Julian's Empire

June, 363. Julian, the current Roman emperor, has already established himself as a fresh and unique face: he is a pagan philosopher, determined to restore the culture and religion of the classical Roman empire. He is campaigning in Persia (or, as he calls it, Parthia), determined to follow in the footsteps of Alexander the Great. He has just defeated the forces of the Sassanid army at the capital of Ctesiphon. The Persian king, one Shapur II, offers him a peace treaty to prevent further bloodshed. It is here that our Point of Divergence occurs.

In our timeline, Julian rejected the treaty, and instead chooses to advance further into Persia. This decision caused the Roman army to be met with disaster, and within weeks, Julian retreated back into Anatolia. During his trip back, he was killed in a skirmish with Persian forces.

But what if...

Although reluctant, Julian agrees to halt campaigning. His convinces Shapur to cede all of his empire up to the Euphrates River, and the whole land is annexed as the Roman province of Parthia.

Rome is electrified by the news. Never before had Parthia been annexed, and many citizens flock to cradle of civilization, eager to exploit the new fertile land under Roman control.

Immediatly after his campaign on Parthia, Julian goes back to Rome to enact his plans for restoring paganism. First, most of the Roman temples in the Roman Empire which had been turned into churches by his uncle Constantine were re-opened as temples again. Julian proclaims that Roman Paganism, or Roman Cult, as he calls it, will be turned into the official national religion. Julian believed that the primary reason Christianity came to power was because of a lack of organization and centralized doctrine in the old religions. So, in order to defeat Christianity, he sets out to create a definitive belief system for the empire. To start, he spends large amounts of money restoring the Temple at Delphi, returning statues that had been taken to Constantinople to their original location at the temple. The Edict of Delphi, declared on 4 December 363, mandates that the orcale must be consulted before any major military or political decisions are made.

These reforms are a partial success, and many Christians end up converting to the new Roman Cult. Finally, after several years of gradually reducing the power of the Chruch and restoring more and more temples, Julian hires his long time religious advisor Maximus, as well as several prominent philosophers from Athens, to write a holy book for the Roman Cult.

By 380, the holy book of the Roman Cult, which includes the stories of Ovid, Homer, Hesiod, Virgil and others, plus several new stories and customs, is finished. With the Roman Cult now possessing a definitive doctrine, Christianity gradually declines in favor of the more tolerant and traditional new religion. By 390, only 31% of the Roman population remains Christian, mostly in Constantinople and Jerusalem. By 400, this number would be down to only 19%. By now, most Christians realize that they have lost control of the Empire, and many immigrate to nearby kingdoms and empires, Armenia and Axum in particular.

With his religious reforms coming along smoothly, Julian now focuses on the military problems of the empire-namely, the huge influx of barbarians along the Roman border. Fleeing from a mysterious enemy known as the Huns, thousands of barbarians have arrived at the Rhine and Danube rivers, begging the Romans to let them through.

Julian is unsure what to do about this initially, but he soon discovers a solution. He orders merchants across the empire to cede hundereds of ships to him (causing his popularity to decline among the populace), and appears to allow the barbarians permission to settle in Britannia. The tribes rejoice-unknownlingy falling right into Julian's trap.

On 30 January 371, a massive fleet of some 60,000 barbarians sets off from the coast of Germania, destined for Britannia. Julian now enacts his plan, and, completely betraying his pacifist values, committs arguably the single worst act of genocide in the empire's history up to that point.

On a ship, a small group of about five slaves, setting alight carefully concealed torches, slowly and methodically set fire to the ship. They then jump overboard. Following suit, another group of slaves sets fire to their ship. And another. Soon, the entire fleet of barbarian ships has been set on fire. Trapped in the middle of the sea with no aid, an estimated 58,000 people burn alive on their ships. Of the 2000 that survive, nearly all of them freeze to death in the ice-cold water.

This act of violence shocks Julian's fellow philosophers. Historians have often marked this event, which became known as the Barbarian Massacre, as the beginning of Julian's transformation from a peaceful philosopher to a savage emperor.

