Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- A note on references and quotations
- Introduction
- PART I The historiography milieu
- PART II The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
- 3 Introduction
- Volume 1 - 1776
- Gibbon among the philosophers
- Volumes II and III - 1781
- 9 ‘The more rational ignorance of the man’
- 10 Julian the Apostate
- 11 Ammianus Marcellinus
- 12 ‘The nice and secret springs of action’
- Volumes IV, V and VI - 1788
- Appendix
- Bibliography
- Index
10 - Julian the Apostate
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 September 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- A note on references and quotations
- Introduction
- PART I The historiography milieu
- PART II The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
- 3 Introduction
- Volume 1 - 1776
- Gibbon among the philosophers
- Volumes II and III - 1781
- 9 ‘The more rational ignorance of the man’
- 10 Julian the Apostate
- 11 Ammianus Marcellinus
- 12 ‘The nice and secret springs of action’
- Volumes IV, V and VI - 1788
- Appendix
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
… for you must know, that next to new-invented characters, we are fond of new lights upon ancient characters; I mean such lights as shew a reputed honest man to have been a concealed knave; an illustrious hero a pitiful coward, &c. …
LytteltonCet empereur élevé jusqu' aux nues par les ennemies du nom chrétien, a mérité que de nos jours un auteur célebre prit la peine d'écrire son histoire, & s'efforçat de rectifier le jugement qu' on devoit en porter.
ChastelluxThe way in which Gibbon's allegiance to the philosophe assumptions with which he had begun The Decline and Fall is shaken, and the consequences of that disturbance, are shown with great clarity in his handling of Julian the Apostate.
Julian's most recent historian has found that it is possible only to ‘grope towards the facts about the man and his reign’. Michel Baridon has argued that Gibbon did not share this tentativeness. While acknowledging that his portrait of Julian is not a simple panegyric – after all, the historian himself speaks of ‘my impartial balance of the virtues and vices of Julian’ – Baridon suggests that The Decline and Fall astutely blends criticism of Julian with praise in order to confuse those who, aware of Gibbon's aversion to Christianity, expected him to make a hero of the Apostate.
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- Information
- The Transformation of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire , pp. 156 - 168Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1988