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I don't know how or why anyone would let a thirteen year old withdraw this book from a public library but someone did, and it went a long way towards forming my mind. For better or worse.

Julian the Apostate was born just a little too late: the last Hellenist (pagan) in the family of Constantine, who a few years before Julian's birth had converted the Roman Empire to Christianity. The novel chronicles his unlikely rise to power and its inevitable conclusion. Not a plot spoiler----aren't a lot of practicing pagans around, are there? It takes the form of an exchange of letters and reminiscences between two Athenian philosophers who had known Julian as a young man, the letters transmitting portions of a hitherto-unknown memoir in Julian's own hand. The memoir, naturally, is the bulk of the novel.

I don't know how to put this otherwise: this book, more than any other I've read in the nearly forty years since, made the ancient world come alive. Having done that it led me to question seriously the historical antecedents of the religion in which I was being raised.

But forget that: this book is so good that I reread it every three to five years.

Oh---funny thing about reading a 1963 novel when you're thirteen. The descriptions of sex are so circumspect that no kid can imagine what's going on.