3 - From Jovian to Theodosius

Summary

JOVIAN

At dawn on 27 June 363, after Julian's body had been carefully stowed away for the long journey back to the west, the senior officers of his Persian expedition met to elect a new emperor. A heated debate took place and factions emerged. Arintheus and Victor, who had been much favoured by Constantius II, clashed with a knot of Gallic officers, led by Nevitta and Dagalaifus, who had accompanied Julian from Gaul. No agreement was reached until the name of Saturninus Secundus Salutius, praetorian prefect of the East, was proposed. Like Julian, the elderly Gallic general was a Christian apostate with a taste for philosophy. But the attempt of the conclave to settle on a compromise candidate failed when Salutius declined the offer on grounds of age and ill health.

Elsewhere in the camp, where the extreme danger of the army's situation was not lost on the legionaries, ‘a few hot-headed soldiers’ proclaimed Jovian, a thirty-two-year-old primicerius domesticorum, emperor. Jovian's only distinction was to have escorted the body of Constantius II to Constantinople for burial in 361. But his father Varronianus, a soldier from Singidunum in Moesia, was well known as a successful commander. Jovian was swifty provided with a purple robe and led before the eyes of the troops, strung out in a column for four miles along the road from Ctesiphon. Some, hearing the emperor's name acclaimed by their comrades, believed that Julian had recovered and burst into tears of disappointment at the sight of the stooping Jovian.