Julian lost his mother not many months after he was born. He was only six when his imperial uncle Constantine died; and one of his earliest memories must have been the fearful massacre of his father and kinsfolk, in the interest and more or less at the instigation of the sons of Constantine. Only Julian and his elder brother Gallus were spared, as they were too young to excite the fear or justify the cruelty of the murderers. From this period till his twenty-fifth year Julian passed his life in the closest retirement, jealously watched by the reigning emperor, often under immediate fear of death. He was carefully educated, however, under the supervision of the family eunuch Mardonius, and of Eusebius, bishop of Nicomedia, at Constantinople itself and at various places in Ionia and Bithynia, and afterwards for six years at Macellum, a remote and lonely castle in Cappadocia. He was trained to the profession of the Christian religion; but he became early attracted to the old faith, or rather to the idealized amalgam of paganism and philosophy which was current among his teachers, the rhetoricians. Cut off from all sympathy with the reigning belief by the terrible fate of his family, and with no prospect of a public career, he turned with all the eagerness of an enthusiastic temperament to the literary and philosophic studies of the time. The old Hellenic world had an irresistible attraction for him. Love for its culture was in Julian’s mind intimately associated with loyalty to its religion.

In the meantime the course of events had left as sole autocrat of the Roman empire his cousin Constantius, who felt himself unequal to the enormous task, and called Julian’s brother Gallus to a share of power. The same turn of affairs brought a great improvement in the condition of J ulian, who was permitted to pursue his studies at Nicomedia. Here he made the acquaintance of some of the most eminent rhetoricians of the time, and here it was that he became confirmed in his secret devotion to the pagan faith. But the downfall of Gallus (354) yet again exposed Julian to the greatest danger. By his rash and headstrong conduct Gallus had incurred the enmity of Constantius and the eunuchs, his' confidential ministers, and was put to death. Julian fell under a like suspicion, and narrowly escaped the same fate. For some months he was confined at Milan, till at the intercession of the empress Eusebia, who always had a kindness for him, he was permitted to retire to Athens (355). The few months he spent here were probably the happiest of his life. Living at the ancient hearth of Grecian culture, and amid the companionship of congenial friends, he found his dearest ambition realized in the enthusiastic study of literature and philosophy.

But a member of the Roman imperial house could not thus be allowed to escape the public responsibilities connected with his birth. The emperor Constantius and he were now the sole surviving male members of the family of Constantine; and, as the emperor again felt himself oppressed by the cares of government, there was no alternative but to call Julian to his assistance. At the instance of the empress he was summoned to Milan; and there from Constantius, who had been chiefly concerned in the murder of his family, he received the hand of Helena, sister of the emperor, as also the title of Caesar and the government of Gaul. It was with extreme reluctance that Julian entered on his new dignities. Accustomed to a life of quiet study and retirement, he felt timid and awkward in the world of ceremony, suspicion, and intrigue to which he was now introduced, He knew well the danger to which he was exposed from the dark temper of the emperor and the arts of the eunuchs who were all-powerful at the court.

A task of extreme difficulty also awaited him beyond the Alps. During recent troubles the Alemanni and other German tribes had crossed the Rhine; they had burned Cologne, Treves, Strasburg, and many other flourishing cities, and extended their ravages far into the interior of Gaul. The internal government of the province had also fallen into great confusion. In spite of his inexperience, and by virtue of his native energy and ability, Julian quickly brought affairs into order. He completely overthrew the Alemanni in the great battle of Strasburg (357). The Frankish tribes which had settled on the western bank of the lower Rhine were reduced to submission. Five times in all he crossed the river to overawe the restless tribes beyond. In Gaul he rebuilt the cities which had been laid waste, re-established the administration on a just and secure footing, and as far as possible lightened the taxes, which weighed so heavily on the poor provincials. Paris was the usual residence of Julian during his government of Gaul, and his name has become inseparably associated with the early history of the city.

