Was Julius Caesar the real Jesus Christ?

It seems counterintuitive that the (psycho) elite who basically did away with Caesar in that treacherous manner would have made an U-turn and resolve to worshipping him afterwards, except if not for some incentive for themselves to do so.

It often serves elites to first vilify/murder a true popular hero, and then shamelessly use his aura for self-aggrandizement. Just think of JFK and the cynical "worship" of him by the political class afterwards, including buildings and streets and so on named in his honor...
 
It seems counterintuitive that the (psycho) elite who basically did away with Caesar in that treacherous manner would have made an U-turn and resolve to worshipping him afterwards
Caesar actually had a lot of support from the elite, and pretty much all the assassins were killed by Octavian and his allies in the years after the assassination. Any supporters of the assassins in the coming decades would pretty much have to fall in line with Augustus, IMO.
 
Caesar actually had a lot of support from the elite, and pretty much all the assassins were killed by Octavian and his allies in the years after the assassination. Any supporters of the assassins in the coming decades would pretty much have to fall in line with Augustus, IMO.
Then I'm puzzled a bit; if Caesar was supported by a lot of the elite, where were those elite supporters when basically the quite numerous group of that same elite (and presumably majority of Senators) stabbed him (23 times) to death at the Senate meeting on Ides of March in 44 BC?

From wiki:
Julius Caesar was assassinated by a group of senators on the Ides of March (15 March) of 44 BC during a meeting of the Senate at the Curia of Pompey of the Theatre of Pompey in Rome where the senators stabbed Caesar 23 times. They claimed to be acting over fears that Caesar's unprecedented concentration of power during his dictatorship was undermining the Roman Republic. At least 60 to 70 senators were party to the conspiracy, led by Marcus Junius Brutus, Gaius Cassius Longinus, and Decimus Junius Brutus Albinus. Despite the death of Caesar, the conspirators were unable to restore the institutions of the Republic. The ramifications of the assassination led to his martyrdom, the Liberators' civil war and ultimately to the Principate period of the Roman Empire.
 
Then I'm puzzled a bit; if Caesar was supported by a lot of the elite, where were those elite supporters when basically the quite numerous group of that same elite (and presumably majority of Senators) stabbed him (23 times) to death at the Senate meeting on Ides of March in 44 BC?

From wiki:
Probably trying to save their own skins and not get stabbed themselves, being unarmed and having already watched Caesar receive several surprise blows after the initial strike. Politicians are very skilled at saving their own skins! (I didn't say they were great guys, just that they supported him.) ;)
 
I don't find the worship of a living god to be that far-fetched. We have today celebrity worship, pope worship, and in the near-past saint worships of all kinds. At that time, the ruler of the world for people living in the provinces, and even more so outside of the large cities in these provinces, may have seemed so remote, so mythical, so outwordly. After all, when a ruler has been the chief priest of the chief god, has performed superhuman feats, is descendant from a goddess, and after all if you rule successfully you must have the favour of the gods, maybe it wasn't considered outlandish to worship such person in some places, depending on the local traditions and beliefs.
 
Caesar actually had a lot of support from the elite, and pretty much all the assassins were killed by Octavian and his allies in the years after the assassination. Any supporters of the assassins in the coming decades would pretty much have to fall in line with Augustus, IMO.
While browsing wiki about the bolded part above, a peculiar thing about Liberators' (Brutus and co.) forces caught my attention.
The Liberators' army also had nineteen legions (eight with Brutus and nine with Cassius, while two other legions were with the fleet). Only two of the legions were at full ranks, but the army was reinforced by levies from the Eastern allied kingdoms. Appian reports that the army mustered a total of about 80,000-foot-soldiers. Allied cavalry included a total of 17,000 horsemen, including 5,000 bowmen mounted in the Eastern fashion. This army included Caesar's old legions present in the East (probably with XXVII, XXXVI, XXXVII, XXXI and XXXIII legions); thus much of the Liberators' army was made up of former Caesarean veterans.
Since there were no references in wiki entry to additionally check this statement that Caesar's veterans composed majority of Liberators' army forces and wiki by itself isn't the most reliable source of info, do you maybe know if that wiki claim's potentially true or not?

