Was Julius Caesar the real Jesus Christ?

[Palinurus]

Still looking for Carotta's book at a reasonable price.

Mac

I had two third party seller cancellations on Amazon and Amazon UK ran out of copies after I placed an order. Waiting to see if my latest try at ordering from Amazon will work out, because if it doesn't the only copy available that I could find on the internet other than the German ones is the last copy available on Amazon at over $400. :O

Can't read it because it's in Dutch, but there may be a way to purchase it directly from the publisher here: _http://www.uitgeverijaspekt.nl/boekdetail.php?id=9789059113961

Another place to try and buy it (32 euros + shipping) may be this one: _http://www.bol.com/nl/p/jesus-was-ceasar/1001004001847813/ :)

 

[Don Genaro]

I was just chiming in to say how grateful I am for this topic awakening in me a fascination and curiosity with ancient history and for motivating me to read. I've caught the Caesar bug :)

Me too :D

I've been getting some good use out of a kindle looking at some of the public domain sources like Plutach, Suetonius and Caesar that are freely available. It gives me a feeling of excitement to be able to read first hand accounts from these times. I enjoyed this free kindle book on the history of Julius Caesar by Jacob Abbot. It's quite an easy to read book on the historical background written in 1904 which adds its own charm such as:

Thanks for the link Pob! It's downloaded and queued!
I finished Parenti's book today. It's excellent as well as being a very quick and easy read. I already had an idea of what a vile creature Cicero was from this thread and from reading subsequently, Philip Freeman's biography but it becomes really clear in Parenti's book. In Laura's words:

Cicero was a pompous ass, an authoritarian follower who had the morals of a weathervane couched as paramoralisms.

and

Indeed. One has only to read Shackleton Bailey's "Classical Life and Letters" of Cicero to realize that Cicero was one of the most repellant characters in history. Shack almost comes right out and says so! What's good about this book is that it gives you the low-down on what was happening interwoven with excerpts from Cicero's letters.

I've got Kahn's book on order and looking forward to it!

 

[Rich]

For me, THE portrayal of Caesar as a real life humane character of great stature was the performance of Rex Harrison in the movie Cleopatra.

Thanks Palinurus, that's good to know. I've been looking at which of the ancient historical drama's would be worth watching. I'm just waiting for Kubrick's Spartacus to arrive _http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0054331/?ref_=sr_3 which admittedly is set before Caesar but by all accounts is one of the classic epics and entertaining I'm sure.

 

[domi]

Can't read it because it's in Dutch, but there may be a way to purchase it directly from the publisher here: _http://www.uitgeverijaspekt.nl/boekdetail.php?id=9789059113961

I'll check this out once I hear back from my old stomping grounds bookstore back in Belgium.
If I go the publisher route, I'll report back on cost, etc.

Dominique

 

[l apprenti de forgeron]

I was just confused because I remember the cs mentioned that christ was going to come and teach through the media, or something like that.

It's probably wise to take the excerpts relative to Jesus with a pinch of salt. Prejudice might have led to corrupted information.

Given that the Cs are a 6th density version of Laura, it could still be possible that some higher density/other reality version of Julius Caesar ends up with some media effect after a Wave arrival. Even before the Caesar idea, the Jesus coming thing was being thought of here as some kind of psychic connection so perhaps it's kind of the higher density version of this forum. Even without prejudice, the Cs seem to have and use a lot of wiggle room when it comes to things that this forum is supposed to learn on its own.

Well, these are deep thoughts you put here. Thanks Bluelamp.

For me, THE portrayal of Caesar as a real life humane character of great stature was the performance of Rex Harrison in the movie Cleopatra.

Thanks Palinurus, that's good to know. I've been looking at which of the ancient historical drama's would be worth watching. I'm just waiting for Kubrick's Spartacus to arrive _http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0054331/?ref_=sr_3 which admittedly is set before Caesar but by all accounts is one of the classic epics and entertaining I'm sure.

Yes, Spartacus is a great movie!. Is one of those movies to see periodically.

