Rewriting Julian’s Legacy: John Chrysostom’s On Babylas and Libanius’ Oration 24
Libanius’ Oration 24 and John Chrysostom’s On Babylas represent contemporaneous and competing efforts to reshape narrations of the emperor Julian and thus influence local and imperial politics fifteen years after his death. Following the emperor Valens’ death at the battle of Adrianople in 378, which echoed Julian’s death in battle in 363, Libanius and Chrysostom revived the memory of Julian in order to address the strength of the gods and define ideal imperial behavior as Theodosius I came to power. Reading these two texts in light of each other highlights the renewed importance that Julian’s legacy carried immediately following Valens’ death, and the late fourth-century implications of that legacy for Antiochene and imperial politics.
Nicaea and its legacy : an approach to fourth-century Trinitarian theology
I. TOWARDS A CONTROVERSY 1. Points of Departure 2. Theological Trajectories in the Early Fourth Century I 3. Theological Trajectories in the Early Fourth Century II 4. Confusion and Controversy: AD 325-340 5. The Creation of 'Arianism': AD 340-350 II. THE EMERGENCE OF PRO-NICENE THEOLOGY 6. Shaping the Alternatives: AD 350-360 7. The Beginnings of Rapprochement 8. Basil of Caesarea and the Development of Pro-Nicene Theology 9. The East from Valens to Theodosius 10. Victory and the Struggle for Definition III. UNDERSTANDING PRO-NICENE THEOLOGY 11. On the Contours of Mystery 12. 'The First and Brightest Light' 13. 'Walk Towards Him Shining' 14. 'On Not Three Gods': Gregory of Nyssa's Trinitarian Theology 15. The Grammar of Augustine's Trinitarian Theology 16. In Spite of Hegel, Fire and Sword Epilogue: On Teaching the Fourth Century
Constantius' paideia, intellectual milieu and promotion of the liberal arts*
Constantine the Great's sons, Constantine II, Constantius II and Constans, were the first Roman emperors since Commodus (AD 180–92), Marcus Aurelius' son, to have been brought up in the imperial household and groomed as heirs apparent. Constantine II reigned for a mere three years and suffered damnatio memoriae, while our evidence for Constans is scant due to the loss of the early books of Ammianus' Res Gestae. As a result, we know little detail regarding their education and any subsequent influence it may have had upon their respective rules. Fortunately, the same is not true of their brother, Constantius, who reigned for some twenty-four years as Augustus and is the subject of seven still-extant panegyrics.