1The final part of the Historiae abbreuiatae (mistakenly known as De Caesaribus) reads as follows:

“For this reason, so that there might be no rebellion among the Gauls, who are headstrong by nature, especially because the Germans were ravaging most of those districts, Constantius appointed Julian as Caesar in command of the Transalpine regions since he was acceptable to him by virtue of their family relationship, and the latter quickly subdued (those) fierce nations and captured their famous kings. Although these exploits were accomplished by his vigour (uis), they nevertheless came about through the good fortune (fortuna) and planning (consilio) of the emperor. This is so important that Tiberius and Galerius achieved very much that was outstanding when serving others, but under their own authority and auspices their accomplishments were by no means equal” (Aur. Vict. 42.17-19, transl. Bird).

2This is the only place in the text where Aurelius Victor mentions Julian. The passage addresses two sensitive problems: internal revolts and the Rome’s relations with the Barbarians. It is convenient to associate them purely and simply with the historical context in which Aurelius Victor found himself. However, both these issues inform the narrative from its beginning, to the point that, in my view, they constitute for Aurelius Victor intrinsic aspects of the imperial era itself. Similarly, it is notoriously difficult to capture, from iv-century historical breviaries, a profound understanding of the political and military transformations that involved the Roman Empire and foreign peoples¹. Therefore, the conquests and setbacks in foreign wars are presented as an expression of the uirtutes or uitia of the emperors.

3Indeed, this derived from a perspective that personalized historical events, something understandable if we consider the long-running process of institutionalization of the Roman Principate and, furthermore, the central role that was attributed to the sovereign during the iv century. Hence, in the passage transcribed above, it is said that the nationes feras were defeated thanks to the uis of Julian and the fortuna and consilio of Constantius II. Thus, it is worth asking the following: according to the text of Aurelius Victor, who deserves merit for the victory against the barbarian invaders in Gaul? Or, alternatively, how Julian was regarded by the historian?

4The present study tries to provide some answers to these questions. Thus, I argue that, although Aurelius Victor depicts Constantius II in a negative but cautious and veiled manner, he cannot straightforwardly be considered a supporter of Julian. Rather, throughout his text, Aurelius Victor stands against illegitimate or controversial claimants to power. Therefore, I would like to prove Julian did not entirely match the political and moral principles and expectations that can be seen in the Historiae abbreuiatae.

From social place to the text

5More than 40 years ago, M. de Certeau published an influential study on theoretical and methodological elements common to the historian’s craft. In L’Écriture de l’histoire, de Certeau explained how “historiographic operation” results from the combination of a social place from where one writes about the past, a set of analytical procedures (a practice), and finally a narrative created by the researcher. Thus, the operation carried out by the historian

“[...] is articulated over a socioeconomic, political and cultural place of production. It implies an area of elaboration that peculiar determinations circumscribe: a liberal profession, a position as an observer or a professor, a group of learned people, and so forth. It is therefore ruled by constraints, bound to privileges, and rooted in a particular situation. It is in terms of this place that its methods are established, its topography of interests can be specified, its dossiers and its interrogation of documents are organized”².

6The debate about how Aurelius Victor dealt with the figure of Julian relates to the social place from which he composed his work. However, herein lies a huge problem. Information about his life trajectory is scarce, and, at the same time, it is impossible to establish precisely the moment in which the narrative was written. The Res Gestae of Ammianus Marcellinus places Aurelius Victor in Illyricum during the year 361; it is said that Julian had returned to Naissus (modern Niš) when

“there he [i.e., Julian] made [Aurelius] Victor, the writer of history (scriptorem historicum), whom he had seen at Sirmium and had bidden to come from there, consular governor of Pannonia Secunda, and honoured him with a statue in bronze, a man who was a model of temperance, and long afterwards prefect of the City” (Amm. 21.10.6, transl. Rolfe).

