He Almost Reversed Christianity — Then Died at 31 in the Desert

In the year 363 AD, a Roman emperor died in the desert. He was thirty-one years old. He had ruled the empire for less than two years. And in the moment of his death, on a battlefield near the Tigris River, he was attempting something no Roman emperor before or after him would attempt. He was trying to reverse Christianity. Julian was born into the Christian imperial family that had made Christianity the favored religion of Rome. His father was murdered by his own cousins when he was six. He was raised as a devout Christian in what amounted to a gilded prison. And in secret, over years of philosophical study, he converted back to the old gods of Rome. When he unexpectedly inherited the entire empire in 361, he revealed the conversion he had hidden for over a decade. And in the twenty months given to him, he tried to reverse the religious transformation of the western world. He almost succeeded. And then he died. And the church he had tried to hold back went on to shape the next fifteen hundred years of European history. This is the story of Julian the Apostate. The last non-Christian emperor of Rome. A brilliant philosopher, a competent general, an austere ruler. And a man whose memory was so systematically erased that most people today have never heard his name. 🔔 Subscribe for new stories every Tuesday and Saturday — the dark corners of history they didn't teach you in school. #romanhistory #ancientrome #juliantheapostate #paganrome #darkhistory #ancienthistory #romanempire #buriedhistories #forgottenemperors #christianity 🎵 Music: "Eyes of Glory" by Aakash GandhiSource: YouTube Audio Library