A history of Julian, the grandson of Constantine, and his failed attempt to reverse the Christian tide that swept the Roman Empire <br /><br />&#8226; Portrays the &#8220;Apostate&#8221; as a poet-philosopher, arguing that had he survived, Christianity would have been checked in its rise <br /><br />&#8226; Details reforms enacted by Julian during his two-year reign that marginalized Christians, effectively limiting their role in the social and political life of the Empire <br /><br />&#8226; Shows how after Julian&#8217;s death the Church used paganism to represent evil and opposition to God, a tactic whose traces still linger <br /><br />The violent death of the emperor Julian (Flavius Claudius Julianus, AD 332-363) on a Persian battlefield has become synonymous with the death of paganism. Vilified throughout history as the &#8220;Apostate,&#8221; the young philosopher-warrior was the last and arguably the most potent threat to Christianity.<br /><br /><em>The Last Pagan</em> examines Julian&#8217;s journey from an aristocratic Christian childhood to his initiation into pagan cults and his mission to establish paganism as the dominant faith of the Roman world. Julian&#8217;s death, only two years into his reign, initiated a culture-wide suppression by the Church of all things it chose to identify as pagan. Only in recent decades, with the weakening of the Church&#8217;s influence and the resurgence of paganism, have the effects of that suppression begun to wane. Drawing upon more than 700 pages of Julian&#8217;s original writings, Adrian Murdoch shows that had Julian lived longer our history and our present-day culture would likely be very different.