7The observation made by Ammianus situates Aurelius Victor in time and space. Although nothing is said about what he was doing in Illyricum, the Res Gestae defines him as scriptor historicus. This brings us back to the Historiae abbreuiatae. Judging by what is noted in the text, Aurelius Victor finished it the year before the two meetings held with Julian in 361, as he states that “Julius Contantius [...] has been ruling as Augustus for twenty-three years” (Aur. Vict. 42.20, transl. Bird). The twenty-third year of Constantius’s reign ended on September 8, 360. In these terms, the Historiae abbreuiatae would have been finished sometime between the fall of 359 and the beginning of September of the following year.

8That said, I agree with the idea, implicit in Ammianus’s account, that Aurelius Victor met Emperor Julian in 361 as a “practicing historian” – that is, as someone who had written a work of history by then. However, this does not mean that the text was finished before September 360. I propose the chronological reference at Aur. Vict. 42.20 stimulated the projection of a “horizon of expectation” on the part of the readers without, however, being confused with the moment of narrative enunciation per se. I will come back to this throughout the chapter. For now, I return to the passage with which I opened the present study. It portrays Constantius II as an excellent princeps. Several lines present him in laudatory tones, especially at Aur. Vic. 42.23. As for Julian, there is only a restrained, not to say neutral, citation.

9It is not for us to question here the forms of representation of Constantius II in the Historiae abbreuiatae. Even so, it is impossible not to highlight a few points about it. For example, V. Neri showed how Aurelius Victor, in writing about “contemporary history”, presented a pagan and hostile tradition toward the Constantinian family, though in a veiled, sometimes ironic way³. In this sense, explains Neri, Aurelius Victor intended to give ready-made compliments to both Constantine and Constantius II aiming at diverting the reader’s attention to specific faults the text emphatically attributes to them⁴.

10Following in Neri’s footsteps, some scholars pointed out how Aurelius Victor criticized the ruling dynasty through allusions inserted in points of the narrative other than those written in the last three chapters of the work. M. Antiqueira stresses an apparently circumstantial reference to a prodigy (the unexpected death of gallinae albae) that occurred when Nero committed suicide (Aur. Vict. 5.17) which serves to highlight the permanence of pagan ritual practices in the city of Rome, despite the anti-pagan policy that Constantius II promoted in the second half of the 350s⁵. In turn, N. Zugravu identifies one more “anti-Constantinian echo” in the Historiae abbreuiatae, also related to the report on the downfall of another member of the Julio-Claudian family – that is, Caligula. Aurelius Victor argues that the existence of “foreigners and Barbarians” (external barbarosque) in the imperial army is linked to the moral weakness of the Quirites at that time. According to him, it explained why the coup led by Cassius Chaerea only resulted in the murder of Caligula and could not equally restore the libertas once enjoyed by the Roman people (Aur. Vict. 3.14-15). In saying that, he expressed his disappointment with the presence of barbarian forces in the Roman military, a process stimulated by Constantine and expanded throughout the 350s⁶. Accordingly, it is necessary to recognize the rhetorical devices used by Aurelius Victor in order to criticize Constantius II.

11That being said, we must consider the social place in which Aurelius Victor was inserted. What had the historian been doing before he was appointed consular governor of Pannonia Secunda? There is almost a consensus among modern scholars that Aurelius Victor was already at Sirmium (Sremska Mitroviča) in the late 350s. The reference to Anatolius⁷, praetorian prefect of Illyricum between 357 and the beginning of 360, seems to reflect the personal contact the bureaucrat/historian Aurelius Victor had with such a high-ranking officer. Despite this, it is impossible to determine when Aurelius Victor arrived at Illyricum, nor is it known the position he held at that point of his life. I agree with H. W. Bird that the subsequent promotion of Aurelius Victor to the government of an important province indicates that he would have held some senior office at Sirmium⁸. Due to the gaps in our knowledge of the career of Aurelius Victor, there is a tendency to mirror his trajectory with that of Eutropius, of which we are better informed. For example, R. Smith claims that “both of them [Aurelius Victor and Eutropius] had prospered at court, rising from service as clerks in branches of the palace-secretariat to upper-level posts which conferred senatorial status; each of them composed an abbreviated survey of Roman history imbued with the bureaucrat’s ethos” (italics mine)⁹.

