The Works of the Emperor Julian, Vol. 1 (Loeb)

INTRODUCTION

...had been proclaimed Augustus by the army. The motives of Constantius in making Julian Caesar are not clear. Eunapius says that he hoped his cousin would be killed in Gaul. Eusebia may have persuaded the Emperor that their childlessness was a punishment for his treatment of his relatives. The Gallic provinces were overrun by barbarians, and Constantius could not go there himself because he was occupied on the Danube with the Sarmatians and the Quadi, and by the threat of the Persians in Mesopotamia. Julian set out for Gaul on December 1, 355, with a small troop of 360 men who "only knew how to pray," as he says in fragment 5. Eusebia gave him a library of books which he took with him. His task was to expel the hordes of Germans who, having been invited by Constantius to assist in suppressing the usurper Magnentius, had remained to overrun and devastate the country and had destroyed the Roman forts on the Rhine. In his five years of campaigning in Gaul,For the condition of Gaul and his achievements there see Vol. 2, To the Athenians, 278-280. though he was continually thwarted by the officers whom Constantius had sent to watch his movements, Julian pacified the provinces and restored their prosperity, recovered 20,000 Gallic prisoners from Germany, expelled the Germans, defeated the Franks and Chamavi, restored the Roman forts, and crossed the Rhine four times. In August 357, he won the famous battle of Argentoratum (Strasbourg), which was fought somewhere between Saverne and Strasbourg, and sent Chnodomar, the king of the Alemanni, captive to Constantius. He spent the winter of 358–359 at Paris, whence he wrote to his...