In a speech addressed to Polycles sometime after c.365, Libanius preserves the otherwise unattested claim that the Emperor Julian paid an unnamed doctor to kill his wife Helena, the sister of his cousin and Eastern rival at the time, Constantius II.Footnote 1 However, he does so only in order to refute this charge which his former friend Polycles had made against Julian during a conversation concerning his reign.Footnote 2 According to Libanius, Polycles had initially criticized Julian for being too generous to his favourites, and had cited his gift of certain villages to some eunuchs in proof of this allegation (Or. 37.2).Footnote 3 He had also made some vague insinuations about the reasons for this generosity, but Libanius says that he was prepared to overlook this, knowing that they were not true and that Julian had made larger gifts to others.Footnote 4 However, Polycles then claimed that Julian had contrived at the death of his wife Helena also (Or. 37.3):
τούτοις προσέθηκας τῆς μητρὸς τῆς ἐκείνου τὸν κόσμον͵ ὃν ἰατρῷ τινι δοθῆναι μισθὸν τοῦ θανάτου τῆς οὔσης αὐτῷ γυναικός.Footnote 5
To these charges, you added that Julian gave a doctor a jewel that had belonged to his mother as a fee for causing the death of his wife.Footnote 6
This final allegation proved too much for Libanius, provoking a furious reply and the composition of the present speech.
No modern student of this period seems to have taken seriously the allegation that Julian had Helena murdered and, when modern biographers of Julian do mention it, they tend to dismiss it quickly out of hand.Footnote 7 Certainly, many vicious rumours concerning the behaviour of Julian did circulate following his death, and it is tempting to dismiss this allegation as just another such.Footnote 8 However, there are two reasons why one needs to be careful not to dismiss this allegation prematurely. The first is that Polycles specifically named his source for this information as Helpidius, a former notarius who had risen to the rank of praetorian prefect of the Orient during the last years of Constantius II, holding office by early 360 until his replacement by Saturninius Secundus Salutius during the early reign of Julian as sole Augustus in December 361.Footnote 9 As praetorian prefect of the East, therefore, he had held the most senior imperial office under Constantius II at the very time that his sister Helena died, so no one would have been better placed than him to receive reports of the circumstances surrounding her death, as Libanius himself highlights (Or. 37.11).Footnote 10 The second reason that this allegation deserves further investigation is that it contains some rather unusual and specific details, namely that Julian had paid an item (τὸν κόσμον), perhaps better translated as ‘ornament’ rather than ‘jewel’, to this doctor, and that this had once belonged to his mother.Footnote 11 This suggests that the allegation had some form of factual basis, and was not composed solely of literary topoi or vague rumour. Consequently, the purpose of this note is to explore the potential significance of these details for understanding the origin of the larger allegation.
Cribiore seeks to explain the origin of the claim that Julian had paid what she describes as a ‘jewel’ to the doctor in return for the murder of his wife as a result of some association between a description of Julian's diadem on the one hand and a description of the death of Helena on the other, so that ‘diadem and death somehow became associated’.Footnote 12 In particular, she draws attention to the fact that Ammianus Marcellinus proceeds from a description of the fact that Julian wore a magnificent diadem while attending his quinquennial games at Vienne in November 360 to a description of his treatment of the remains of his wife (21.1.4):
et ambitioso diademate utebatur, lapidum fulgore distincto, cum inter exordia principatus, assumpta uili corona circumdatus erat xystarchae similis purpurato. inter quae Helenae coniugis defunctae suprema miserat Romam, in suburbano uiae Nomentanae condenda, ubi uxor quoque Galli quondam (soror eius) sepulta est Constantina.
And he wore a magnificent diadem, set with gleaming gems, whereas at the beginning of his principate he had assumed and worn a cheap crown, like that of the director of a gymnasium attired in purple. While these games were going on, he had sent to Rome the remains of his deceased wife Helena, to be laid to rest in his villa near the city on the Via Nomentana, where also her sister Constantina, formerly the wife of Gallus, was buried.Footnote 13
However, it is difficult to understand how anyone could have been so misled by this, or by any similar description of these events, as to believe that a diadem, or other piece of jewellery, could have played any role in the circumstances surrounding the death of Helena.
