Emperor and Galilean

[2] 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.

[3] A slightly abridged English translation was made by Michael Meyer in the early 1960s and revised in the 1980s: it has not been performed on stage, though it was broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on 30 March 1990, with Robert Glenister playing Julian.

[4][5] The first stage performance in English was of a newly created version by Ben Power, given at the National Theatre in London on 9 June 2011: Julian was played by Andrew Scott, with Ian McDiarmid as Maximus.

[6][7] This formed the basis for a two-part audio adaptation broadcast on BBC Radio 3 in 2023, with Freddie Fox as Julian and Siân Phillips as Maxima, a female version of Maximus.

[8] Another stage adaptation by Neil Wechsler premiered at Torn Space Theater in Buffalo, New York on Thursday, March 1, 2012, directed by David Oliver, starring Adriano Gatto as Julian.

There the play's main character, Constantius' young cousin prince Julian, is under constant surveillance; the city's inhabitants are very divided as to what is correct Christianity; the emperor's court is corrupt.

The second act takes place in Athens, where Julian talks with Libanius, in whom he soon loses interest, and with the Church Fathers Basil of Caesarea and Gregory of Nazianzus, who become less and less of an influence on him.

These three are all members of the intellectual circle which has gathered around Julian as he becomes popular in the Greek Academy, running rhetorical discussions and logical debating.

This act takes place in Ephesus, where the mystic Maximus has set up a mysterious symposium for Julian to communicate with the other world and thus find out the meaning of his life.

Immediately news arrives that Gallus, heir to the imperial throne, is dead and that Julian has been appointed Caesar of the Roman Empire.

The act is a long struggle, which ends in Julian finally making a complete rejection of Christianity in favour of pure neo-Platonism.