Also, what would you (and Laura and other historians/scholars on the Forum) suggest where to look (which sources) for a more or less reliable info about time period of Roman history immediately after Caesar's murder and about Illyricum under Roman rule of Caesar and Octavian?
 
This is an absolutely brilliant analysis by Sergei—IMO.

The spirit of Gaius Julius Caesar still strikes fear into the minds and hearts of the decrepit and dying echelon of modern oligarchs—two millennia after his passing.

That is a Divine level of power.

NO COUNTRY FOR GREAT MEN: A REVIEW OF BBC’S CAESAR

The inventory of historical analogies in contemporary discourse is limited. With only a precious few common reference points, it is inevitable that these references end up being overworked. Above all, World War II is today pressed into service as an analogy for virtually every foreign policy scenario. And not too far behind, surely, is the fall of Rome (a term that people use interchangeably for both the end of Roman Republicanism and for the much later collapse of the Roman Empire).

Rome has great appeal as a model for the West and for America especially. The Romans are considered the prototypical Westerners; for America the Roman Empire represents the archetype of both Republicanism and global domination. The United States was explicitly modeled on the Roman Republic both institutionally and aesthetically. Americans are proud of both their democracy and their enormous power, and Rome stands as a cautionary tale of a state that had both of those things and lost them.

Therefore, when the BBC announced a new docuseries about Julius Caesar, presented by respected classicists and authors Tom Holland and Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, the danger that this fascinating subject matter would become corrupted by heavy-handed allegories to contemporary politics was obvious. The loaded title – Julius Caesar: The Making of a Dictator – flashed a warning light as to the direction that it would take. But, probably like many people, I am too much of a Romanophile to resist the siren song of Caesar on screen.

The show itself is billed as a docudrama, which implies that it will feature dramatic re-enactments of historical events. Sadly, the reenactment footage takes the form of non-verbal vignettes. There is no dialogue from any of the historical figures depicted; every word spoken in the show comes from the narrator or from the panel of commentators. Caesar does not speak; instead, he glowers in silent anger while the narrator tells us what’s happening and interpolates motivations. This makes the series a major letdown as entertainment. It is not really a docudrama but a lecture.

The lecture, of course, is not subtle. As if the very title did not make it obvious, its goal is to convince the audience that Julius Caesar was personally and solely responsible for the end of the Roman Republic. The implication is that democracies are always vulnerable to toppling by the ambition of a single individual. Caesar becomes a particular type of political figure who needs to be neutralized wherever he is found. One of the presenters, British politician and broadcaster Rory Stewart, states explicitly that Caesar demonstrates that “a populist can corrupt an entire state.”

If one knew nothing about Roman history before watching Caesar, you would come away largely under the impression that a stable Roman political system had been singlehandedly wrecked by one person. Or, as Stewart puts it, “This republic was overthrown by the ambitions of one man.” This is laughable; it’s not history at all. The Roman Republic was in a state of institutional crisis long before Caesar was born. The germ of the problem was that Rome’s political institutions had been originally built for a modest city-state which now found itself in control of a vast empire ringing the periphery of the Mediterranean.

In the high days of Roman Republicanism, when Rome was carving out the beginnings of its empire in Italy, a bedrock of smallholding farmers formed the heart of both the citizenry and the army. The Roman ideal was a Farmer-Citizen-Soldier who worked the fields himself, participated in civic institutions like elections and religious duties, and fought in the army when called up. The idealized example of this was Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus, who worked his own farm into old age, until he was called up by the citizens to assume dictatorial powers in the face of an invasion. After achieving total victory in only a few weeks, he gave up his powers, and returned to his farm.

