FLAVIUS CLAUDIUS**, emperor of Rome, A.D. 363-4, was a scion of a noble Mosian family, and the son of the Comes Veronianus, a distinguished general and high officer of state under Constantius. Jovian, who was captain of the life guards of the Emperor Julian, accompanied his master on his disastrous campaigns against the Persians. When Julian fell in battle, A.D. 363, Jovian was proclaimed by the army his successor. His first task, on assuming the purple, was to conduct his army back to his dominions. He reached the Tigris in safety; but Sapor with his hosts hung upon his rear, and he found it impossible to cross that great river in presence of the Persian army. Sapor, afraid to drive the Romans to despair, proposed terms of peace, which, ignominious as they were, Jovian was fain to accept. The terms were, that the Romans should surrender their conquests beyond the Tigris, along with the fortress of Nisibis, and many other strongholds in Mesopotamia; and should, moreover, bind themselves to give no aid to the Armenians, with whom Persia was then at war. Saving his army and himself, if not his honour, on these conditions, Jovian hastened westwards to arrange the internal affairs of his kingdom. One of his first acts was to proclaim himself a Christian, and to rescind the edicts of his predecessor against the Christians. He granted protection, however, to such of his subjects as adhered to the old system; and when urged by some importunate sectaries to help them against other sectaries, he sternly reminded them that impartiality was the first duty of an emperor. Himself strictly orthodox, he upheld the Nicene creed against the Arians, and reinstated the ecclesiastics who had suffered at their hands. One of his first acts, indeed, on arriving at Antioch, was to restore his friend Athanasius to his see of Alexandria, from which the machinations of the Arians had driven him. After waiting a few months at Antioch to receive homage from the various provinces of the empire, he set out for Constantinople, and, taking Tarsus on his way, paid the last honours to the ashes of Julian. Continuing his journey in the face of an unusually severe winter, he arrived at Ancyra, where he assumed the consular honours, and a few days later at Dadastana, a frontier town of Galatia and Bithynia. On the following morning (Feb. 17, 364), he was found dead in his bed. His death was attributed to various causes. Some say that he was suffocated by the fumes of a charcoal fire in his chamber; others, by exhalations from the plaster with which it had been newly laid. It is most likely that he died under the dagger or poison of an assassin. He was in the thirty-third year of his age, and had only reigned for seven months. Valentinian was proclaimed his successor by the army.