12Scholars like Smith have attempted to reconstruct the career of Aurelius Victor using Bird’s formulation¹⁰. Although in several previous works I also adhered, to a greater or lesser extent, to the hypotheses raised by Bird, I currently disagree with the idea of describing Aurelius Victor as a member of the comitatus, that is, the “imperial court”¹¹. The harsh, albeit concealed, words we read about Constantine and his sons warn us about the limits of that proposal. Moreover, although Bird relies on plausible inferences, they are impossible to verify yet.

13Let us consider this further. Bird suggests that by 345 the historian may have joined civil service as a notarius¹². At that time, the body of the notarii was composed to a large extent of men of low social extraction – as was the case for Aurelius Victor, considering what he says about himself (see Aur. Vict. 20.5). By the reign of Constantius II there was a rapid expansion of the number of notaries, who began to be employed in tasks of a varied nature (diplomatic, administrative, military, and so on).

14It should not go without saying that the Latin term notarius was technically defined in Late Antiquity as “a senior official or officer with a special imperial mission, and also the secretary of the consistorium (as tribunus et notarius)”¹³. But more generally, a notary was someone who fulfilled some legal functions, such as the registration of documents, in the manner of a tabellio, a “documentary scribe”¹⁴. Indeed, it is possible to speculate that Aurelius Victor had performed “notarial” activities, in that more nonspecific sense, in Rome from the 340s onward. Meanwhile, H. W. Bird implies that Aurelius Victor went to Sirmium at the end of May 357 along with the entourage of Constantius II who, on April 28 of that year, had visited the Vrbs Aeterna for the first and only time of his life. Bird says that the emperor “may have taken him to Sirmium and encouraged him to write” his historical booklet¹⁵.

15In light of this, it is assumed that there must have been some kind of interaction between them. It is worth mentioning that notaries gained prominence during the reign of Constantius II: by serving as “shorthand writers” within the imperial court, they performed tasks of a confidential nature and remained close to the emperor. As a result, they amassed social prestige and political influence¹⁶. However, by the year 345, which emperor would Aurelius Victor have served? Both Rome and Italy were then ruled by Constans, who did not visit the eternal city except for (perhaps) a single occasion in the year 340¹⁷. As previously stated, Constantius II had also been in Rome only once, remaining there between April 28 and May 29, 357.

16So, it is more advisable to consider that if Aurelius Victor lived in the city of Rome between 345 and 357, he did not maintain direct or indirect contact with any of the reigning emperors¹⁸. Neither we are able to explain why Aurelius Victor moved to Sirmium at the end of the 350s. So, the premise that he had been taken from Rome to Sirmium and assigned the role of numerarius in the praetorian prefecture of Illyricum cannot be proved. In my opinion, this is an assumption that overestimates the personal capabilities of Aurelius Victor based on the fact that the historian has somehow drawn the attention of the emperor Julian in 361. Therefore, it is assumed (perhaps unconsciously) that the same may have occurred in 357 with regard to Constantius II, retrojecting a personal situation involving Aurelius Victor to his own past.

17Accordingly, I disagree with the perspective that Aurelius Victor was someone “ensconced [...] at the court”¹⁹, as this turns the Historiae abbreuiatae into a book of aulic nature, created to guarantee its author the favor of the sovereign²⁰, whether it was Constantius II or Julian. The narrative has nuances and ambiguities that make such a judgment unfeasible. Furthermore, as I have previously stated, scholars like H. W. Bird and R. Smith project onto Aurelius Victor aspects related to Eutropius (or even Festus) – writers who, in fact, held offices at the court of Valens – as if, implicitly, every laudatory element in iv-century Latin historical tradition must necessarily result from the pen of a court official.