The main problem with Cribiore's approach is that she fails to distinguish properly between the observable events and the motivation then attributed to those participating in these events, that is, between Julian's alleged gift of an ‘ornament’ that had once belonged to his mother to the doctor and the claim that he had done so to pay the doctor for killing his wife. It seems hardly likely that Julian would have given the ‘ornament’ to the doctor in full public view while loudly declaring that this was in payment for the murder of his wife, and the obvious conclusion is that his alleged reason for this gift is a secondary inference by someone who knew both that Julian had given the ‘ornament’ to the doctor, however exactly he knew this, and that the doctor had been treating Julian's wife when she died. Hence one may ignore the problem of motivation for a moment and focus rather on the nature of the deed itself. In what circumstances might the husband of a patient give an ‘ornament’ to a doctor? It might, perhaps, be in payment for professional services, but why would a doctor want payment in this form rather than in cash? Furthermore, in this particular case it would have been almost impossible to dispose of such an item in order to realize its cash value without insulting the emperor who would hardly have been pleased at the prospect of an imperial heirloom ending up in the hands of just anybody. The answer to these questions may lie in the circumstances surrounding Helena's death. In attacking the allegation against Julian, Libanius asks the rhetorical question whether he killed the woman whom he had impregnated, with the obvious implication that Helena was pregnant when she died (Or. 37.9).Footnote 14 The probability that Helena died while pregnant may explain the nature of her death itself, the result of some complication during pregnancy or childbirth. However, it may also explain why Julian would have given an ‘ornament’ that had once belonged to his mother to the doctor treating her at the time of her death.
The key points to realize here are that medical amulets saw widespread usage during the classical and late antique periods, and that they were used for a large variety of problems, including those associated with pregnancy.Footnote 15 Of particular interest here is the fact that scholars have identified several types of amulets, the purpose of which seems to have been to effect a safe and easy delivery of a child. These could take a variety of forms. For example, an inscribed gold-leaf tablet found in Britain and dating to the period c.250–350 expresses the wish that a certain Fabia ‘shall master the unborn child and bring it to birth’.Footnote 16 More commonly, gems were used, and one particular group of reddish or orangey gemstones depicting an uterus with a lock at its mouth have been identified as ‘quick-birthers’, because one of their number bears an inscription best read as ‘Onto your little feet!’, apparently addressed to the unborn child.Footnote 17 Another gem of red jasper bears a similar inscription, ‘Feet-wards for the growing baby!’, and so presumably served the same function.Footnote 18 However, it bears a rather different design, depicting Helios with his usual whip and globe in a speeding chariot rather than a locked uterus.
It is my suggestion, therefore, that the ‘ornament’ that Julian gave to the doctor who had treated Helena was actually a medical amulet for use during pregnancy or childbirth, whether a gemstone or an inscribed gold leaf, rather than a piece of jewellery in the normal sense. The fact that this item is identified as having once belonged to Julian's mother Basilina rather than, for example, to his father Julius Constantius, supports this interpretation. She had presumably used this amulet during her pregnancy with Julian, her only child. If one can believe the only surviving evidence in this matter, this pregnancy had initially turned out very well indeed, with a quick and easy delivery allegedly, although the fact that Basilina died only months later could suggest some problems for her subsequently owing to the pregnancy, even if they were not recognized as such at the time.Footnote 19 As to why Julian gave this amulet to the doctor, much depends on when exactly he is supposed to have done so. If he gave this amulet to the doctor while he was treating his wife still, then it was probably not a gift to him, at least not initially, but something that he wanted the doctor to use in the treatment of his wife. However, if he gave the amulet to the doctor after the death of his wife, then it probably was a gift.Footnote 20 In that case, Julian may have given this amulet to the doctor not so much because of its monetary value but because of its professional value to the doctor who would have been able to use it time and again in his treatment of other patients also. In such circumstances, he may well have been motivated by the fact that he saw no further use for it himself now that his wife was dead.Footnote 21 More importantly, perhaps, he may also have come to doubt its efficacy or even blame it in some way for the recent death of his wife and child. After all, this was the second time at least that a pregnancy had ended badly for Helena, since she had given birth to a son who had died shortly after his birth in 356/357.Footnote 22 However, whoever first started the rumour that Julian had given the ‘ornament’ to the doctor in payment for killing Helena failed to understand its real purpose and tragic history, and that Julian may simply have been ridding himself of an item that now served merely as a bitter reminder of all that he had lost. To the external observer, it may have seemed that Julian was being extraordinarily generous to give anything at all to the doctor who had failed to save his wife and child, least of all a valuable ‘ornament’ and family heirloom, but the truth was more complex. Indeed, it was probably for this very reason that Polycles had first raised this subject in his conversation with Libanius, as another example of Julian's lavishness in his gifts, and not as a separate charge.