The position and reputation of Julian were now established. He was general of a victorious army enthusiastically attached to him, and governor of a province which he had saved from ruin; but he had also become an object of fear and jealousy at the imperial court. It was accordingly resolved to weaken his power. A threatened invasion of the Persians was made an excuse for withdrawing some of the best legions from the Gallic army. Julian recognized the covert purpose of this, yet proceeded to fulfil the commands of the emperor. A sudden movement of the legions themselves decided otherwise. At Paris, on the night of the parting banquet, they forced their way into Julian’s tent, and, proclaiming him emperor, offered him the alternative either of accepting the lofty title or of instant death. Julian accepted the empire, and sent an embassy with a deferential message to Constantius. The message being contemptuously disregarded, both sides prepared for a decisive struggle. After a march of unexampled rapidity through the Black Forest and down the Danube, Julian reached Sirmium, and was on the way to Constantinople, when he received news of the death of Constantius at Mompsocrene in Cilicia (361). Without further trouble Julian found himself everywhere acknowledged the sole ruler of the Roman empire.

Julian had already made a public avowal of paganism, of which he had been a secret adherent from the age of twenty. It was no ordinary profession, but the expression of a strong and even enthusiastic conviction; the restoration of the pagan worship was to be the great aim and controlling principle of his government. His reign was too short to show what precise form the pagan revival might ultimately have taken, how far his feelings might have become embittered by his conflict with the Christian faith, whether persecution, violence, and civil war might not have taken the place of the moral suasion which was the method he originally affected. He issued an edict of universal toleration; but in many respects he used his imperial influence unfairly to advance the work of restoration. In order to deprive the Christians of the advantages of culture, and discredit them as an ignorant sect, he forbade them to teach rhetoric. The symbols of paganism and of the imperial dignity were so artfully interwoven on the standards of the legions that they could not pay the usual homage to the emperor without seeming to offer worship to the gods; and, when the soldiers came forward to receive the customary donative, they were required to throw a handful of incense on the altar. Without directly excluding Christians from the high offices of state, he held that the worshippers of the gods ought to have the preference. In short, though there was no direct persecution, he exerted much more than a moral pressure to restore the power and prestige of the old faith.

Having spent the winter of 361-2 at Constantinople, Julian proceeded to Antioch to prepare for his great expedition against Persia. His stay there was a curious episode in his life. Strange to say, it is doubtful whether his pagan convictions or his ascetic life, after the fashion of an antique philosopher, gave most offence to the so-called Christians of the dissolute city. They soon grew heartily tired of each other, and Julian took up his winter quarters at Tarsus, from which in early spring he marched against Persia. At the head of a powerful and well-appointed army he advanced through Mesopotamia and Assyria as far ∣as Ctesiphon, near which he crossed the Tigris, in face of a Persian army which he defeated. Misled by the treacherous advice of a Persian nobleman, he desisted from the ∣siege of that great city, and set out to seek the main army lof the enemy under King Sapor. After a long and useless (march into the interior he was forced to retreat, when he 'found himself enveloped and harassed by the whole Persian army, in a waterless and desolate country, and at the hottest season of the year. The Romans repulsed the enemy in many an obstinate battle. In one of these, however, on the 26th of June 363, Julian, who was ever in the front, was mortally wounded. The same night he died in his tent. In the most authentic historian of his reign, Ammianus Marcellinus, we find a noble speech, which, like Socrates in the prison, he is said to have addressed to his afflicted officers. Jovianus was chosen emperor by the army, which was extricated from its perilous situation only by a very disadvantageous treaty.

From Julian’s unique position as the last champion of a dying polytheism, his character has ever excited interest and been the subject of debate. Authors such as Gregory of Nazianzus have heaped the fiercest anathemas upon him; but a just and sympathetic criticism, like Neander’s, has found many noble qualities in his character and ample excuse for his leanings to a philosophic paganism. In his childhood he had seen his nearest kinsmen massacred by the heads of the new Christian state; till the age of twenty-five he held his life on sufferance, and passed it in obscurity under the most rigid and suspicious surveillance. The only sympathetic friends he met were among the heathen rhetoricians and philosophers; and he found a suitable outlet for his restless and inquiring mind only in the studies of ancient Greece. In this way he was attracted to the old paganism; but it was a paganism idealized by the philosophy of the time, and still further purified by the moral influence of the Christianity which it rejected.