18Therefore, modern assumptions about the social place of Aurelius Victor should be viewed with caution, and we must focus on what we do have: his text²¹. So, we should consider the Historiae abbreviatae in its totality, and not just the last three chapters of the book, where Aurelius Victor recounts events occurred in the more recent past.

The Tetrarchic connection

19Finally, we must investigate to what extent the antipathy felt toward the Constantinians would have implied a positive view with respect to Julian, as well as whether such appreciation bears any relation to the encounters between the emperor and the historian. According to T. D. Barnes, Julian and his soldiers reached Sirmium in mid-July 361. Some days later, the monarch moved to the city of Naissus. Julian remained in the province of Moesia Prima until he heard the news of his cousin’s death, which occurred on November 3. He subsequently entered Constantinople on December 11²². Perhaps Aurelius Victor had contacted Julian in Sirmium, despite the brief sojourn of the emperor in the city. Later on – at some time between late July and the first half of November – Aurelius Victor was summoned to appear before Julian at Naissus where, as reported by Ammianus Marcellinus, he was chosen to govern the province of Pannonia Secunda.

20As we have seen earlier, the narrative of Aurelius Victor did not cover the last year of the reign of Constantius II, which began on September 9, 360. Despite this, C. E. V. Nixon and R. Burgess argue that the Historiae abbreuiatae could not have been written except in the spring of 361, as the text reads that Julian “quickly subdued [those] fierce nations and captured their famous kings” (Aur. Vict. 42.17). The phrase captis famosis regibus, inflected in the plural, alludes to Cnodomarius, king of the Alamanii, defeated by Julian in the Battle of Argentoratum (modern Strasbourg) in 357, and to another Alamannic chief, Vadomarius, who had been detained in Raetia, by means of a ruse, between May and June of 361²³.

21Thus, Aurelius Victor merged events that occurred in different moments, while keeping silent about Julian’s situation after the winter of 360 and his rise from the rank of Caesar to that of Augustus. It is worth remembering that Constantius II did not recognize the promotion of his cousin and co-ruler, which would therefore turn Julian into a usurper (and a rival), at least in the eyes of Constantius II’s courtiers. I must say I agree with Nixon and Burgess, so that the composition of the book should probably be dated in the mid-361, although it is not possible to define a more precise date.

22Nevertheless, the use of the plural form (captis famosis regibus) may refer to the various reguli who fought against the Romans in Argentoratum. It should be remembered that “confederations” like that of the Alamanii had already developed a complex system of internal hierarchy by the middle of the iv century. In 357, they fought Julian’s army under the auspices of two kings (Cnodomarius and Serapius, with the latter as second-in-command) and several other warrior chiefs, whom the Romans called reguli, who were united by the call to arms and accompanied by men with whom they had personal ties.

23At the same time, the choice to emphasize the penultimate year of the reign of Constantius II as the end of the narrative plot can be understood as something inherent to historiographical formatting, among both the ancients and their modern counterparts. Therefore, I agree with J. Grethlein when he states that “historiographic works are shaped by the future of the events narrated”, and consequently, “[…] retrospect makes historians view the past in the light of subsequent events”²⁴. In these terms, it is worth saying that the year 360 corresponds to the final point, the telos guiding the narrative enunciation. Thus, there is a “future past”²⁵ in the text, so that the telos is located in the future with regard to the events narrated by Aurelius Victor, but in the past – in the case of the Historiae abbreuiatae, the very recent past – in relation to the historian himself, whose definitive act of enunciation occurred at some point in the year 361, amid the uncertainties surrounding the dispute between Constantius II and Julian.