Julian, however, does not notice his change in personality, believing himself merely to be protecting Rome’s borders. Neither, it seems, do the Roman people: after he had dealt with the barbarians, he was hailed as a hero, and his popularity soared. In spite of his success, however, his solution proved only to temporarily solve the problem.

In 376, another tribe of barbarians, the Visigoths, began forcing their way past the Roman border and into the countryside. Between March 376 and February 377, hundreds of border towns are sacked by Visigoth looters, their inhabitants enslaved. To everyone in the empire, the barbarians appear unstoppable.

However, while this looting was ravaging the further parts of the empire, Julian was busy devising a battle plan to combat the barbarians in one massive battle. In January 377, he sends a messenger to the Visigoth king, demanding that they return across the Rhine river or suffer the consequences. The king responds by sending Julian back the messenger’s head. Expecting this, he gathers his army of 55,000 troops to meet the Visigoth forces at their current location in northern Gaul.

On February 19, 377, the two armies clash in the Battle of the Rhine. Although the Visigoths have the advantage in numbers, Julian imitates Alexander and spreads his army out, dispersing the enemy across the battlefield and leaving them easy prey for his archers. The battle proves to be a decisive victory for the Romans: while Julian only lost 2,300 of his troops, an estimated 49,000 Visigoth soldiers are killed in the battle, with the king being captured. After Julian executes him, he throws his body and the bodies of the dead Visigoth troops into the Rhine after stripping them of their valuables, literally dying the river red for several days. The message to the migrating tribes across the Rhine river is clear: stay out of the empire. For 70 years, the barbarians heed this warning, and only again become a problem when the Huns finally arrive in Europe.

With the barbarians safely taken care of and his domestic reforms slowly but surely coming to fruition, Julian now becomes obsessed with emulating the second century emperor Trajan, determined to conquer new lands for the empire. Unlike Trajan, however, he also wants to ensure that these lands will be secure for future generations. He decides to begin his conquests with Parthia, resolving to finish what he started fourteen years earlier. He spends the next four years debating and refining a plan for invasion with his advisors before he is ready to begin his campaign.

First, he concludes that Armenia and the Caucausian tribes must be subdued to act as a staging area for his assault on Parthia. For the past 20 years, Armenia has been an increasingly irritating thorn in Rome’s side, particularly because it is home to some of the last Christians in the world, who often harass the imperial border.

On October 3, 381, Julian leads an army of some 60,000 troops north out of the Roman province of Parthia, destined for Armenia. The kingdom has no chance against the might of the Roman army. On November 11, the capital is captured; Armenia summarily surrenders. After several brief and pointless battles with the surrounding tribes, the kingdom and all of the land around is subdued by New Years’ Day and annexed as the Roman province of Armenia; this extends the imperial border to the Caucasus Mountains. Showing a glimpse of his former self, Julian declares that all Christians living in the area will be free to stay or leave as they wish, and that he will not persecute them so long as they keep the peace and maintain civic order-terms which the Christians happily agree to.

On January 22, 382, Julian leads his army across the Euphrates River and into Parthia. Thanks to his military genius, the Romans defeat the Parthians in battle after battle, finally capturing the capital of Ctesphion on March 29, causing king Aradashir II to flee across what is left of his shattered empire. After many months of fleeing from the Roman forces, his army is slowly and methodically wiped out, and when he finally reaches the Indus river on November 30, the Romans are waiting for him. The Indians, hearing of Julian’s military might, refuse to grant him asylum; as a result, he signs the Treaty of the Indus on December 2, in which he agrees to cede all of his empire to Rome, effectively bringing an end to Parthia as an independent state. In exchange for this, Julian lets him live, sentencing him to exile on the island of Malta, where he lives the remainder of his live as a peaceful fisherman, dying of natural causes in July 396.

Julian’s conquest of Parthia makes him the most beloved emperor since Augustus, with one Roman senator going so far as to declare him the next Alexander. En route to a triumph being held for him in Rome, Julian stops in the town of Milan, where he meets an odd young man with the unique name of Volesus. The boy is a child prodigy with aspirations to become, as he puts it, a “philosopher general”. After enoying a rhetorical debate with him, Julian takes him under his wing, and after growing close to him over many years, formally names him his successor on May 3, 397.