In other respects Julian was no unworthy successor of the Antonines. Though brought up in a studious and pedantic solitude, he was no sooner called to the government of Gaul than he displayed all the energy, the hardihood, and the practical sagacity of an old Roman. In temperance, self-control, and zeal for the public good, as he understood it, he was unsurpassed. To these Roman qualities he added the culture, literary instincts, and speculative curiosity of a Greek. One of the most remarkable features of his public life was the perfect ease and mastery with which he associated the cares of war and statesmanship with the assiduous cultivation of literature and philosophy. Yet even his devotion to culture was not free from pedantry and dilettantism. His contemporaries observed in him a want of naturalness. He had not the moral health or the composed and reticent manhood of a Roman, or the un-self-conscious spontaneity of a Greek. He could never be at rest; he never could hold his tongue; in the rapid torrent of his conversation he was apt to run himself out of breath; his manner was jerky and spasmodic. He showed quite a deferential regard for the sophists and rhetoricians of the time, and advanced them to high offices of state; there was real cause for fear that he would introduce the government of pedants in the Roman empire. Last of all, his love for the old philosophy was sadly disfigured by his devotion to the old superstitions, and in this respect he little pleased the taste of a judge like Gibbon. He was greatly given to divination; he was noted for the number of his sacrificial victims. Wits applied to him the joke that had been passed on Marcus Aurelius: “The white cattle to Marcus Caesar, greeting. If you conquer, there is an end of us.”

Julian wrote several works, including—(1) Letters, eighty-three of which are preserved in the edition of Heyler, Mainz, 1828 (most of these are addressed to men of letters); (2) Orations, nine in number; (3) Kαi<rαpey ¾ '2.υμ.π όσιον, a satirical composition, in which the dead Caesars appear at a banquet prepared in the heavens, and have to endure the caustic wit of old Silenus; (4) 'Avτtoχικδs ¾ Mισoπωyωv, &jeu cl’esprit on the inhabitants of Antioch, in which also his own person and mode of life are jocularly handled. The most important of his works, the Κατά Χριστιανών, has been lost, except the fragments preserved in the refutation by Cyril, latest edition by Neumann, 1881. The best edition of his entire works used to be that of Spanheim, Leipsic, 1696; the most recent is that of Hertlein in the Teubner series, Leipsic, vol. i. in 1875.

Of the primary sources for Julian’s life and character the most important are his own works; the trustworthy and impartial historian of the period, Ammianus Marcellinus, v. 8-xxv.; the letters and orations of Julian’s much esteemed friend Libanius; and the orations of his severest critic, Gregory of Nazianzus. The impression which Julian’s career produced on the Christians of the East is reflected in two Syriac romances published by J. G. E. Hoffmann (Julianos der Abtrünnige, Leyden, 1880). Compare Nδldeke, in Z. D. Μ. G., 1874, vol. xxviii., p. 263 sq., 666 sq. Modern authorities are—Gibbon's Decline and Fall ; Neander, Der Kaiser Julian und sein Zeitalter, Leipsic, 1813, English translation by G. V. Cox; D. F. Strauss, Der Romantiker auf dem Throne der Cäsaren oder Julian der Abtrünnige (Gesam. Schriften, vol. i„ Bonn, 1876); Semisch, Julian der Abtrünnige; Rode, Geschichte der Reaction K. Julians gegen die christliche Kirche; H. Adrien Naville, Julien VApostat, Paris, 1877; and the Hulsean essay for 1876, by G. H. Rendall. ( T. K.)

Nothing was more characteristic of his method of studying Chinese than his habit of collecting every peculiarity of idiom and expression which he met with in his reading; and, in order that others might reap the benefit of his experiences, he published in 1841 a work entitled Discussions grammaticales sur certaines regies de position qui, en Chinois, jouent la même role que les inflexions dans les autres langues, which he followed in 1842 by Exercises pratiques d? analyse, de syntaxe, et de lexigraphie Chinoise. Meanwhile in 1839 he had been appointed joint keeper of the Bibliothèque Royal, with the especial superintendence of the Chinese books, and shortly afterwards he was made Administrateur du Collège de France.