24Thus, by directing the reading to a telos that is not to be confused with the more immediate present, Aurelius Victor discouraged a direct, explicit relationship between civil wars and internal rebellions that took place in the past (both distant and recent) and the tense relations involving the ruling emperors in 361. In addition, oblique references to events in the year 361, as in the case of captis famosis regibus, can be interpreted as vestiges of the moment of the narrative enunciation and, equally, they show that the historian also made the present an object of his investigation, leaving to the readers the prerogative of connecting past, present and future. In short, Aurelius Victor excused himself from uttering clear statements on Julian and his “usurpation”.

25Nevertheless, some scholars claim that the text contains evidence of a favorable position toward Julian. For example, E. Cizek argues that it was not by chance that the final sentence exhorted the principes and their virtues (see Aur. Vict. 42.25) at precisely the point where the Historiae abbreviatae was concerned with present time – that is, at the moment Julian gained prominence in the imperial political scene²⁶. In a similar vein, V. Neri states that the emphasis placed on the diligent role emperors should play in assuring the prosperity of the res publica might be seen as an expression of praise for Julian’s rule in Gaul²⁷.

26Thus, Neri says that the “giudizio critical complessivo sulla sua [i.e., Constantius’s] amministrazione dell’impero” (see Aur. Vict. 42.24) was exceptional and would hardly have been included in the narrative if Constantius II were still alive, especially if we consider that it had been written by an imperial bureaucrat²⁸. So, it is proposed that the two concluding sentences constitute a kind of post scriptum, whose writing was motivated by a deliberate act of Aurelius Victor in favor of Julian. The historian felt free to do so only after he met Julian in Naissus (although he maintained a prudent position in regard to Constantine and his dynasty)²⁹.

27For his part, G. W. Bowersock appears less incisive. The criticism of the servants of Constantius II shows that Aurelius Victor indirectly referred to the acclamation of Julian in Paris. To put it differently, the opprobrium against the apparitores of Constantius II obliquely reveals that the historian stood for Julian’s cause. Therefore, the closing line of the Historiae abbreuiatae must be seen as something like a bet – which in the end payed off – on the part of Aurelius Victor in favor of one of the sides involved in the political dispute and not the result of a choice based on the personal ascendancy that Julian might have exercised over him³⁰.

28Nonetheless, events like the controversial acclamation of Julian from his own men (February or March 360) correspond to what Aurelius Victor most condemned in his text. As Julian marched East in the spring of 361 for an imminent confrontation against his cousin who did not recognize him as Augustus, he acted in the manner of the usurpers whom the narrative so much repudiated. In this sense, I agree with C. E. V. Nixon when postulating that, considering the deep-seated aversion that Aurelius Victor had both to internal conflicts and the strong influence of the soldiers in the political sphere, the proclamation of Julian as Augustus at the beginning of 360 would have incited unfavorable reactions on his part³¹. It was, after all, a matter of principle.

29Moreover, the uneasiness and discontent of Aurelius Victor with the soldiery is well known. He despised civil wars because, among other things, he saw them as a sign of barbaritas. Therefore, the army came to be depicted by him as a sort of vehicle for the “barbarization” of Roman society, so it is no surprise that he conceived the presence of “non-Romans” within the military as a factor that not only defined his own times, but also the beginnings of the imperial age³².

30Equally important, the outbreak of a civil war usually resulted in the destruction of several cities or, at least, deprived them of the material conditions necessary for the subsistence of their inhabitants. Thus, many Roman citizens fell victim to the rivalry between imperial armies. It means that they experienced violent disruptions in their everyday lives during the course of fratricidal wars that swept across the Empire throughout its history. This is why the historian stresses how unusual a civil war was that did not result in material destruction and the death of men (see Aur. Vict. 39.15).

31In light of this, I think the Historiae abbreuiatae does not benefit someone like Julian³³. If, as V. Neri and H. W. Bird claim, Aurelius Victor added two other paragraphs at the end of his text, we cannot fully explain the reason why he did not revise his work in its entirety and rewrote those passages that could undermine Julian’s claims to the rank of Augustus. In my opinion, modern scholars are mistaken because they base their interpretations on two doubtful perspectives: on the one hand, they assume that it was imperative that Aurelius Victor supported either Constantius II or Julian. On the other hand, they seek to explain the Historiae abbreuiatae in terms of the brief contact that the historian made with Julian in the summer or fall of 361, as if the promotion obtained by Aurelius Victor should have to be reflected in the narrative, in such a way that the disapproval of Constantius II would amount to an attempt to appease Julian³⁴.

