Julius Constantius' second wife, Basilina, had died…

Julius Constantius' second wife, Basilina, had died soon after the birth of Gallus' half brother Julian, who was thus early left an orphan.

With Gallus, seven years his senior, he had been brought up in obscurity, first by Eusebius, Arian bishop of Nicomedia in Bithynia, and later at the remote estate of Macellum in Cappadocia.

By the patronage of Eusebia, wife of Constantius II, Julian, at age nineteen, had been allowed to continue his education, first at Como and later in Greece.

Having developed a fondness for Hellenic literature, he secretly converts in 351 to the pagan Neoplatonism, recently “reformed” by the late Syrian philosopher Iamblichus, and is initiated into theurgy by Maximus of Ephesus, the Neoplatonist philosopher and theurgic magician whose most spectacular achievement has been the animation of a statue of Hecate.