 

[domi]

Can't read it because it's in Dutch, but there may be a way to purchase it directly from the publisher here: _http://www.uitgeverijaspekt.nl/boekdetail.php?id=9789059113961

I'll check this out once I hear back from my old stomping grounds bookstore back in Belgium.
If I go the publisher route, I'll report back on cost, etc.

Dominique

So apparently there will be a new version of Carrota's book in October according to the bookstore I was in touch with.
Price of 32 euros with shipping about 18 euros to the US for a book with similar weight of 800 gr (original version weight).
I don't know what's going to be in the new version and if that is a new version of the Dutch book or all languages because I inquired about either.
Any opinion on whether this is worth the wait?

 

[Palinurus]

Yes, Spartacus is a great movie!. Is one of those movies to see periodically.

I quite agree. I have it myself so I'll be watching it again shortly. Thanks for the reminder. ;)

For those who like to browse through lists to trace possible gems in a sea of trivia, have a go at these:

_http://www.ranker.com/crowdranked-list/the-best-roman-movies
_http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_films_set_in_ancient_Rome
_http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_historical_drama_films
_http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiction_set_in_ancient_Rome
_http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swords-and-sandals
_http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_films_based_on_Greco-Roman_mythology

Learning can be fun!

 

[Mal7]

Here's a quote from Fustel de Coulanges' The Ancient City about people being worshipped as Gods after they die:

Every city had gods who belonged to it alone. These gods were generally of the same nature as those of the primitive religion of families. They were called Lares, Penates, Genii, Demons, Heroes; under all these names were human souls deified. For we have seen that, in the Indo-European race, man had at first worshipped the invisible and immortal power which he felt in himself. These genii, or heroes, were, more generally, the ancestors of the people.

The bodies were buried either in the city itself or upon its territory; and as, according to the belief which we have already described, the soul did not quit the body, it followed that these divine dead were attached to the soil where there bodies were buried. From their graves they watched over the city; they protected the country, and were, in some sort, its chiefs and masters. This expression of chiefs of the country, applied to the dead, is found in an oracle addressed by the Pythia to Solon: “Honor with a worship the chiefs of the country, the dead who live under the earth.” These notions came from the very great power which the ancient generations attributed to the human soul after death. Every man who had rendered a great service to the city, from the one who had founded it to the one who had given it a victory, or had improved its laws, became a god for that city. It was not even necessary for one to have been a great man or a benefactor; it was enough to have struck the imagination of his contemporaries, and to have rendered himself the subject of a popular tradition, to become a hero – that is to say, one of the powerful dead, whose protection was to be desired and whose anger was to be feared. The Thebans continued during ten centuries to offer sacrifices to Eteocles and Polynices. The inhabitants of Acanthus worshipped a Persian who had died among them during the expedition of Xerxes. Hippolytus was venerated as a god at Troezene. Pyrrhus, son of Achilles, was a god at Delphi only because he died and was buried there. Crotona worshipped a hero for the sole reason that during his life he had been the handsomest man in the city. Athens adored as one of its protectors Eurystheus, though he was an Argive; but Euripides explains the origin of this worship when he brings Eurytheus upon the stage, about to die, and makes him say to the Athenians, “Bury me in Attiea. I will be propitious to you, and in the bosom of the ground I will be for your country a protecting guest.” The entire tragedy of Oedipus Coloneus rests upon this belief. Athens and Thebes contend over the body of a man who is about to die, and who will become a god.

-The Ancient City (London: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Co., 1916. pp. 195-197)

 

[Zadig]

I finished reading, The Poison King: The Life and Legend of Mithradates, Rome's Deadliest Enemy by Adrienne Mayor and Mithridates VI and the Pontic Kingdom by Jakob Munk Hojte, and I think that Mithridates (M) was an influence on Caesar, in particular for his social policy and his mercy toward his enemies.

Below, I will quote only the interesting facts (see http://www.kavehfarrokh.com/iranica/parthian-era/professor-brian-mcging-mithradates-vi-eupador-of-the-pontus-kingdom/ for an overview of his life).