32Furthermore, I do not think that the Historiae abbreuiatae played any decisive role in the choice of Aurelius Victor as consular governor. Julian lacked new, yet experienced, men to rule the provinces. For whatever reason, Aurelius Victor seemed to be a good option³⁵. To suppose that Julian had manifested his appreciation for paganism to the equally pagan Aurelius Victor is merely conjecture. We should remember that Julian was publicly positioning himself as a Christian, and it was only after receiving the news of his cousin’s death and his triumphal entry into Constantinople that he felt comfortable enough to openly worship the gods of the Greco-Roman pantheon³⁶. There is no reason to support the idea that Julian would have confided his attachment to paganism to someone like Aurelius Victor, with whom he had no bond.

33In my view, the ambiguous assessments about the living emperors comes out in the passage with which our study begins. There, Aurelius Victor reflected on a practice common in his lifetime, that is, the sharing of power, whose most significant example in the narrative is provided by the Tetrarchs. Listing a series of military disturbances in the 280’s and 290’s, Aurelius Victor stated the following (Aur. Vict. 39.24-25):

“For these reasons, Julius Constantius and Galerius Maximianus, whose surname was Armentarius, were appointed as Caesars in accordance with ties of kinship which have been created. After annulling their previous marriages, the former received the stepdaughter of Herculius [i.e., Maximian], the latter Diocletian’s daughter, which is what Augustus had once done in the case of Nero Tiberius and his daughter Julia” (transl. Bird with minor changes).

34Two other pieces of information about the Tetrarchs deserve attention. In the first place, the historian says that Maximian, Constantius Chlorus, and Galerius “[all] revered Valerius [i.e., Diocletian] as a father or like a mighty god” (Aur. Vict. 39.29, trans. Bird with minor changes, italics mine). Furthermore, the text indicates that

“[Galerius] was so successful that if Valerius, at whose command all state affairs were conducted, had not for some unknown reason forbidden it, the Roman fasces would now be carried in a new province. But some of the territories which were nevertheless quite useful to us were acquired: the recent very serious and destructive war which has broken out is because they are now being demanded back with greater insistence” (Aur. Vict. 39.36–37, transl. Bird, italics mine).

35In view of this, we should emphasize how Aurelius Victor depicted the so-called First Tetrarchy and “the subsequent enforcement of a system of monarchic plurality”³⁷. First of all, the exercise of power was based on a strict hierarchy among the tetrarchs. Constantius Chlorus and Galerius were named as Caesars, subordinate to the Augusti Maximian and Diocletian, respectively. As stated above, the relationship between them was established through matrimonial alliances (see Aur. Vict. 39.24-25). But what really comes to our attention is that Aurelius Victor sustained that there was only one leader among them, although power was shared by four people³⁸. Hence, as F. Kolb puts it, Aurelius Victor captured the essence of political experience at the time of the Tetrarchy, that is, the sharing of power was mingled with a monocratic element, with one ruler (Diocletian) recognized as the supreme authority, even though the Empire rested upon the power of four individuals³⁹.

36It is not surprising that Aurelius Victor defends this point of view. After all, at the very beginning of the text, he wrote that “in about the 722nd year of the city the custom commenced at Rome of obeying one man alone” (Aur. Vict. 1.1, transl. Bird, italics mine). It is also interesting that he referred to the emergence of the subordinating relationship between the Augusti and Caesars dating it back to the death of Trajan and his succession (Aur. Vict. 13.11-12):

“[Trajan] died of an illness at an advanced age, but not before he had appointed Hadrian, his fellow-countryman and relative, as emperor […]. Henceforth the titles of Caesar and Augustus were separated, and the practice was introduced into the state of having two or more men share the supreme power, but with different titles and unequal power (dissimiles cognomento ac potestate dispari sint)” (transl. Bird, italics mine).

