Reddit reviews Julian: A Novel

Hope I'm not too late to the party. In this thread you'll find a lot of material on Rome, but I wouldn't go as far as calling them sources. HBO's Rome is a historical fiction TV series, and Dan Carlin's Hardcore History, of which I'm a fan, should never substitute genuine academic work or ancient literature. If you're looking for books, there's a plethora of works to choose from.

In the lighter end of literature, you'd do well reading Mary Beard, Adrian Goldsworthy or Tom Holland - all educated in Classicism from either Oxford or Cambridge. I'd categorise most of their work as popular history, so they're easy reads, yet made with authority on the subject.

If you want your information straight from the horse's mouth, you can also look into works written by the Romans themselves, such as Livy, Plutarch or Suetonius. Reading these can be a little challenging/dull at times though, as they don't conform to our modern ways of structuring a narrative.

As for fiction, which, if done right, does have something to offer, you'd benefit from checking out I, Claudius, Memoirs of Hadrian or Julian imo.

Bernard Cornwell is well regarded and quite good at "action scenes." He's also very very prolific.

For Roman settings Steven Saylor is pretty good; excellent on Roman society and civilian life. You could also check out Lindsey Davis or Ruth Downie. All three of these write Roman historical "crime" novels.

Allan Massie has also published some excellent "historical fiction biographies."

And please read I, Cladius. You may also like Gore Vidal's Creation (actually set in ancient Greece, India & China - a quite simply astounding book) and Julian, a fictionalized account of Julian the Apostate's life.

If you want more recommendations, just ask. :)

I wish more people have heard about him. I doubt Julian would have erased Christianity, but he would have curbed its power significantly. I think, had he succeeded, Christianity would have continued, but it would have changed into a much less hostile form (this is happening now in some quarters, but 1500 years too late), and perhaps would have syncretized with the traditional religions. Also, one of his policies had been to take rival bishops out of exile, such that the Christians would have been too busy fighting (violently) over the nature of Christ to even think about taking power. As Julian said, "No wild beasts are so dangerous to men as Christians are to one another."

I've read it being compared to ancient Chinese policy to curb the power of Buddhist monasteries, but not wipe out Buddhism.

In our history, Christopaganism has happened in the past (and is an option for modern Pagans), maybe in this alternate history, there'd have been Hellenochristianity instead. ("pagans" were also called Hellenes, after the widespread Greek culture.) There had been syncretism with Judaism, why not Christianity?

By the way, I highly recommend that you read the historical novel "Julian" by Gore Vidal. It is a novel, but it's a meticulously researched and damn good one. Besides reading his many writings ([for free at Wikisource, and available for download into electronic formats(http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Author:Julian)) or quotations from them, it's as close as anybody can get to meeting the man.

(Full disclosure: I revere his spirit as a divus, as Roman Emperors were considered to become after death. Human deification (typically after death--for good reasons!) is a common tradition in ancient polytheistic religion (I posted a link to a talk on the subject in ancient Egypt at /r/pagans) , especially since polytheistic religions have looser and more porous boundaries between god and man. (I don't see him as on the level of say, Ra or Hathor, but somewhere above a dead ancestor, though I also see Julian as a sort of spiritual ancestor, since he was himself a convert from Christianity.)