Was Julius Caesar the real Jesus Christ?

[Nienna]

Michael Parenti: The Assassination of Julius Caesar

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IO_Ldn2H4o

Talk by Michael Parenti, author of The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People's History of Ancient Rome given April 5, 1998 in Seattle.

I've seen the first few minutes and think it looks like one to watch, giving us an introductory overview of the Roman political system.

I really liked it. And Michael Parenti did it entertainingly. This is a great introduction to who Caesar really was, who and what the Senate really was, and, as Laura said, the times of Julius Caesar were really like the times are now.

 

[Approaching Infinity]

I stumbled upon the wiki article for Parenti's book last week. It looks interesting:

Chapter Five "Cicero's Witch-hunt"

Parenti argues strongly against the favorable view of Cicero held[citation needed] by most historians. While admitting Cicero's chief fame as an orator, Parenti presents Cicero as a hypocrite, a sycophant, and a devious flatterer as well as noting abuse of power. Often, in his public speeches, Cicero would accept the goals of the populares or praise an opponent while, in private letters, he bitterly complained. In particular, Cicero's prosecution of Catiline for a supposed conspiracy is presented as a witch-hunt and Parenti notes nine suspicious flaws in Cicero's accusations.(p. 107-111) Most seriously, he states that Cicero's self-aggrandizing prosecution led to several executions as well as a military campaign against a legion of impoverished Roman veterans. (p. 93)

Chapter Eight "The Popularis"

Parenti is critical of most of the ancient sources, except for Caesar's writings and those of his supporters.[need quotation to verify] Parenti also says Sulla encouraged the growth of large estates in the Roman countryside (p. 79).

Parenti lists Caesar's measures to relieve poverty; some measures are outright grants to the poor but most are programs to put the plebs to productive work. Also, several measures are taken to curb corruption practices of the wealthy as well as to levy some luxury taxes. Then Parenti turns to debt relief and contrasts "two theories about why people fall deeply in debt."(p. 151)

The first says that persons burdened with high rents, extortionate taxes, and low income are often unable to earn enough or keep enough of what they earn. So they are forced to borrow on their future labor, hoping that things will take a favorable turn. But the interested parties who underpay, overchange, and overtax them today are just as relentless tomorrow. So debtors must borrow more, with an ever larger portion of their eanings going to interest payments ... eventually assumes ruinous proportions, forcing debtors to sell their small holdings and sometimes even themselves or their children into servitude. Such has been the plight of destitude populations through history even to this day. The creditor class is more that [sic] just a dependent variable in all this. Its monopolization of capital and labor markets, its squeeze on prices and wages, its gouging of rents are the very things that create penury and debt.(p. 151-152)

In the second theory, debtors are lazy and free spenders. However, Parenti states this model doesn't apply to the poor but rather to the spoiled children of the upper class:

who live in a grand style, cultivate the magical art of borrowing forever while paying back never, as did Caesar himself during his early career. Such seemingly limitless credit is more apt to be extended to persons of venerable heritage, since their career prospects are considered good. ... They treat fiscal temperance as tantamount to miserliness, and parade their profligacy as a generosity of spirit.(p.152)

In any case, Caesar's debt relief was aimed at "the laboring masses, not the dissolute few."(p. 153)

Also, Parenti states that:

Caesar was the first Roman ruler to grant the city's substantial Jewish population the right to practice Judaism ... That he has consorted with such a marginalized element as the Jewish proletariat must have been taken by the optimates as confirmations of their worst presentiments about his loathsome leveling tendencies.(p.153-154)

Then, Parenti firmly argues against the accusation that Caesar was responsible for the burning of the Library of Alexandria. (See Library of Alexandria for a detailed treatment of this issue.) Instead, Parenti states that the library:

was in fact brought to ruination by a throng of Christ worshipers, lead by the bishop Theophilus in AD 391. This was a time when the ascendant Christian church was shutting down the ancient academies and destroying libraries and books throughout the empire as part of its totalistic war against pagan culture.(p.155)

In an unusual measure, Caesar also proposed a cap on total wealth when:

In 49 BC, he attempted to enforce a law that limited private holdings at 15,000 drachmas in silver or gold, thereby leaving no one in possession of immeasurably large fortunes.(p.164)

 

[Laura]

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.

 

[Cosmos]

Michael Parenti: The Assassination of Julius Caesar

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IO_Ldn2H4o

Talk by Michael Parenti, author of The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People's History of Ancient Rome given April 5, 1998 in Seattle.

I've seen the first few minutes and think it looks like one to watch, giving us an introductory overview of the Roman political system.