Background

Mithradates VI Eupator Dionysos (r. 120-63 BCE), last king of Pontus, the Hellenistic kingdom that emerged in northern Asia Minor in the early years of the 3rd century BCE. He is noted primarily for his opposition to Rome. Of the three wars he fought against Rome, the first (89-85 BCE), in which his armies swept through Asia Minor and Greece, eventually only meeting defeat at the hands of Sulla, identified him as Rome’s most determined foreign enemy since Hannibal.


Sources:

The sources we have on Mithridates and the Mithridatic Wars are few and somewhat unreliable. The only primary sources available are written by Roman historians such as Appian of Alexandria, Plutarch, and Cassius Dio. These accounts have to be considered biased because they were writing about a war between their nation and that of an enemy. Indeed, all three refer to Mithridates as a “barbarian.” Appian‟s Mithridatica is the only thorough account of the war and is very valuable. It is, however, full of errors and contains minimal chronology. Plutarch‟s bibliographies of Lucullus and Sulla are intended to show them in very favorable terms. Ancient historian Frank Burr Marsh wrote in his history of Rome that we “only know Mithridates through his enemies.”

Furthermore, all were born in the common era, over one hundred years after the end of Mithridates‟s life. They used memoirs from Roman generals and legislation as their main sources of information. Finally, these sources disagree on many key details. The sources record different numbers of strength for armies and navies, different numbers of casualties, and varying terms of treaties. Some of the sources leave parts of the history out and other sections have not been preserved.

Birth:

The greatness of M reign was foretold by the heavens: in the year of his birth (135 BC), a comet appeared, and in the year of his accession to the throne (119 BC) a comet appeared for 70 days according to Justin, filling a quarter of the whole sky and blocking out the sun. When still a baby, M was struck by lightning, an incident supposed to provide the explanation for his surname Dionysos (The worship of Dionysos had been banned by the Roman senate in 186 BC, because of Dionysus’s association with slave revolts and foreign rebellions.)

He was the first, with Tigranes II of Armenia, to use a representation of a comet on his coins. Tigranes was M most trusted ally, his queen was M favorite daughter. According to the Armenian scholars the comet on the coin of Tigranes was a representation of Halley’s Comet, which appeared in 87 BC during his reign.

M comets of 135 and 119 appeared in the constellation of Pegasus. This position in the sky explain why he chose the wings horse as his personal emblem.

The myth of Pegasos was a perfectly Greek legend, which however had connections to Perseus, the mythical ancestor of the Persians. After Perseus had killed Gorgo, Pegasos flew out of the beheaded monster. Similar references to Perseus are found on many of the Pontic bronze coins. The eight-pointed star and moon sickle seen above the head of Pegasos is the emblem either of the land of Pontos or the Pontic royal house, and it appears on all silver and gold coins.(Hojte)

These sensational events and portents from so many different sources predicting the fall of an evil empire and the advent of a savior-king born under an Eastern star, became intertwined and loomed lard in M story during his lifetime. These oracles and the comets nourished the king’s self-image and his official publicity. The prophecies helped create fertile ground for popular support of his campaign against the tyranny of Rome. M, “the oriental savior king of oracles and prophecies” hoped that all people “would see in him the king from the east destined to bring about the destruction of Rome foretold in oracles.”(Adrienne Mayor)

Social and foreign policies

M grand strategy for the Black Sea was to secure a co-prosperity trade zone and tax it fairly. M farsighted vision offered a positive alternative to Rome’s rapacious greed and violent resources extraction in its early period of conquest. Instead of continual war, M offered peace. Instead of imposing bloodsucking taxes and debt, M would tax moderately and reinvest taxes in military measures to ensure security. M stood for a new vision of mutual prosperity, while the Romans of the late Republic pursued corruption, selfish profit and plunder.(Adrienne Mayor)

M first acts as the savior of Anatolia were social reforms aimed at redressing complaints against the Romans and their supporters. In what the historian Luis Ballesteros Pastor calls the “Mithridatic Revolution”, M relieved public and private debts, canceling loans owed to Roman and Italian creditors, winning support from the middle and lower classes.(Adrienne Mayor)

Mithridates the Merciful and Cruel

M had a reputation of cruelty and clemency. After the defeat of Nicomedes IV of Bithynia, M made