A society built on smallholding farmer-soldiers works well for a city-state fighting wars in its immediate vicinity. So long as war is confined to the Italian peninsula, the army is able to fight a campaign and then disband to care for their farms. This is why the Roman deity Mars was the god of both war and farming – he was the god of the ideal Roman citizen, who fought and farmed on a seasonal basis. Roman society had distinct campaigning and growing seasons, and Mars attended to both.

Unfortunately, this social dynamic could not be sustained as Rome’s power grew. As her imperial commitments spread ever farther around the Mediterranean rim, the farmer-soldier became an anachronism. A soldier fighting the Samnites in central Italy can get home in time to harvest his wheat. A soldier fighting Pontus in modern-day Turkey cannot. His farm would fall into disrepair and ruin, he himself could be killed, and his land could be bought up by one of the members of the Roman ultra-wealthy.

Rome’s enormous success and increasingly vast empire brought three important changes that destroyed the social basis of Roman institutions: first, long campaigns and increasing distances ended the possibility of the seasonal farmer-soldier; secondly, the deaths of huge numbers of Roman men in battle allowed the wealthy to accumulate their land; and third, the influx of slave labor from victories abroad destroyed the basis of citizen labor. The Roman social form was radically changed, from a society of farmer-soldier-citizens working their own small farms into an oligarchy of the ultra-rich, who owned vast estates worked by their slaves.

This transformation created enormous economic inequality, embittering much of the Roman populace, and planting the seeds of corruption in politics. By the time Caesar arrived on the scene, there was already a strong rift between the so-called “populists”, who sought reforms designed to prop up the common folk, and the conservatives who wished to defend senatorial prerogatives. Political violence had long become normalized. Several decades before Caesar was born, two prominent populist politicians – the Gracchi Brothers – were stabbed to death by senators. In 82 BC, a brief civil war broke out which saw Lucius Cornelius Sulla crush his adversaries at the Battle of the Colline Gate, declare himself dictator, and implement a coordinated purge of his political enemies in a wave of executions. In 63 BC, a senator attempted a coup against the reigning consuls and was summarily executed.

Elections were widely corrupted by the practice of vote buying and bribes, to the point where an effort by a few idealistic senators to crack down on Ambitus (as political corruption was called) was met with anger by the public, which had come to see election bribes as a regular part of their income. Caesar did not plunge the republic into crisis; rather, the crisis created Caesar. So why does the BBC, two millennia later, feel the need to affix all the blame to him? Is it that our contemporary democracy finds itself in the same position as the Roman Republic and identifies with it?


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BBC’s “Julius Caesar: The Making of A Dictator”
Perhaps the best answer lies in a deep-seated fixation with what I call the ‘Inverted Great Man’. Academia these days has a strong revulsion for the Great Man theory of history, which emphasizes the role of dynamic individuals who embody the great turnings of history: the Caesars, the Washingtons, the Columbus and the Napoleons of the world. The idolization of such figures is anathema, laced with the fear of personality cults, tyranny, and the notorious bogeyman, fascism. Accordingly, we are given the inverted form of the theory: Great Men can exist so long as they are wicked. There is no room for the conventional Great Man, who embodies the will and vitality of the people and manifests a historical turning, but there is room for the Very Bad Man, who wrecks everything and ushers in tyranny. There are no heroes but there are villains.

Hence the bizarre contemporary personality cults around figures like Donald Trump, and Vladimir Putin, not from their supporters, but from their enemies and detractors. Nobody obsessed about the Trump Presidency the way liberal news did, analyzing his gait and his facial expressions, chasing every rumor with breathless anticipation, and going apoplectic over the mean tweets. A genre of Twitter microcelebrity (the #Resistance) sprang up dedicated entirely to Trump Watching, convinced that he was either on the verge of being arrested for capital crimes and/or instituting a fascist dictatorship. In the end, of course, he did neither. Similarly, western critics ascribe phantasmagorical powers to Vladimir Putin, imagining him as something approximating a Bond villain. But they think about him far more often than Russian citizens do.