After his victory in Parthia, Julian turns his attention to Caledonia. The tribes, having overrun the abandoned Antonine Wall decades ago, are now harassing Hadrian’s Wall more and more frequently. Deciding that the best solution is the complete annihilation of these tribes, Julian leads an army of some 21,000 troops across the border of Britannia in April 384. Over the next four years, he proceeds to slowly and methodically wipe out the tribes of Caledonia, with the last of them being eliminated by 388. Caledonia is annexed as a Roman province, and Hadrian’s Wall is repurposed to serve as a provincial border.

Julian, by now well into his 50s, begins reverting to his former self, becoming concerned with the intellectual and domestic interests of the empire. Curious about Rome’s new neighbor, he hires the historian Britannicus to travel across India and report what he finds. In 395, Britannicus publishes Observations of India, which mesmerizes the people of Rome with its stories of this land surrounded in mystery.

In the final years before his death, Julian becomes a reclusive introvert, surrounding himself in the literature and philosophy of the ancient world as he did in his youth. In 394, as his last major act as emperor, he orders a massive, seven foot high concrete wall constructed across all of Roman Africa’s border. Stretching from the Nile river to the west African coast, this wall is completed by 400, and puts an end to any threats of Tribal invasion along the African coast.

In 398, he orders the construction of the Library of Athens. Though he doesn’t live to see its completion, after it is built, it becomes the intellectual and philosophical capital of the empire, containing virtually every major work from Ancient Greece and Rome. His last act as emperor is to order the construction of the Mausoleum of Julian in 399 on a peaceful and remote island in the Aegean Sea. In 400, he publishes his memoirs, which become the most acclaimed writings of any emperor since Marcus Aurelius. He dies peacefully in his sleep on July 18, 401.

His death is intensely mourned throughout the empire and he is immeadeately deified by the Roman senate. In accordance with his wishes stated in his will, his body was cremated, and he was given a modest state funeral in Rome, attended by any who wished to come. His ashes are interred in his masoleum and his 29-year-old adopted son Volesus comes to power without incident.

Volesus (401-444 CE)
Volesus starts his reign by travelling to Parthia. After realizing that Parthia is too large, he divides it into six regions: Mesopotamia was three by itself, being Sumer (on the south), Babylon (on the center) and Assyria (on the north). Inland Persia has Êran (South Persia), Persia (mid-Persia) and Parthia (north and East Persia). He is also more tolerant than Julian- although still a member of the Roman Cult, he gives more freedoms to the other religions.

In 406, he begins his conquests of the Celtic tribes living in Hibernia (Ireland). However, unlike Julian, his campaigns are much more considerate: the Celts were allowed to continue living in the land, and very few were killed. Nonetheless, it was annexed as a Roman province in 408. Volesus settled down to strengthen the Arabian and Germanian frontiers, ordering a large wall to be built at the borders of the provinces of Arabia and Nabatea and to strengthen the small walls on the Germanian frontier.

In 415, Voelsus' 14th year as emperor, the Library of Athens is completed. The new library is then extended by Voelsus, who has a politicy of treating all of the regions of the Empire equally. The new parts of the library would house Egyptian, Celtic, Nabatean and Persian works of literature and science.

The Huns arrived in the East Germanic plains by 420, scaring most of the tribes left there (Ostrogoths, a few remaning Visigoths, Saxons, Alamanni, Franks and Angles) into forcing their way into the Roman Empire. Like Julian, Volesus attacks them, but unlike Julian, his ways are not so bloody. Instead of massacring the prisoners, he let most of the tribes settle in unpopulated areas of the Empire, such as Iberia, Caucasic Iberia, parts of Hibernia and Caledonia, Parthia, Assyria, and Sumer, with the conditions that they surrender their weapons. However, instead of recruiting them for war en masse, like many other emperors (which had lead to the de-romanization of the Roman army), he recruited very few soldiers from the "barbarian cities". The only tribe not permitted to settle in the empire are the Visigoths, who are given several ships and forced to sail beyond the Atlantic coast.

Voelsus also reformed the Roman army, de-barbarizing it and returning it to the basic principles of Marius. He added several improvements of his own and borrowed several ideas from the Celt, Germanic and Persian armies.