In the late summer of 360 Julian marched across the Rhine near modern day Basel and out of the empire with a mere 3,000 hand picked volunteers.  He penetrated the Black Forest just north of the Alps.  Travelling light and crossing mountains and morasses by obscure and rarely used routes he was soon out of contact with the

Julian raised up on shield and hailed Augustus In an absolute monarchy much hangs on the personality of the man on top, and the events covered in this podcast are pretty much the result of the emperor’s management style.  Constantius seems to have been the kind of boss that corridor warriors thrive under.  He was

Athanasius – thanks to Wikipedia for the image Imagine a large chunk of the population suddenly adopted a strange set of beliefs that you couldn’t understand, and that they themselves couldn’t explain.  Then imagine that they started arguing with each other over seemingly insignificant details.  And they are very serious about it all.  Deadly serious. 

Considering that the establishment of Christianity was the most lasting effect of his reign, it is a bit surprising that we don’t know exactly when Constantine became a Christian.

Julian set off to Gaul with a guard of 300 men and without any idea of military matters. The plan was simply to give an air of concern to a neglected theatre. The Alemanni were well established and imperial forces were disorganised.  The actual running of the campaign was in the hands of Sallust, an

Blackadder: Where is the prisoner. Baldrick: He’s dead. Blackadder: Dead? Are you sure? Baldrick:  Well I cut his head off. That usually does the trick. In that episode of Blackadder 2, Edmund Blackadder had been put in charge of the Tower of London and had brought all the scheduled executions forward so he could enjoy