Finally, it is worth reconsidering how exactly the knowledge that Julian had given the doctor an ‘ornament’ spread in the way it did. One possibility is that other friends or servants were present when Julian gave the amulet to the doctor, but did not properly understand the significance of this action at the time, whether this was an item intended for the treatment of his wife or a real gift for the doctor. Nevertheless, this would not have prevented them from gossiping about the potential significance of such an apparent gift. However, another possibility is that the gift was real, and that the doctor spread the knowledge of the gift himself as he used the amulet in the treatment of other patients subsequently, or offered to do so at least, but that these patients placed the worst possible interpretation on his receipt of this gift, despite what he himself said. As already noted, Polycles learned of this allegation against Julian from the former praetorian prefect of the Orient, Helpidius. While Helpidius may well have learned of this allegation during his tenure of the office of praetorian prefect, there is a second possibility also. Helpidius was married to a certain Aristaenete, and she had already borne him three children by the time of his appointment as prefect. The same doctor who had treated Helena in Gaul in 360 would presumably have accompanied Julian's court to the East in late 361, and so would have been able to attend upon wives of senior figures in the East also after this date, including Aristaenete. However, Helpidius and Aristaenete were firm Christians, and the monk Hilarion of Gaza had once cured their children of fever.Footnote 23 So if any doctor had offered to treat her with a traditional amulet of some sort, the probability is that his offer would have been received with suspicion and hostility, to the extent even of blaming the amulet for causing the death of Helena if made aware of its history.Footnote 24 Indeed, it would have been but a simple step then to accusing the apostate Julian of deliberately killing his wife by giving the doctor this demonic object to use upon her, and with which he was then rewarded. Hence it is possible that the whole story of how Julian allegedly paid a doctor to kill his wife may go back no further than Helpidius himself, who drew upon his own personal knowledge of the doctor's continued possession of the amulet which Julian had given him, while putting the worst possible interpretation on what the doctor had told him about its origin.
The possibility just outlined has two chief merits. The first of these is that it helps to explain both the ferocity and the focus of Libanius’ invective against Polycles and Helpidius. He attacks them—and them alone—in the way that he does, because they seem to him to be personally responsible for concocting an entirely new charge against his hero Julian, as indeed they were, and he is genuinely shocked by this new slander. The second merit in this possibility is that it explains why this charge remained unknown to so many other authors, both before and after Libanius, who would certainly have welcomed any new accusations to throw against Julian. In particular, it explains why Gregory of Nazianzus should have omitted this charge from his first oration against Julian in 364, wherein he ran through the whole of Julian's life detecting signs of madness and badness wherever possible.Footnote 25 This is because the story of how Julian had his wife murdered originated within a small social circle at a relatively late date, when the main charges against Julian were already well established. Furthermore, there may even have been a certain disbelief by then that such a deed could have escaped unnoticed for so long, the sort of disbelief revealed by Polycles himself even in requiring Helpidius to swear an oath as to the truth of his allegations (Or. 37.3), and by Libanius also in his objection concerning the prevalence of informers under Constantius II, who would have been only too delighted to report such a story to him (Or. 37.10). Finally, Julian was slowly becoming yesterday's news by this point as the Eastern emperor Valens became the new focus of anger and fear by both pagans and Catholic Christians alike, and rumours concerning Julian's alleged misdeeds probably did not enjoy the same currency that they once would have had. The result was that the allegation that Julian had had his wife murdered never spread far, and would have been lost forever had not Libanius taken such great offence on the one occasion that his then friend Polycles had raised this allegation in a private conversation with him.
In conclusion, it is arguable that the allegation reported with indignant disbelief by Libanius, that the Emperor Julian had paid a doctor with an item of jewellery for the murder of his wife Helena, may preserve a hostile misrepresentation of Julian's gift of a medical amulet used for pregnancy or childbirth to the doctor treating his pregnant wife at the time of her death. Unfortunately, Libanius pays little attention to the details of the charge against Julian, but focusses rather upon praising his character and condemning that of those responsible for this charge, Polycles and Helpidius. A different approach to the refutation of this charge might have proved more informative and effective, although considerably less entertaining.
