HELIOS OR JESUS? THE LAST WORDS OF THE EMPEROR JULIAN

Abstract

The death of the Roman Emperor Julian provided Christians with the opportunity not only for the return of a line of Christian emperors, but also for the use of the emperor’s supposed last words as proof of the supremacy of Christ over all else. This article studies the different verba ultima attributed to Julian by Eutychianus of Cappadocia, Philostorgius, and Theodoret and argues that Theodoret willfully edited the emperor’s last words as part of his apologetic and polemical agenda, to develop the emperor further into a character that aptly transmitted the fatalism of paganism and the triumph of Christianity.