These « mirrors for the princes » make us wonder about the mentality and the ideology lying behind the texts. In the literary works, the imperial imagery is reflected in a series of pictures presented to the emperors in charge. While they are rulers, they can also be orators, philosophers, poets, jurists, and sometimes even artists. In these portraits, emperors are men of letters and/or men of war, athletic and/or intellectual, bilingual or not, educated or ignorant. Three of them – Eutropius’ Breviarium, Aurelius Victor’s Liber de Caesaribus and the Pseudo-Aurelius Victor’s Epitome de Caesaribus – focus on the emperor’s culture and education as the cornerstones of any civilised governance : they present recurring observations on the paideia of the princes.

Their purpose is usually practical and didactic : they present the imperial deeds of times passed in a concise and chronological manner. These works observe new and particular rules, imposed by their famous dedicatees. These short histories were written by former teachers, grammarians or rhetoricians who reached the highest ranks of the imperial administration, as did Eutropius and Aurelius Victor. These are often commissioned works, written by court historians, sometimes at the request of the emperor himself. is defined, amongst other things, by the production of compendiums of Roman history (breviarium, epitoma or periochae). This thesis will argue that the narratives of Julian’s death, written in the fourth and fifth centuries, were colored by these two political and religious concerns of the period. Analysis of these narratives, written by Gregory Nazianzus, Libanius, Ammianus Marcellinus, and the ecclesiastical historians of the fifth century (Socrates of Constantinople, Sozomen of Gaza, and Theodoret of Cyrrhus) allows the historians a more nuanced view of the religious and political history of late antiquity, specifically concerning Christianization in the empire and relations between bishop and emperor, church and state.

It is my view that these different death narratives were used as literary loci to discuss the growing power of the church and the relations between church and state. Ancient writers composed different death narratives for the last “pagan” emperor, elaborating upon certain details in the narratives and adding portions, probably fictionalized, of the story where they thought necessary. This thesis addresses an intriguing question concerning the death of emperor Julian, known throughout history as “the Apostate.” Although Julian ruled for less than two years, his reign and death were the center of debate for centuries.

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