Julian the Apostate in the context of "Neoplatonic"

Pythia (/ˈpɪθiə/; Ancient Greek: Πυθία [pyːˈtʰíaː]) was the title of the high priestess of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi in central Greece. She served as its oracle and was known as the Oracle of Delphi. Her title was sometimes historically glossed in English as the Pythoness.

The Pythia was established at the latest in the 8th century BC (though some estimates date the shrine to as early as 1400 BC), and was widely credited for her prophecies uttered under divine possession (enthusiasmos) by Apollo. The Pythian priestess emerged as pre-eminent by the end of the 7th century BC and continued to be consulted until the late 4th century AD. During this period, the Delphic Oracle was the most prestigious and authoritative oracle among the Greeks, and she was among the most powerful women of the classical world. The oracle is one of the best-documented religious institutions of the classical Greeks. Authors who mention the oracle include Aeschylus, Aristotle, Clement of Alexandria, Diodorus, Diogenes, Euripides, Herodotus, Julian, Justin, Livy, Lucan, Nepos, Ovid, Pausanias, Pindar, Plato, Plutarch, Sophocles, Strabo, Thucydides, and Xenophon.

The Roman army (Latin: exercitus Romanus) served ancient Rome and the Roman people, enduring through the Roman Kingdom (753–509 BC), the Roman Republic (509–27 BC), and the Roman Empire (27 BC – AD 476/1453), including the Western Roman Empire (collapsed AD 476/480) and the Eastern Roman Empire (collapsed AD 1453). It is thus a term that broadly spans approximately 2,206 years, during which the force underwent numerous permutations in size, composition, organization, equipment and tactics, while conserving a core of lasting traditions.

Emperor and Galilean (in Norwegian: Kejser og Galilæer) is a play written by Henrik Ibsen. Although it is one of the writer's lesser known plays, on several occasions Henrik Ibsen called Emperor and Galilean his major work. Emperor and Galilean is written in two complementary parts with five acts in each part and is Ibsen's longest play.

The play is about the Roman Emperor Julian the Apostate. The play covers the years 351–363. Julian was the last pagan ruler of the Roman Empire. It was his desire to bring the empire back to its ancient Roman values. Another crucial and more sympathetic feature of Emperor Julian, is his disliking of his own dynasty, who, in the play at least, were claiming descent and authority for being Galileans, making Jesus Christ their own, in terms of ethnicity.

Mystery religions, mystery cults, sacred mysteries or simply mysteries (Greek: μυστήρια), were religious schools of the Greco-Roman world for which participation was reserved to initiates (mystai). The main characteristic of these religious schools was the secrecy associated with the particulars of the initiation and the ritual practice, which may not be revealed to outsiders. The most famous mysteries of Greco-Roman antiquity were the Eleusinian Mysteries, which predated the Greek Dark Ages. The mystery schools flourished in Late Antiquity; Emperor Julian, of the mid-4th century, is believed by some scholars to have been associated with various mystery cults—most notably the mithraists. Due to the secret nature of the schools, and because the mystery religions of Late Antiquity were persecuted by the Christian Roman Empire from the 4th century, the details of these religious practices are derived from descriptions, imagery and cross-cultural studies.

Justin Martyr in the 2nd century explicitly noted and identified them as "demonic imitations" of the true faith; "the devils, in imitation of what was said by Moses, asserted that Proserpine was the daughter of Jupiter, and instigated the people to set up an image of her under the name of Kore" (First Apology). Through the 1st to 4th century, Christianity stood in direct competition for adherents with the mystery schools.

Domus Aurea (in English Golden House) or the Great Church in Antioch was the cathedral where the Patriarch of Antioch preached. It was one of the churches whose construction was started during the reign of Constantine the Great. It is thought to have been sited on an island where the Imperial Palace of Antioch used to stand during the Seleucid period.

The church became a major point of the controversy between Christians and Julian the Apostate when the latter closed the cathedral in response to the burning of an ancient temple of Apollo in the nearby suburb of Daphne. From 526 to 587 it suffered from a series of earthquakes, fires and Persian attacks, before being finally destroyed in another earthquake in 588, after which it was not rebuilt.

The Salian Franks, or Salians, sometimes referred to using the Latin word Salii or Sali, were a Frankish people who lived in what is now the Netherlands in the fourth century. They are only mentioned under this name in historical records relating to this one period, when they came into conflict with Roman forces led by Julian the Apostate in 358 AD, during the period when Julian ruled in Gaul as Caesar, under his cousin the emperor Constantius II. In modern historiography, they are traditionally believed to be ancestral to the Franks who became the rulers of much of present day northern France in the 5th century - at first under the leadership of Chlodio, and later under the leadership of the Merovingian dynasty.

Roman sources describing the events of 358 AD indicate that the Salians were a Frankish people who had entered the empire from across the Rhine some time earlier, and settled with Roman acceptance in Batavia, which is a large island in the Rhine delta, that lay on the northern boundary of the Roman Empire. They had subsequently been settling in the relatively unpopulated and infertile area of Texandria, south of the delta, which was still considered to be under direct Roman control. They were also one of the tribes of this region who were being paid off by the Roman government to allow the safe passage of grain shipments up the Rhine, along with another people, the Chamavi. Julian, seeking to end the payments, entered the region with military force. After defeating both peoples and taking hostages he proclaimed new agreements with them, authorizing the Salians to keep any lands they had settled without fighting, but forcing many of the Chamavi to return to their homeland. He also obliged both peoples to contribute soldiers to the Roman military. Consistent with this, Julian is known to have created several military units named after the Salians.