun in 350. Gallus and Julian, the grandsons of
Constantine’s father Constantius II and Theodora, had been regarded up to
then as threats to the succession, but Constantius now made Gallus Caesar
while he himself moved to crush Magnentius; however, Gallus was killed at
Constantius’ orders in 354. As sole ruler, Constantius made a famous visit
in 357 to Rome, no longer the seat of government in the west, which was
memorably described by the historian Ammianus Marcellinus, whose surviv-
ing history is a main and very important source from the year 354.^33 The his-
torian was struck by the emperor’s pose of grandeur and impassivity (‘as if he
were an image of a man’, Hist. 16.10.10), and this brought out in him all his
considerable powers of virtuoso description. The years of Constantius’ sole
reign were also occupied in dealing with military threats in the west from the
Alamanni and Sarmatians and in the east from the Sasanians, who took Amida
(Diyarbakir in eastern Turkey) in 359. He brought back Gallus’ half-brother
Julian from his studies at Athens and the latter successfully campaigned as
Caesar against the Alamanni, winning a major battle at Strasburg in 357. But
in 360 Julian’s troops proclaimed him Augustus in Paris,^34 news that Con-
stantius heard while campaigning in the east. There was little likelihood that
Constantius would accept Julian as co-emperor, and the latter marched east,
entering Constantinople to general acclaim in December 361, a few weeks
after Constantius had died in Cilicia.
Julian’s short reign as sole emperor (he died from a spear wound in mys-
terious circumstances when on campaign against Persia) is one of the most
controversial, partly because of his own considerable and self-conscious lit-
erary output. Brought up a Christian, at first under the care of Eusebius the
bishop of Constantinople, he was later allowed contact with leading philoso-
phers at Ephesus and Athens, and adopted an enthusiastic form of pagan
Neoplatonism. Among his writings are a hymn to King Helios and a treatise
against Christianity (Against the Galilaeans) and as emperor he attempted to
ban Christians from teaching and to organize paganism along the institutional
lines adopted by the Christian church. However, he lacked the persuasive and
other skills necessary to carry this through, even in a city still full of intellectu-
als and many pagans such as Antioch, where he arrived from Constantinople
in July 362 and where he stayed for some months before setting off on his
eastern campaign.^35 Not only did Christians such as Gregory of Nazianzus,
Ephraem the Syrian and John Chrysostom react violently against this threat;