Julius Caesar: The Making of a Dictator is an attempt to give a veneer of academic legitimacy to this inverted personality cult and the tyrannical quality of the populist. The series is full of implicit references to our own time and the supposed applicability of the Caesar story to our own democracy. In the introductory sequence, the narrator warns us that “Democracy has to be constantly fought for” or else “a new Caesar will come.” Caesar has long been the archetype for the man of action and power, who cuts through corruption and decay. The intent of this series is to transform him into a dark archetype; a purely destructive force with no personal virtues or historical context.

Caesar becomes a scapegoat for the collapse of a centuries-old political system, deflecting focus away from what could have been a productive discussion about the actual causes of socio-political rot. Most importantly, it inhibits the ability to understand why Caesar was able to achieve what he did, or why powerful elements of Roman society rallied behind his successors and fought to preserve the Caesarian revolution. And this is a question worth asking. Why, more than 2,000 years after his death, does this Roman general still have his admirers? What is Caesarism? An honest reckoning with the Caesarist archetype makes it clear that Caesar arises amid a crisis of authority. The same set of motifs manifest themselves repeatedly: alienation of the population from the political class, economic inequality, willingness to transgress political norms, and the inability to form a stable government.

The BBC’s presenters clearly abhor Caesar. They speak of him with thinly veiled disgust. In marked contrast, they celebrate Cato the Younger. Cato was a Senatorial contemporary of Caesar known as one of the leaders of the anti-Caesar coalition. In the BBC docudrama, he is treated with something bordering on reverence, as a principled and uncompromising defender of Republican traditions and Roman democracy.

In fact, Cato was one of the great obstructers in political history and a major contributor to the final collapse of Roman Republicanism. He adopted a radical policy of non-negotiation and belligerency, and he worked tirelessly to convince the rest of the senatorial class that Caesar was a tyrant in waiting who needed to be stopped at all costs. Cato’s systematic obstructionism was a critical factor in alienating powerful men like Caesar and his erstwhile ally Pompey from the senate and ran deeply against Roman political norms which had long prized negotiation, debate, and compromise. Cato blocked popular legislation and appointments that could have achieved that effect. His willingness to accept dysfunction rather than compromise was an essential catalyst for civil war. The fact that The Making of a Dictator chose to lionize Cato as a tragic hero, making a doomed last stand against Caesarism, is very telling. Rory Stewart supports Cato’s obstructionism, saying “the idea of compromising with Caesar feels emotionally to him as it might for someone in the 1930’s to compromise with Hitler.” The parallels to our own political context could not be more obvious.

And so, we come full circle. Caesar retains a great deal of cachet as a recognizable archetype of the restorative strongman, who emerges amid a crisis of government authority and bureaucratic ineffectuality, reinvigorating the state through personal rule and dynamism. Presenting him as nothing more than a cartoonish supervillain who toppled a stable republic for his own vain ambition serves as an effort to destroy the archetype at its source, delegitimizing the idea of the strongman, and making Caesar a scapegoat for the crumbling of the Roman Republic. It is politically useful, but it is also bad history. It seems odd, perhaps, to be talking about a hitpiece against a man who has been dead for 2,000 years, but that is the enduring allure of Caesar. In times of unrest, he will always be looked for, with equal measures of fear and hope.
 
Goldsworthy's Caesar: Life of a Colossus (2008)
Just finished the book. I was amazed toward the end, how Caesar, using his legendary statecraft, attempted to transform Rome into a system that started resembling STO government. Looking at Putin's Super-Team today, what they are doing. Their expert statecraft. I was amazed with his beginning steps, stages of modifying the State, how Caesar made a striking example, what this planet could be transformed into, but with Putin's long lasting and sober political team. If Caesar had Putin's expert team then in Rome fully supporting and protecting him..