I really liked it. And Michael Parenti did it entertainingly. This is a great introduction to who Caesar really was, who and what the Senate really was, and, as Laura said, the times of Julius Caesar were really like the times are now.

I really liked it too!
I think he might also be another good candidate for a future radio show...

 

[Palinurus]

Found this:
Caesarian Conflict: Portrayals of Julius Caesar in narratives of civil war by Jaime Volker
A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
University of Washington 2012

Available as PDF here: _https://digital.lib.washington.edu/researchworks/bitstream/handle/1773/20730/Volker_washington_0250E_10346.pdf?sequence=1

Abstract:

This dissertation investigates the poignancy of civil war for Rome in the late Republican through early Imperial period, as focalized through depictions of Julius Caesar and, to a more limited degree, the Caesar-like Catiline.

My comparative examination of Sallust’s Bellum Catilinae, Velleius Paterculus’ Historiae, and Lucan’s Pharsalia centers on how each author treats qualities and catchwords found in Caesar’s self-portrait in the Bellum Civile.

By reading each portrayal of Caesar against the general’s own account of civil war, I contend that one finds shifts in issues and traits according to their relevance to an author’s own times, aims, and view of the relationship between Republic and Principate.
Moreover, I suggest that whether an author portrays Julius Caesar in a positive or negative light is likely a consequence of his view of the current “Caesar” (i.e. Octavian, Tiberius, or Nero).

Also found this:
Clementia Caesaris: The Creation and Dissemination of a Reputation by Natalie Angel
PhD doctorate thesis University of Sydney 2006/7

Source:
_http://books.google.nl/books/about/Clementia_Caesaris.html?id=kxcvNAAACAAJ&redir_esc=y
_http://ses.library.usyd.edu.au/handle/2123/5429 (Closed Collection, i.e. no access)

No abstract available and no reviews either (to my knowledge). Also unknown on amazon.com

 

[Laura]

Parenti's talk is great! I've ordered his book.

 

[Diane]

Purchased the Gary Courtney book. Will be starting it later tonight.

Any suggestions for books about Mithraism/Mythraism ?
Been checking it out a little...a secret handshake?, called each other "brothers", initiation of being blindfolded...is there any relationship to Masonic Initiation? Connections to apostle Paul? The god coming from the Rock had me thinking of Simon Peter also.

I've only touched on The Gallic Wars Books. Found where Caesar mentions the Gauls and the Druids, and that was interesting. I was diving into the History of the Druids when this thread began. Do you know which book in The Gallic Wars there's mention of Mithra or Mithraism?

Trying to understand why in 577 certain history regarding comets, disasters etc. was moved from the East to the West. What was the purpose there? Not certain, I may have to go over the broadcast again. I probably missed something of great importance there. Any help understanding this better is appreciated. thanks.

 

[Approaching Infinity]

Any suggestions for books about Mithraism/Mythraism ?

Laura has recommended this one in the past: The Origins of the Mithraic Mysteries: Cosmology and Salvation in the Ancient World by David Ulansey (I think she mentioned Ulansey on the radio show).

 

[Thomas Alan]

Parenti's talk is great! I've ordered his book.

It was enlightening for me as well. Now I am starting to get who Caesar really was and why the elite of his time wanted to get rid of him. He had will to put through reforms that would help the people and his nation as a whole and the power to get it done. The oligarchy of the day knew they were cooked if Caesar could make his reforms stick.

I will definitely add Parenti to my reading list and concur that he would make a worthy guest on a SOTT broadcast.

Mac

 

[l apprenti de forgeron]

And maybe what is meant here with "holographic insert" is not a Star-Trek-like technology, but rather a deliberate falsification of history. I imagine that from a "higher perspective" a modeling of mass consciousness via falsification of history could very well look like an actual "holographic insert".

As for the "portal" in the Middle East, if we remove the rather "spacey" tone, isn't it true that some of the most powerful lies about history have to do with the Middle East - Jesus, 9/11, the war on terror, Zionism, Jerusalem etc.? Just some thoughts...

Interesting thoughts. And perhaps that is why these areas with portals are more likely to be hit by comets?.

Thus, a fictional man is created, onto whom all of the positive qualities of the great man are introjected, leaving the memory of the great man himself to contain only the negative, both the real, the exaggerated, and fabricated. Thus two great lies conceal a single great truth.

Mmm, the others has pointed out that the figure of Christ had lots of purposes. But now that you mention this, I think one of those objectives was to make people think in a different way, to make people be always waiting for a savior, and to maybe introduce a black and white thinking, and make people deny their own human deficiencies, and wait for a cuasi-perfect individual, with long perfect hair and beautiful blue eyes, instead of a normal human that can really represent a change for the better. The need to create a non real archetype or model of individual.

