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:''For other meanings see Jovian (disambiguation).''
'Flavius Claudius Iovianus', anglicized as 'Jovian', (c. 332 - February 17, 364) was a soldier elected Roman Emperor by the army on June 26, 363 upon the death of Emperor Julian during his Sassanid campaign.

Contents

Rise to power

Rule

Sources and references

External links

Rise to power

Jovian was born at Singidunum in 330s, the son of the commander of Constantius II's imperial bodyguards. He also joined the guards, and by 363 had risen to the post that his father had once held. He accompanied the Roman Emperor Julian as guards captain on the disastrous Mesopotamian campaign of the same year against Shapur II, the Sassanid king. After a small but decisive engagement the Roman army was forced to retreat from the numerically superior Persian force. Julian had been mortally wounded during the retreat and Jovian seized his chance. On the day after Julian's death, when the aged Sallust, prefect of the East, declined the purple, the choice of the army fell upon Jovian. His election caused considerable surprise, and it is suggested by Ammianus Marcellinus that he was wrongly identified with another Jovian, chief notary, whose name also had been put forward, or that during the acclamations the soldiers mistook the name Jovianus for Julianus, and imagined that the latter had recovered from his illness.

Rule

Jovian at once continued the retreat begun by Julian, and, continually harassed by the Persians, succeeded in reaching the banks of the Tigris, where Jovian, deep inside Sassanid territory, was forced to sue for a peace treaty on humiliatingly unfavourable terms. In exchange for safety, he agreed to withdraw from the five Roman provinces conquered by Galerius in 298, east of the Tigris, that Diocletian had annexed and allow the Persians to occupy the fortresses of Nisibis, Castra Maurorum and Singara. The Romans also surrendered their interests in the kingdom of Armenia to the Persians and the Christian king of Armenia, Arshak II, was to stay neutral in future conflicts between the two empires, and was forced to cede part of his kingdom to Shapur. The treaty was seen as a disgrace and Jovian rapidly lost popularity.
After arriving at Antioch Jovian decided to hurry to Constantinople to consolidate his position.
Jovian was a Christian, in contrast to his predecessor Julian, who had attempted a revival of paganism. Under Jovian, the labarum of Constantine again became the standard of the army. The statement that he issued an edict of toleration, to the effect that, while the exercise of magical rites would be severely punished, his subjects should enjoy full liberty of conscience, rests on insufficient evidence. Jovian entertained a great regard for Athanasius, whom he reinstated on the archiepiscopal throne, desiring him to draw up a statement of the Catholic faith. In Syriac literature Jovian became the hero of a Christian romance.
He died on February 17, 364 after a reign of only eight months. During his return to Constantinople Jovian was found dead in bed in his tent at Dadastana, halfway between Ancyra and Nicaea. A surfeit of mushrooms or the poisonous carbon monoxide fumes of a charcoal warming fire have been assigned as the cause of death.

Sources and references

★ Banchich, Thomas, "Jovian", ''De Imperatoribus Romanis''.

★ Ammianus Marcellinus, xxv. 5-10

★ J. P. de la Bleterie, ''Histoire de Jovien'' (1740)

★ Gibbon, ''Decline and Fall'', chapters xxiv., xxv.

★ G. Hoffmann, ''Julianus der Abtriinnige'', 1880

★ J. Wordsworth in Smith and Wace's Dictionary of Christian Biography

★ H. Schiller, ''Geschichte der romischen Kaiserzeit'', volume ii. (1887)

★ A. de Broglie, ''L'Eglise et l'empire romain au iv° siecle'' (4th ed. 1882).

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External links