“a surprising announcement. All the captives were free to go. His men divided up the supplies, handing out Nicomedes provisions, foods, clothing and coins to each enemy soldier for his journey home. This benevolent act, and others like it, broadcast by word of mouth, gave M a reputation for clemency toward his enemies. (…) News of his spectacular victory and his magnanimous freeing of prisoners of war spread over the land, convincing many cities to take up his cause, eager to welcome M “ as god and savior”. Ancient writers tell how the populace of many Anatolian cities dressed in white garments and flocked to greet M, requesting his help against the Romans and acclaiming him with divine titles.(Adrienne Mayor)

Mithridates had treated another Roman general, Oppius, leniently and set him free.

However, Aquilius was forced to endure a brutal death. Since it was his greed that had set the war in motion (persuading the Bithynians and Cappadocians to invade Pontus), Mithridates ordered molten gold poured into Aquilius' mouth.

Heliopolis and the city of the sun (133 BC)

This story is not related to M, but it’s very interesting.

Eumenes III (Εὐμένης Γʹ; originally named Aristonicus, in Greek Aristonikos Ἀριστόνικος) was the pretender to the throne of Pergamon.
When the Pergamene King Attalus III (138–133 BC) died in 133 BC, he bequeathed his kingdom to the Romans. Because the Romans were slow in securing their claim, Aristonicus, who claimed to be the illegitimate son of the earlier Pergamene King Eumenes II (197–160 BC), father of Attalus III, filled the power vacuum, claiming the throne and taking the dynastic name Eumenes III.

In central Anatolia, Eumenes III established a utopian city-state, called Heliopolis. The citizens were free and equal, and Eumenes promised to liberate all slave and cancel debts. He was joined by Blossius of Cumae, the Stoic who had been a supporter of Tiberius Gracchus.
All these developments greatly alarmed the Romans, and they sent an army against him. Eumenes III was defeated and captured in 129 BC by a Roman force under Marcus Perperna, the consul for 130 BC in the siege of Thyatira. After his surrender, he was paraded through Rome and executed by strangulation.

But the citizens of Heliopolis continue to resist after the death of Eumenes.

The Senate dispatches the consul Manius Aquilius to crush the insurrection. Aquillius faced a series of long-drawn-out sieges before he could occupy the land and set up the new government. To bring the war to a quick end, Aquillius resorted to a ruthless solution. He ordered his men to pour poison into the water supplies of the besieged cities. This biological weapon killed soldiers and noncombatants alike, and Aquillius’s army easily overran the cities.(Adrienne Mayor)

Asiatic Vespers or the roman Shoah

In 89 BC, Mithridates Eupator was at the height of his power. He was secure in an alliance with Parthian-dominated Armenia and Parthia herself. He had received support from many peoples, tribes and cities around the Black Sea.

As a whole, a huge military force, numbering more than 200,000 soldiers, was at his disposal. The Social War in Italy offered a good opportunity for anti-Roman actions on the part of the Pontic king in Anatolia.

So, according to ancient authors, in 88 BC, Mithridates orchestrated a massacre of Roman and Italian settlers remaining in several Anatolian cities, essentially wiping out the Roman presence in the region( 80 000 deaths according to Appien, 150 000 for Putarch.)

The Asiatic Vespers (also known as the Vespers of 88 BC) refers to an infamous episode during the First Mithridatic War. In response to increasing Roman power in Anatolia, the king of Pontus, Mithridates the Great, tapped into local discontent with the Romans and their taxes to orchestrate the execution of 80,000 Roman and Italian citizens and other foreigners in Asia Minor. The massacre was planned scrupulously to take place on the same day in several towns scattered over Asia Minor. The massacre led to the Roman Senate committing a huge invasion force aimed at breaking the power of the Kingdom of Pontus and eventually annexing their territory in a series of conflicts known as the Mithridatic Wars.

The name was retrospectively given to the massacre by analogy with the Sicilian Vespers of 1282.

After the massacre, Sulla came and slaughtered Greece and Asia Minor.