37One of the most prominent features of Aurelius Victor’s approach to history is the establishment of general trends or lines that can be seen throughout the text. The process of sharing and stratifying political power, commonly observed in the iii century, rearranged at the age of the Tetrarchs, and becoming the norm in the iv century, is depicted as something inherent to the imperial system, since Aurelius Victor thought it had been created at the time of Trajan and Hadrian – or perhaps even earlier, considering the references made to Augustus and Tiberius (see Aur. Vict. 39.25; 42.17). More importantly, this is a practice founded on an asymmetry of power: Tiberius was subordinate to Augustus, just as Hadrian was to Trajan, Constantius Chlorus to Maximian, Galerius to Diocletian and, consequently, Julian to Constantius II.

38Ultimately, Aurelius Victor argues that there was no power but a monarchical one, the regia potestas, as stated at Aur. Vict. 3.20. It is not fortuitous that he calculated the length of each reign according to the grant of the title of Augustus. For this reason, it is claimed that Gallienus reigned for nine years (Aur. Vict. 33.35), even though he ruled the empire between 253 and 268. The historian mistakenly considered that until the death of his father⁴⁰, Gallienus held the subordinate title of Caesar (see Aur. Vict. 32.3). The same goes for the case of Galerius and Constantius Chlorus, as we can see in the following passage: “[Galerius] ruled for five years, Constantius [Chlorus] for one, although of course both had held the rank of Caesar for thirteen years” (Aur. Vict. 40.11, transl. Bird, italics mine).

39Thus, Aurelius Victor reaffirmed significant differences of rank and role within the imperial system, stressing the subordination of the Caesars to the Augusti. The power of ultimate decision-making should rest with the senior emperor. In this way, his evaluation of Julian’s campaign in Gaul (Aur. Vict. 42.17) does not consist of an unbridled exaltation of Constantius II – for the merit of a victory over foreign enemies should ultimately be given to the Augusti⁴¹. On the other hand, if the passage did not exactly underrate the deeds of Caesar Julian, it equally alerts the reader about the examples of Tiberius and Galerius. That is, a valuable Caesar might not necessarily be an outstanding Augustus. If Aurelius Victor aimed at favoring Julian and modified the ending of his narrative, as some scholars have suggested, it seems difficult to explain why his text casts doubt on the skills of some Caesars, once they ranked as Augusti. Such an ambiguous position unveils the anxieties felt by bureaucrats like Aurelius Victor in the face of another civil war which seemed to be coming soon.

40

41To sum up, Julian corresponded by and large to a usurper, as well as to a supporter of the Christian religion (at least in the public sphere until the death of Constantius II). In this sense, he posed a double threat to the traditional mores that the Historiae abbreuiatae sought to defend. The usurpers at the time of Aurelius Victor did not provide an alternative that match his aspirations. His narrative allows us to conclude that he stood, above all, for the unity of the empire⁴². However, this should not be understood as a sign of support for Constantius II. Rather, it is a position deeply rooted in his knowledge of Roman imperial history. According to his text, civil wars, a direct consequence of usurpations, give the opportunity to the rusticitas of the military come to the fore at the heart of Roman society. Thus, Aurelius Victor shows a strong attachment to stability and social hierarchies, under the rule of the same law and one (or more) sovereign(s) accepted as legitimate.

42Nevertheless, the circumstances at that time meant that the fate of Aurelius Victor was sealed by the arrival of Julian in the Illyricum. In succeeding Constantius II, Julian gave evidence of the importance of dynastic continuity as a mechanism to ensure the maintenance of political order, although his actions after the acclamation in Paris could be seen by Aurelius Victor as a threat to that same order.