This creates situations like the one with Chaves I guess, people see him agressive and angry because he knows what USA wants with his country, he tries to make them back off, and at the same time they put at his side the image of a charming black guy with a nice smile, articulate, white teeth, and called Barack Obama. Just to create this dogmatic thinking, in which if certain person has this traits, he can be trusted. Maybe the reason of why so many psychopaths are successful at churches and at those parts, is so easy to know what people that go there want, all they need to is to do what others there do, try to mimic Jesus' behavior.

I was thinking something very similar after writing my previous post, but you've exposed a lot more clearer. You can say the same about Chavez, Arafat and many others. Like Aaron Swartz, the activist that ptb not allowed to grow because it could be really dangerous, as all that privilege information to flow on its own security.

Thanks for the session, this is what I'm talking about. The corruption of ideals and basically, creating worse assumptions than those people already had at that time. If cs are talking about Julius, maybe he faced something we face these days, that people lack faith not to god, but they lack faith for their own potential, or maybe that people lack faith for knowledge and long steady hard work.

The cs' mentioned Jesus was Socrates in another reincarnation, sounds like very advanced soul for me. But if the image of Jesus was based on several individuals, they may be referring to another person too. A last question may be, do you think that Caesar or that soul, is related to that Christ the cs' said will appear after certain events?

Very interesting and surely all we who follow the sessions ask the same. All this seems very complex but I think sooner or later the truth will come to light.

 

[Palinurus]

As a side note, too curious to skip over: I discovered once more that history has a habit of repeating itself -- the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce, as Karl Marx put it in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon. This year (May 6 2013) another Divo Giulio died in Italy aged 94: Giulio Andreotti -- a long serving Christian Democrat politician.

From the obituary in the Guardian:

Giulio Andreotti, who has died aged 94, was the ultimate insider of Italian political life. For half a century he was at the heart of power. His tenure at the highest echelons of government was unequalled in Europe. From the early 1960s to the early 90s, he was – almost uninterruptedly – either prime minister or a senior minister. Andreotti was in all but six of the 45 governments that ran from May 1947 to April 1992, led seven of them and, at various times, was the minister of defence, foreign affairs (five times), finance, treasury, and interior. He held the post of prime minister for longer than any other postwar Italian politician except Silvio Berlusconi, yet he never led the Christian Democratic party.

His tenacity in remaining at the centre of affairs became a source of fascination in itself. Just as Julius Caesar had become Divo Giulio, the god Julius, so the makers of the 2008 film Il Divo, a biopic about Andreotti, attributed to the infinitely pragmatic modern Giulio seemingly mesmeric powers all the more striking for his superficial drabness.

Andreotti was the most controversial figure in the political life of what came to be known as Italy's First Republic (from 1946 to the political and constitutional turmoil of 1992-94). As a senior Christian Democrat, he played a leading part in all significant political watersheds while never taking a major political initiative. Few of Italy's contentious issues left him untainted, from those surrounding the construction of Rome's Fiumicino airport, which opened in 1961; to the murky banking scandals of Roberto Calvi, found hanging under Blackfriars bridge, London, in June 1982; and Michele Sindona, found poisoned in his cell in 1986 while serving a life sentence for murder.

Magistrates asked parliament 27 times for permission to investigate Andreotti, and 27 times parliament rejected the request. Yet he was never directly implicated, let alone indicted, in the most significant of them all, the mother of all scandals, the great Tangentopoli ("bribesville") affair of the 1990s that brought down the Christian Democratic party along with the other four parties that made up almost all the governments of the First Republic. Andreotti's personality and, above all, his innermost political convictions, remained shrouded in mystery – an extraordinary achievement for someone so frequently in the public eye, so often investigated by the press and magistrates, so often interviewed, and so prolific a writer.

This most powerful of men lived modestly with his wife, Livia, whom he had married in 1945, and with whom he had two sons and two daughters. Andreotti, who had interceded on behalf of endless supplicants like a true padrino (godfather), did not use his power to pursue personal wealth or to enhance the prospects of his closest relatives.
[...]

Sources:
_http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Eighteenth_Brumaire_of_Louis_Napoleon
_http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giulio_Andreotti
_http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/may/06/giulio-andreotti-prime-minister
_http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Il_Divo_%28film%29
_http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1023490/
_http://www.ildivomovie.com/

Sorry to go slightly off topic. Couldn't resist

 

[Alana]

I've only touched on The Gallic Wars Books. Found where Caesar mentions the Gauls and the Druids, and that was interesting.