However, this massacre doesn’t match the foreign policy of M against Rome. In studying the foreign policy of M, Jesper Majbom Madsen concludes:

In summation: Mithridates’ policies towards Rome were in many ways defensive. Certainly his conquests, particularly in Anatolia, were against Roman interests. Yet it is important to stress that Mithridates did not attack the Roman Empire before the Roman commission and Nikomedes IV attacked his interests. When engaging in Kappadokia and Bithynia in 90 BC, Mithridates did not launch an attack on Asia, but tried to conceal his takeover of the two Anatolian kingdoms through the use of Sokrates and Armenia. Had he felt strong enough to challenge Rome and at that time desired a war on Rome, this would have been the best time to strike Asia. Instead, Mithridates chose a strategy, where he accepted every demand Rome was ready to put force behind indicating that war with the Romans was to be avoided. What Mithridates aimed at was enlarging his kingdom as far as possible, without engaging in a war with Rome, something he knew had historically led to the destruction of the challenging kingdom (Hojte) .

Further questions:

Scholars of ancient intelligence wonder how the clandestine order was delivered – orally? In writing? In code? (…) M “intelligence coup” is still a great puzzle, remarks Sheldon. “We do not know, to this day, how M coordinated this feat, how he communicated with his agents, or how he kept such a deadly plan secret”, for a month, especially in places like Tralles, where the ordre was discussed in the assembly. (Adrienne Mayor)

Mithridates and the Antikythera Shipwreck

According to the historian Attilio Mastrocinque, the Antikythera Shipwreck comes from Synope (the headquarter of M) during his reign: see http://www.pontos.dk/publications/books/bss-9-files/bss-9-18-mastrocinque

The Antikythera Shipwreck is a box into which a series of 31 gear wheels have been placed in order to make astronomic calculations with a precision and of a complication that one had thought could only be attained in modern times :see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_wreck

Mithraism and Mithridates

Roger Beck thinks that the Kingdom of Commagene was crucial to the spread of Mitraism in Rome:

I propose to locate Mithraism’s founding group among the dependants, military and civilian, of the dynasty of Commagene as it made the transition from client rules to Roman aristocrats. See http://azargoshnasp.net/Din/mysteriesofmithra.pdf

During the end of the II century, Commagene was annexed by Armenia and therefore was an allied of M. It was under Antiochus Theos (70-40) that the Kingdom took back his independence.

He was also an allied of the Cilician pirates.

Even if the birth of Mitraism in Rome was not borrow from Persia and was a creation of the West, the Iranian tradition centred on Mithra-worship must be explained.

See, The Religion and Cults of the Pontic Kingdom: Political Aspects, for an in-depth study of the religious aspects in Pontic Kingdom during the reign of Mithridates :
http://www.pontos.dk/publications/books/bss-9-files/bss-9-15-saprykin

Taking all this into account, we should say that the appearance of Bosporan terracottas representing Attis, Mithras, Mên and warriors with shields was due to religious syncretism and the spread of the official cults of Zeus Stratios and Dionysos under Mithridates VI. These figurines were popular among the soldiers and mercenaries who served in the Pontic army. They had different religious meanings, but their cults were mostly inspired by Zeus Stratios, protector and guardian of many spheres of life in the kingdom. The popularity of Zeus grew parallel to the spread of the cults of Dionysos, Perseus-Apollon, Mithras-Mên-Attis – official deities of the Mithridatids as basis for creating the image of a deified king.

There were three levels in Pontic religious ideology and royal propaganda.

First the Hellenic, which played the most central role in the deification of the ruler, mostly in the eyes of the Greek subjects, for whom Mithridates Eupator was proclaimed Dionysos and was associated with Ares, Perseus, Apollon, Herakles, and Helios – all sons of Zeus, the main cult in Pontos since the early Mithridatids.

Second the Phrygian-Anatolian, where Attis and Mên seemed to be the chief deities, and the latter was drawn into the royal cult, because Mithridates Eupator tried to associate himself with the local moon-god in order to rally the resident population around him.