The facility with which he had learned Chinese, and the success which his proficiency commanded, naturally inclined other less gifted scholars to resent the impatience with which he regarded the mistakes into which they fell in their translations from this most difficult language, and at different times bitter controversies arose between Julien and his fellow Sinologues on the one subject which they had in common. How envenomed were the disputes which thus arose may be gathered from the following title of a work published in 1842 by Julien, Simple expose Tun fait honorable odieusement denature dans un libelle recent de Μ. Pauthier, suivi de la refutation de sa dernière réponse, du résumé analytique de plus de 600 fautes qu'il n'a pas su justifier, et de l'examen de certains passages à l'aide desquels il a prétendu prouver que des Égyptiens ont porte en Chine l'invention de Vecrùure 2353 ans avant J. C. In the same year appeared from his busy pen a translation of the Tao te King, the celebrated work in which Laou-tsze attempted to explain his idea of the relation existing between the universe and something which he called Taou, and on which the religion of Taouism is based. From Taouism to Buddhism was a natural transition, and about this time Julien turned his attention to the Buddhist literature of China, and more especially to the travels of Buddhist pilgrims to India. In order that he might better understand the references to Indian institutions, and the transcriptions in Chinese of Sanskrit words and proper names, he began the study of Sanskrit, and in 1853 brought out his Voyages des Pèlerins Bouddhistes, the value of which work is much enhanced by the fruits of this new instance of his extraordinary mental enterprise. The same remark applies to the work which he published six year later entitled Les Avadânas, contes et apologues Indiens inconnus jusqu' à ce jour, suivis de poésies et de nouvelles Chinoises. For the benefit of future students he disclosed his system of deciphering Sanskrit words occurring in Chinese books in his Methode pour déchiffrer ei transcrire les noms Sanscrits qui se rencontrent dans les livres Chinois (1861). This work, which contains much of interest and importance, falls short of the value which its author was accustomed to attach to it. It had escaped his observation that, since the translations of Sanskrit works into Chinese were undertaken in different parts of the empire, the same Sanskrit words were of necessity differently represented in Chinese characters in accordance with the dialectical variations. No hard and fast rule can therefore possibly be laid down for the decipherment of Chinese transcriptions of Sanskrit words, and the effect of this impossibility was felt though not recognized by Julien, who in order to make good his rule was occasionally obliged to suppose that wrong characters had by mistake been introduced into the texts. His Indian studies led to a controversy with M. Reinaud, which was certainly not free from the gall of bitterness. Among the many subjects to which he turned his attention were the native industries of China, and his work on the Histoire et fabrication de la porcelaine Chinoise is still, and is likely to remain, a standard work on the subject. In another volume he also published an account of the Industries anciennes et modernes de V empire Chinois (1869), translated from native authorities. In the intervals of more serious undertakings he translated the San tseu King, or “Le Livre des trois mots”; Thsien tseu wen, or “Le Livre de mille mots”; “Les deux cousines”; “Nouvelles Chinoises”; the Ping chan ling yen, “Les deux jeunes filles lettrées”; and the “Dialoghi Cinesi,” Ji-tch , ang Peou-Veou-koa. The last work of importance which proceeded from his pen was his Syntaxe nouvelle de la langue Chinoise (1869). In these volumes he gives the results of his study of the language, and has collected in them a vast array of facts and of idiomatic expressions. A more scientific arrangement and treatment of his subject would have added much to the value of this work, which, however, contains a mine of material which amply repays exploration. One great secret by which Julien acquired his grasp of the Chinese language was, as we have said, his methodical collection of phrases and idiomatic expressions. Whenever in the course of his reading he met with a new phrase or expression, he entered it on a card which took its place in regular order in a long series of boxes. At his death, which took place on the 20th February 1873, he left, it is said, 250,000 of such cards, about the fate of which, however, little seems to be known. In politics Julien was imperialist, and in 1863 he was made a commander of the legion of honour in recognition of the services he had rendered to literature during the empire. (r, k. d.) JULIERS. See Jülich.

The abilities and ambition of Julius were regal and military rather than in any sense ecclesiastical. He was more concerned for his own personal fame as a member of the family of Della Rovere than for the advancement of the influence and authority of the church. His dauntless spirit, his mastery of political stratagem, and his moral indifference in the choice of means rendered him the most prominent political figure of his time. While, however, his political and warlike achievements would alone entitle him to rank amongst the most remarkable of the occupants of the papal chair, his chief title to honour is to be found in his patronage of art and literature. He did much to improve and beautify the city; in 1506 he laid the foundation stone of St Peter’s; and he was the friend and patron of Bramante, Raphael, and Michelangelo. He was succeeded by Leo X.

See Dumesnil, Histoire de Jules II., Paris, 1873; Brosch, Papst Julius II. , Gotha, 1878.