Those parts were among the ones I found the most interesting in his first book, his descriptions of the peoples and places (and some of the unusual German animals). And in view of listening to Parenti's talk this morning (which was fascinating!), I was reminded how Caesar, as a historian who was observing/learning and writing down about all these different people, with their bad and the good attributes, he was quite respectful considering that they were his enemies/those "evil others" of different cultural, religious, ethnic background. Compare with the wars today, and the evilization of Muslims by the war generals and the PTB, the brainwashing propaganda. Compare to the excerpts by Cicero which Parenti quoted in his talk, when describing the Jews and the Greeks of Rome at that time.

 

[Sol Logos]

Purchased the Gary Courtney book. Will be starting it later tonight.
Any suggestions for books about Mithraism/Mythraism ?
Been checking it out a little...a secret handshake?, called each other "brothers", initiation of being blindfolded...is there any relationship to Masonic Initiation? Connections to apostle Paul? The god coming from the Rock had me thinking of Simon Peter also.

According to Frank O Collins, St Paul, (who could be I reckon another person who assumed that identity) was one of the main perpetrators of twisting the early Gnostic Christianity. He was said to have received support from followers of Mithra and injected a lot of Mithranism into the early Christian Gnostic message to the point that it was more or less a form of Mithranism.

A bunch of that is written on this page (link below). It's difficult to find the sources of what Frank claims. I find a lot of his work of interest in terms of a perspective on history that's somewhat different. Stuff like this I haven't been able to cross-reference with other material as yet though.
_http://one-evil.org/content/almanac_evil_0010.html

(edit: clarity)

 

[Diane]

Laura has recommended this one in the past: The Origins of the Mithraic Mysteries: Cosmology and Salvation in the Ancient World by David Ulansey (I think she mentioned Ulansey on the radio show).

Just bought the paperback, thank you! I was looking at a few of different ones, and wasn't certain. Thought it best to ask here.

Those parts were among the ones I found the most interesting in his first book, his descriptions of the peoples and places (and some of the unusual German animals). And in view of listening to Parenti's talk this morning (which was fascinating!), I was reminded how Caesar, as a historian who was observing/learning and writing down about all these different people, with their bad and the good attributes, he was quite respectful considering that they were his enemies/those "evil others" of different cultural, religious, ethnic background. Compare with the wars today, and the evilization of Muslims by the war generals and the PTB, the brainwashing propaganda. Compare to the excerpts by Cicero which Parenti quoted in his talk, when describing the Jews and the Greeks of Rome at that time.

I'm enjoying the Gallic Wars. His observations of cultures, people and nature are amazing. I never knew there was such a wealth of info there. I'm still on my quest for the reasons for both the first and second "Falls", fallen angels, and fall of man. Not finding much about it in the Druids as of yet, but I'm learning a lot, and that's important. I'm going to sidetrack off into Mithraism and Caesar for now. Far too fascinating not to. Never know...maybe I can find something that can get me closer to the answers I search for.

I'm very fortunate that I was mentally prepared for the information about Caesar. Got over it not too long ago actually. I'd never really thought of Caesar. But losing the "Jesus" illusion can be very difficult. For me it was like going through someone close to you dying. I went through the stages of grief. At first I denied, then I got angry, (very angry that the world and I had been lied to), then I thought the story was based on someone else, then depressed, and then came to accept it, and then just moved on. So it's all good, it was based on someone else. I do think about all the moving passages and verses attributed to Jesus....now I wonder if Caesar said those, or if they snatched them from someone else too, if so exactly who if anyone at all? Another mission for truth seeking I suppose.

PS-Just noticed Alkhemst post as I was going to post...Thank you! I'll be on that link first think in the am. St Paul is popping up a lot lately for me. I'm finding where St. Paul was doing a lot of twisting. I'm betting right now that there's a good link between Mithraism and Druidism. Oak leaves, crosses, makes me think. It could all be related, or not at all. Early Christianity appears in Europe before the time of Christ...maybe that was Mithraism. Looking that way, but I'm not sure. thanks again.

 

[Laura]

I'm enjoying the Gallic Wars. His observations of cultures, people and nature are amazing. I never knew there was such a wealth of info there. I'm still on my quest for the reasons for both the first and second "Falls", fallen angels, and fall of man. Not finding much about it in the Druids as of yet, but I'm learning a lot, and that's important. I'm going to sidetrack off into Mithraism and Caesar for now. Far too fascinating not to. Never know...maybe I can find something that can get me closer to the answers I search for.

Sounds to me like the answers you are searching for are the fraudulent answers that were provided AFTERward by Alexandrian syncretism. If you haven't read HoM, do so. There you will learn about the real "fallen angels".