Third the Iranian which was perhaps the least important, as the kings of Pontos, though half-Persian by origin, were scared to declare themselves to be descendants of Mithras and Ahura-Mazda, having proclaimed instead that they were equal to the Hellenic and Phrygian gods and heroes, where Perseus was a compromise between Greek beliefs and the Iranian essence of the dynasty.(Hojte)

Hypsicrates and Hypsicratea

Adrienne Mayor theorizes that the last spouse of Mithridates, Hypsicratea, and the historian writing under the name Hypsicrates were the same person.

Hypsicrates the historian was a Greek writer in Rome who flourished in the 1st century BC. His work does not survive, but scholars have conjectures about the writer and his work. He was associated probably with Pontus and wrote a history of the area that was possibly used by Strabo. He may be the same Hypsicrates who served as a slave for Julius Caesar and was freed by Caesar in 47 BC.

In 47 BC, Caesar crushed Pharnaces attempt to regain his father’s lost kingdom. Taking over Pontus, Caesar freed a prisoner of war named Hypsicrates at Amisus. This Hypsicrates accompanied Caesar as his historian on campaigns and wrote treatises on the history, geography, and military affairs of Pontus and the Bosporan Kingdom.

 

[marek760]

Anyone watch "Rome"?
Just heard about the series, was wondering if it's worth watching?
and has it been more or less historically accurate ?

 

[Approaching Infinity]

Anyone watch "Rome"?
Just heard about the series, was wondering if it's worth watching?
and has it been more or less historically accurate ?

While the presentation (i.e., sets, clothing, armor, social setting, etc.) is very accurate, they take some major liberties with the known history, creating intrigues for which we have no evidence, giving characters unique motivations and traits (e.g., Cleopatra being a junky, Atia being a conniving manipulator), etc. That's normal for historical fiction, of course. Even though they present Caesar ambiguously (is he really just power hungry?), in the end, he comes across as the most decent character in the show. So, there's all that to consider. Plus, it's an HBO production, so I thought there was way too much gratuitous sex and violence. You can find various websites online that comment on the historical accuracy of each episode. It WAS interesting to see that certain aspects were presented correctly when it comes to social customs, after reading Parenti for example.

 

[LQB]

Anyone watch "Rome"?
Just heard about the series, was wondering if it's worth watching?
and has it been more or less historically accurate ?

While the presentation (i.e., sets, clothing, armor, social setting, etc.) is very accurate, they take some major liberties with the known history, creating intrigues for which we have no evidence, giving characters unique motivations and traits (e.g., Cleopatra being a junky, Atia being a conniving manipulator), etc. That's normal for historical fiction, of course. Even though they present Caesar ambiguously (is he really just power hungry?), in the end, he comes across as the most decent character in the show. So, there's all that to consider. Plus, it's an HBO production, so I thought there was way too much gratuitous sex and violence. You can find various websites online that comment on the historical accuracy of each episode. It WAS interesting to see that certain aspects were presented correctly when it comes to social customs, after reading Parenti for example.

Same here on the HBO series - great set (like AI says) after reading Parenti. I thought Ceasar came off in pretty good light. I think there was an attempt to get language/expression right for the times - but I'm not qualified to judge. A bit heavy on the sex scenes - but that's HBO. You do get a good feel for the poverty "living" right next to the opulent elite - and what violent crime might have looked like in Rome.

 

[marek760]

Thanks for the reply, just saw the first episode and I agree with what you said there was way too much gratuitous sex and violence ,
but I'll try watch all the episodes .

 

[dant]

Sigh... it looks like I am outta luck getting the following book
as I got unfulfilled orders and had to cancel from several book
stores. So does anyone know where I can order the English
book of "Jesus Was Caesar: On the Julian Origin of Christianity:
An Investigative Report"?

While searching for this book, I found an interesting forum "focused"
on this subject replete with images:
_http://vnnforum.com/showthread.php?t=121609

 

[aragorn]

Argh, I ordered Carrotta's book over a month ago on Amazon UK, and now I've just received a message saying that they still have trouble getting a copy from the publisher. At the time I ordered there were 6 copies left, according to the Amazon page. I wonder what's going on. Well, I guess I'll have to contact them and ask.

Such a pity, I've been waiting for this book very much. :(