Modern Deep State appears to have diligently copied Rome's system of exploitation and often hijacked elections. Pondering how Rome had its very own Deep State then with the Roman oligarchs' machinations, I even thought that democracy was an old Lizard plant, designed to blossom 2000 years later into the full abomination it is today: a perfect vehicle for sneaky totalitarian control via eternal government. Senate filled with non-elected members. Just like in Rome then. Rewriting Law as they saw fit.

In the previous Caesar book it was very depressing reading about the assassination. The shock was almost the same again. Thankfully Goldsworthy gives us a further chapter and does not end the book in pain. The last chapter gratefully emphasizes Caesars different deeds, how he appeared in later literal works and movies in various forms, where he was a protagonist. Gave me the comforting feeling that Caesar was still alive and he didn't die, since his image survived in many works and his ideals still are revered in the world. That felt so good! Eased my mourning for him. Thank you Adrian Goldsworthy!

So much could be said about the Lizzie mind control - in Rome and around the world then in those times -, which was clearly being reflected in the behavior of nations. Just as Gurdjieff described the cyclical insanity overtaking masses. Popularized massacres in wars in the Roman Era - by the Lizzie mindset permeating nigh everything, sacrifices as if it would be somehow okay just to do those every couple years..

From a military perspective I found it striking that - considering the murderous mindset of those times, Caesar's army essentially functioned as a pirate band. The commander had to be popular and good to his soldiers. Otherwise his subordinates acting very much like pirates took over. That the soldiers, veterans even massacred high ranked officers in Caesar's army, when they tried to stop the then widely accepted rape, loot, massacre of civilians of all ages. How Caesar had to carefully maneuver that mass mindset and how he had to build trust in his soldiers toward him. How that trust was eroding with setbacks, hardships that his army had to endure. What was at stake, when Caesar was walking a fine line and became only victorious with luck and thanks to his incomparable genius.

Rome was clearly a system designed for exploitation for evil purposes. Voting, democratic elements were just a show and basically the entire system was ruthlessly ran by money-hungry oligarchs of the time. Just as the US is being run today.

The Lizzies probably intended Rome to fall, in order to feed on turmoil, as always. But to preserve its evil ideology in coming empires, like the US. Perfect planetary Mass Pain Factory system, to continue into eternity. How they nurtured their little psychopaths among the Roman nobles, planted them into the political system to derail the plans of the good guys.

How Caesar performed political miracles to gradually transform that evil system into good. He was probably deadly tired toward the end, according to Goldsworthy's hypothesis and he shows there is not enough evidence for either way. Still Caesars opinion about his life, future plans and his ultimate decision to not surround himself with a super-hardened detachment of veteran 'Kings Guard' that would have made the assassination impossible to carry out.. reflects a weary mindset and also his STO-like nature shines through: trust in his teammates and subordinates. Which is how an STO-like government should function. Ideally. With absolute trust.

Also I found weird that as his superb powerful genes / DNA activated it probably modified his body, so he developed epilepsy and couldn't sire several strong heirs - inheriting his exceptional mindset and DNA - who would have followed in his footsteps, truly and veritably transforming Rome into a heavenly shining & singing city on a hill.
 
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I was looking into the whole Saint Martin Catholic tradition, he is supposedly responsible for the conversion of Gaul to Christianity. An earlier post I read on this thread (you can still read page 75) mentioned the importance given to a relic of Saint Martin (his cloak) for the Frankish royal families. Than he talked about the “pile of Cinq Mars” and about a megalithic stone in Tours (another city associated with Saint Martin). The pile was first mentioned in the Middle Ages and the late source (but also the FIRST source we have) accredited the monument construction to Julius Caesar. As for the megalithic stone in Tours it is more than 4000 years old and it is in the shape of a woman. In the first century BC (so during Caesar’s lifetime or shortly after his death) the stone was recarved and Roman style clothing was added to it plus possibly hair or an headdress were added too. Interestingly enough she was venerated mostly in “pagan” times but her adoration continued well after the Christianisation of Europe and still today people like to put flowers on her or make marriages photos in front of “her”. It was cut in half by a iconoclastic priest during the 18th century but the angry parishioners saved her from complete destruction and put it back in place after cementing togheter. What was the nature of the veneration 4000+ years ago of course we cannot know but an hint as her role in Roman is that she is commonly referred to as “Caesar Grandmother”.
 
