Bishop Nicholas of the Christian church of Myra, in Lycia, was born a Greek in Asia Minor during the third century in the city of Patara (Lycia et Pamphylia), a port on the Mediterranean Sea.

He lives in Myra (part of modern-day Demre, Turkey), at a time when the region is Greek in its heritage, culture, and outlook and politically part of the Roman diocese of Asia.

He is the only son of wealthy Christian parents named Epiphanius and Johanna according to some accounts and Theophanes and Nonna according to others.

He was very religious from an early age and according to legend, Nicholas was said to have rigorously observed the canonical fasts of Wednesdays and Fridays.

His wealthy parents died in an epidemic while Nicholas was still young and he was raised by his uncle—also named Nicholas—who was the bishop of Patara.

He tonsured the young Nicholas as a reader and later ordained him a presbyter (priest).

He is in 325 one of many bishops to answer the request of Emperor Constantine and appear at the First Council of Nicaea, where Nicolas had been a staunch anti-Arian and defender of the Orthodox Christian position, and one of the bishops who signed the Nicene Creed.

Nicholas allegedly earns a reputation for generosity and compassion through such acts as tossing, on three separate occasions, a bag of gold through the window of a poor family.

His philanthropic act provides a dowry to obtain for each of three daughters an honorable marriage and saves the girls from a life of prostitution.

Later canonized as Saint Nicholas, he will become the patron saint of Russia, of children, and of sailors.

His story provides the basis for the practice, still observed in many countries, of giving gifts on the saint's feast day of December 6.

Variants of his name eventually include Sant Nikolaas, Sante Klaas, and Santa Claus.

The Arian leaders, exiled after the Council of Nicaea, have from 325 to the death of Constantine in 337 tried by intrigue to return to their churches and sees and to banish their enemies.

They have been partly successful.

After some months of confusion, the emperor's three surviving sons each adopt the title of Augustus on September 9 and divide the empire among themselves.

Constantius II takes the eastern provinces (Thrace, Macedonia, Greece, Asia, and Egypt) for himself.

Simultaneously, the troops massacre many of his relatives, including Constantine's half-brother, Julius Constantius, consul in 335 and father of the future caesar Gallus and the six-year-old future emperor Julian, who is exiled with the rest of his family to Cappadocia.

(In Julian's 361 Letter to the Athenians, he will openly accuse Constantius of murdering his father.

The historian Eutropius felt the new emperor had “permitted but not ordered” the killings.)

Constantius expands Roman anti-Jewish legislation; Jews are labeled “a pernicious sect”.

Nicholas, a bishop of the Christian church of Myra, in Lycia, Anatolia, allegedly earns a reputation for generosity and compassion through various acts.

These include his tossing a bag of gold through the window of a poor family on three separate occasions, thereby providing a dowry to procure for each of three daughters an honorable marriage and saving the girls from a life of prostitution. (Nicholas, who dies in 343, is later canonized; as Saint Nicholas, he will become the patron saint of Russia, of children, and of sailors.

His story provides the basis for the practice, still observed in many countries, of giving gifts on the saint's feast day of December 6.

Variants of his name eventually include Sant Nikolaas, Sante Klaas, and Santa Claus.)

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.

Arianism, despite its condemnation by the first council of Nicaea, becomes the Roman Empire’s official faith in 359, when the Eastern bishops meet in council at Seleucia (now Silifke, Turkey).

Valens, who obtains rule over the eastern half of the Balkan Peninsula, Greece, Egypt, Syria and Anatolia as far east as Persia, is back in his capital, Constantinople, by December 364.

Valens, left with the task of dealing with Procopius, considers abdication and perhaps even suicide, but soon steadies his resolve to fight.

His efforts to forestall the usurper are hampered by the fact that most of his troops had already crossed the Cilician gates into Syria when he learned of the revolt.

Even so, Valens sends two legions to march on Procopius, who easily persuades them to desert to him.

Valens himself is nearly captured in a scramble near Chalcedon.

Troubles are exacerbated by the refusal of Valentinian to do any more than protect his own territory from encroachment.

The failure of imperial resistance in 365 allows Procopius to gain control of the dioceses of Thrace and Asiana by year's end.

Valens has finally assembled enough troops to deal effectively with the usurper Procopius in the spring of 366.

Marching out from Ancyra through Pessinus, Valens proceeds into Phrygia, where he defeats Procopius's general Gomoarius at the Battle of Thyatira.

The defeat of Gomoarius decreases the hopes of Procopius, so that, when Valens reaches Procopius and his troops at Nacoleia, the troops of the usurper desert their commander, and Procopius is on May 27 executed by the army, most of which have remained faithful to Valens, and his head sent to Valentinian in Trier for inspection.

Valens begins preparations for a major expedition as the eastern frontier heats up in 375.

Meanwhile, trouble is brewing elsewhere.

In Isauria, the mountainous region of western Cilicia, the inhabitants of which are described by Ammianus Marcellinus as the scourge of the neighboring provinces of Asia Minor, a major revolt has broken out which diverts troops formerly stationed in the east.

Valens prepares for war against the Persians in 377, taking measures to recruit ‘Scythians’ (Goths) for the war, and again moves forward to Hierapolis, where he spends July and August.

He intends to attack in early spring 378 as it is too late in the year to launch a major offensive, but the Armenian ruler Varazdat, a Roman client, is expelled from his kingdom by Manuel Mamikonian.

As Persian king Shapur II proceeds to attack the territories taken over by the Romans and to harry the troops supporting Sauromaces, the Roman client-king of Iberia, Valens receives the news of the Goths’ invasion of Thrace.