The remarkable bestseller about the fourth-century Roman emperor who famously tried to halt the spread of Christianity, bJulianbi iis widely regarded as one of Gore Vidal's finest historical novels. pJulian the Apostate, nephew of Constantine the Great, was one of the brightest yet briefest lights in the history of the Roman Empire. A military genius on the level of Julius Caesar and Alexander the Great, a graceful and persuasive essayist, and a philosopher devoted to worshipping the gods of Hellenism, he became embroiled in a fierce intellectual war with Christianity that provoked his murder at the age of thirty-two, only four years into his brilliantly humane and compassionate reign. A marvelously imaginative and insightful novel of classical antiquity, bJulianbi icaptures the religious and political ferment of a desperate age and restores with blazing wit and vigor the legacy of an impassioned ruler.