Julian: An Intellectual Biography (Classical Lives)

Julian: An Intellectual Biography (Classical Lives) by Polymnia Athanassiadi. paperback edition. ISBN: 9780415077637.

"Julian" tells the story of the transformation of a reclusive and scholarly adolescent into a successful general and an audacious social reformer. The author traces the sequence of the Emperor Julians responses to inner and outward challenges and dwells on the tensions and conflicts that each new choice created for him. Julian knew how to cope both with success and with those misfortunes for which he was not personally responsible, but he was not able to face failure. The shock of realizing a few months before his premature death that as a statesman he had indeed failed caused him to withdraw into a private world of visions and illusions, and rendered him incapable of sustaining any longer his contact with reality.