This prompted me to do some research and when I was looking into the origin of this nickname I found some other megaliths in Gaul associated with Caesar: Caesar tumulus, Caesar chair, Caesar armchair (not the same as the previous one), Caesar holy well. I leave a picture of all these sites below. In order they are “Caesar grandmother”, “Caesar chair and armchair” and “Caesar well”. This alone wouldn’t be so impressive if it wasn’t for another thing I discovered while reading about this. It’s about a series of these megalithic sites in Gaul that were found containing vast amounts of Roman artifacts mostly statuettes and pottery. Common to all the sites were a surprisingly high amount of Venus and other mother goddesses statuettes (but overwhelmingly Venus) and gallo roman coins left as offerings. The sites are particular because of their way higher than averege amount of Venus worship and because their connection to the last battle of Caesar against the Veneti (a Gaulish tribe) that also marked the end of the Gallic wars.
The most fascinating thing IMO is the minting year of the coins found togheter with the Statues of Venus as offerings, the dates are very telling. (In the last image you can see the amount of coins found and when they were minted)

Here is an article that goes into more detail
 

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Also I found weird that as his superb powerful genes / DNA activated it probably modified his body, so he developed epilepsy and couldn't sire several strong heirs - inheriting his exceptional mindset and DNA - who would have followed in his footsteps, truly and veritably transforming Rome into a heavenly shining & singing city on a hill.

Caesar didn't have epilepsy. Toward the end, it appears he had a couple of mini-strokes and from these events, the epilepsy rumor began. He knew he was ill.
 
This prompted me to do some research and when I was looking into the origin of this nickname I found some other megaliths in Gaul associated with Caesar: Caesar tumulus, Caesar chair, Caesar armchair (not the same as the previous one), Caesar holy well. I leave a picture of all these sites below. In order they are “Caesar grandmother”, “Caesar chair and armchair” and “Caesar well”. This alone wouldn’t be so impressive if it wasn’t for another thing I discovered while reading about this. It’s about a series of these megalithic sites in Gaul that were found containing vast amounts of Roman artifacts mostly statuettes and pottery. Common to all the sites were a surprisingly high amount of Venus and other mother goddesses statuettes (but overwhelmingly Venus) and gallo roman coins left as offerings. The sites are particular because of their way higher than averege amount of Venus worship and because their connection to the last battle of Caesar against the Veneti (a Gaulish tribe) that also marked the end of the Gallic wars.
The most fascinating thing IMO is the minting year of the coins found togheter with the Statues of Venus as offerings, the dates are very telling. (In the last image you can see the amount of coins found and when they were minted)

Here is an article that goes into more detail
Another detail I forgot to mention about the city of Tours

“The city did not get its name from the French word for tower. Instead, the town is named after Turonus, the nephew of Brutus, the “stepson(?)” of Julius Caesar, who ended up murdering him. Turonus was buried here, and a town was founded on his grave. In the Middle Ages, Tours consisted of two separate towns, one developed on top of the Roman settlement and a separate "new" city to the west called Le Vieux Tours.”

This already is a link to Caesar but even more interestingly:

“Tours became a Roman city in the first century and was known as Caesarodunum, the Hill of Caesar. The Roman city was set to be heavily populated and contained a temple, two aqueducts, and a massive amphitheater. The Roman amphitheater, the remnant of which is still visible, was one of the largest ever discovered. It was a testament to the city's wealth and prosperity.”

 
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