Julian the Rebel

In an absolute monarchy much hangs on the personality of the man on top, and the events covered in this podcast are pretty much the result of the emperor's management style.  Constantius seems to have been the kind of boss that corridor warriors thrive under.  He was far from ineffective as an emperor and I'll be looking at his balance sheet a bit later, but he does seem to have had a bit of a weakness in delegation skills.  Time and again we see him letting highly unsuitable people get into positions where they follow their own agendas rather than the empire's best interests.  The way things played out with Julian illustrates this.  The two men could well have formed a great team that could have done great things.  But somehow the intrigues in the court of Constantius always stopped this happening.