On 26 June 363 christian chronology, Julian the Great, the Philosopher-Ruler was killed. Was it an assassination by one of his own soldiers? No soldier appeared before the Persian king to collect his price. The Romans were pursuing and he must have had guards around him.
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During the withdrawal, Julian's forces suffered several attacks from Sassanid forces.[75] In one such engagement on 26 June 363, the indecisive Battle of Samarra near Maranga, Julian was wounded when the Sassanid army raided his column. In the haste of pursuing the retreating enemy, Julian chose speed rather than caution, taking only his sword and leaving his coat of mail.[76] He received a wound from a spear that reportedly pierced the lower lobe of his liver, the peritoneum and intestines. The wound was not immediately deadly. Julian was treated by his personal physician, Oribasius of Pergamum, who seems to have made every attempt to treat the wound. This probably included the irrigation of the wound with a dark wine, and a procedure known as gastrorrhaphy, the suturing of the damaged intestine. On the third day a major hemorrhage occurred and the emperor died during the night.[77][78] As Julian wished, his body was buried outside Tarsus, though it was later removed to Constantinople.[79]
In 364, Libanius stated that Julian was assassinated by a Christian who was one of his own soldiers;[80] this charge is not corroborated by Ammianus Marcellinus or other contemporary historians. John Malalas reports that the supposed assassination was commanded by Basil of Caesarea.[81] Fourteen years later, Libanius said that Julian was killed by a Saracen (Lakhmid) and this may have been confirmed by Julian's doctor Oribasius who, having examined the wound, said that it was from a spear used by a group of Lakhmid auxiliaries in Persian service.[82] Later Christian historians propagated the tradition that Julian was killed by Saint Mercurius.[83] Julian was succeeded by the short-lived Emperor Jovian who reestablished Christianity's privileged position throughout the Empire.
Libanius says in his epitaph of the deceased emperor (18.304) that "I have mentioned representations (of Julian); many cities have set him beside the images of the gods and honour him as they do the gods. Already a blessing has been besought of him in prayer, and it was not in vain. To such an extent has he literally ascended to the gods and received a share of their power from him themselves." However, no similar action was taken by the Roman central government, which would be more and more dominated by Christians in the ensuing decades.
Considered apocryphal is the report that his dying words were νενίκηκάς με, Γαλιλαῖε, or Vicisti, Galilaee ("You have won, Galilean"),[84] supposedly expressing his recognition that, with his death, Christianity would become the Empire's state religion. The phrase introduces the 1866 poem Hymn to Proserpine, which was Algernon Charles Swinburne's elaboration of what a philosophic pagan might have felt at the triumph of Christianity. It also ends the Polish Romantic play The Undivine comedy written in 1833 by Zygmunt Krasiński.
