Emperor and Galilean is a play by Henrik Ibsen, and although it is one of his lesser known plays, on several occasions he called it his major work. It is Galilean is written in two complementary parts with five acts in each part and is Ibsen's longest play.The play is about the Roman Emperor Julian the Apostate. The play covers the years 351-363. Julian was the last non-Christian ruler of the Roman Empire. It was his desire to bring the empire back to its ancient Roman values.

Emperor and Galilean is a play written by Henrik Ibsen. Although it is one of the writer's lesser known plays, on several occasions Henrik Ibsen called Emperor and Galilean his major work. Emperor and Galilean is written in two complementary parts with five acts in each part and is Ibsen's longest play. The play is about the Roman Emperor Julian the Apostate. The play covers the years 351-363. Julian was the last non-Christian ruler of the Roman Empire. It was his desire to bring the empire back to its ancient Roman values.

Emperor and Galilean was published in 1873 when Ibsen was at the height of his creative powers. He saw it as the cornerstone of his entire dramatic output. This book will be my masterpiece, he declared. He had completed the two great poetic dramas, Brand and Peer Gynt and was about to embark on the Cycle of twelve modern plays, beginning with Pillars of Society and concluding with When We Dead Awaken which were to establish his unrivaled international fame. While the plays of the Realist Cycle are well known, Emperor and Galilean still awaits discovery by modern readers, actors and directors. The major Shakespearean scholar, G. Wilson Knight has written of the play, it is certainly the greatest dramatic document of its century..it is stageworthy...(it is) conceived dramatically, even theatrically... under a spectacular production the result could be triumphant. Dramatizing the tragic career of Julian the Apostate, the play presents Western Civilzation itself at a most crucial point. It is indispensable for understanding the later plays: themes, situations, and characters from Emperor and Galilean continually reappear in the modern realist plays.