The Carotta Code Cracked

It seems that someone at Francesco Carotta's "Divine Julius" web site took offence at my recent book review. The extensive "rebuttal" is unsigned but carries the tag "Francesco Carotta". So, has the great man deigned to defend his dodgy theory?

A reasoned rebuttal?

Actually, he seems to be more interested in discrediting my review. "We can notice lots of errors, patterns of bias," he writes. My supposed bias is mentioned more than once. (How can a grumpy old emperor be biased?) As for rebutting my review? According to Signor Carotta, a.k.a. Divine Julius, "That shouldn't be too hard".

In time-honored fashion, his first move is to discredit my blog. I am, he suggests, "too senile to notice" important pieces of evidence. (That's rich! Divine Julius calling Antoninus Pius senile!)

He claims that the title of my post "is misleading". (Really? How so? I thought it summed up the debate perfectly.) "Nowhere has Carotta made a case for the same-initials-argument JC=JC", he writes ... as if anyone seriously believed that there was any significance in the initials J.C. (By the way: notice that, like Caesar, he grandly refers to himself in the third person.) Of course, I never suggested that this was part of Signor Carotta's theory. (Mehercle! There's already enough bunkum without adding more!) This is a spurious "rebuttal", but it serves Carotta's purpose: to undermine my credibility.

So, let us examine the responses from C.D.J. (shorthand for Carotta's Divine Julius mouthpiece), point by point.

1. Support for Carotta

C.D.J. claims that I was wrong to say that there has been no serious endorsement of Carotta's theory. This is false. I still haven't seen his book reviewed in any academic journal. However, amongst his alleged enthusiasts, Signor Carotta names ex-London Times editor Sir Peter Stothard, on the basis of this cryptic comment. Other "authorities" are quoted piecemeal and out-of-context; there seems to be no point-by-point discussion. Furthermore, the damning charge of "sweeping and often superficial" is quoted as a compliment! Eheu! I'd go along with Professor Mary Beard's assessment of Carotta's "eccentric website". But we are being side-tracked. (Another of Carotta's ploys?) Let us return to The Carotta Code.

2. Julius Caesar was chrêstos

Signor Carotta's entire theory relies upon the proof of this allegation: that Julius Caesar was known as chrêstos, a Greek word which means "morally good" or "worthy". Obviously, Signor Carotta could not cite any official documentation naming Caesar as chrêstos, because none exists. However, C.D.J. claims that there is a source, "an important one at that". This is false. The ancient writer Plutarch says that Pompey claimed, on one occasion, that Caesar was "considerate and worthy" (Plut., Pomp. 75.2: eugnômona kai chrêston).

"For Caesar the word fit perfectly, because he was 'good': proven by his much acclaimed clemency", writes Carotta. Before we get too carried away with this coincidence, we should note that Caesar was not the only one whom Plutarch called chrêstos. Earlier in the same book, Plutarch calls Caecilius Metellus chrêstos (Pomp. 19.5). Suddenly, Caesar isn't looking so special after all. Indeed, even Alexander the Great is said to have been chrêstos (Alex. 30.3). Was he, perhaps, the Messiah? (After all, he, too, came from a northern land and crossed a fateful river. But we are getting ahead of ourselves.) Carotta implies that Caesar was specially singled out as chrêstos, but this is false.

3. Julius Caesar was Christos

Having decided that Plutarch's use of the word chrêstos is somehow significant -- we've seen that it isn't --, Signor Carotta searches around for some way to convert it into Christos, so that Julius Caesar can become Jesus Christ.

Signor Carotta claims that Caesar's statues ordinarily carried an inscription which could easily be misconstrued as reading Christos. This is false. There is a single inscription on which one of Caesar's titles (amongst the many listed there) is archiereus megistos. Signor Carotta claims that "Christos looks like a contraction of archiereus megistos". This is false. By no stretch of the imagination could anyone, seeing the words archiereus megistos, skip over most of the letters to read the word christos.

Remember that this is the bedrock of Signor Carotta's theory. This is his one link between Julius Caesar and Jesus Christ. This is the single brick on which his entire teetering edifice is balanced. Once we realise that this link is false, the entire theory comes crashing down. If only Signor Carotta could show that, in antiquity, Caesar was particularly known as chrêstos ... but he can't. If only he could show that Caesar's statues carried an inscription that onlookers could easily mistake for the title Christos ... but he can't. So his entire theory loses its focus.

4. Carotta's Secret Code

For the rest of Signor Carotta's theory, we are deep in Dan Brown territory (except that Carotta doesn't write nearly as entertainingly). He claims that the Gospel of Saint Mark -- it has to be this one Gospel, as his theory doesn't fit the others -- is a secret code for the Life of Julius Caesar.

C.D.J. realises that I have undermined his theory, so he continues to slander my blog: I am "not only oblivious, but also unaware of my own blunder". Silently by-passing the problem -- the massive problem -- that Caesar was not specially known as chrêstos (the same word is used to describe other men), and that Caesar's inscriptions do not carry the code-word Christos, C.D.J. focuses attention on Caesar's statues.

Signor Carotta claims that a bust of Caesar (i.e. a head and shoulders, with the body missing) in the Museo Torlonia was his death mask, designed "to awaken feelings of both pity and revenge". It is worth noting that one Caesar expert thinks that the Torlonia bust is not Caesar, while another thinks that it is Caesar. (Carotta naturally favors the latter.) In fact, he claims that the lost statue belonging to this bust (which, let us remember, may not even depict Caesar) "may have had the appearance of a pietà, before which, if it were positioned in a church each little old lady would make the sign of the cross". This emotive language is clearly designed to evoke images of Christ's pietà familiar from Renaissance art, for these are the very statues "before which each little old lady would make the sign of the cross".

However, Signor Carotta knows that he has been rumbled. The cracks are starting to open, and his theory is crumbling. He cannot answer my criticism, so -- again -- he tries to discredit my blog. Apparently, I suffer from "a notorious illness of English native speakers, who seldom know foreign languages". Ouch! "A virgin Mary", he scoffs, "is not required to have a pietà in the original sense of the word". But his argument clearly relies upon a parallel between the death sculpture of Caesar -- remember, not all scholars are convinced that this is Caesar -- and the well-known Renaissance death sculptures of Jesus Christ.

5. Preposterous parallels

Finally, we arrive at Signor Carotta's preposterous (there is really no other word to describe it) list of parallels between the Gospel accounts of Jesus Christ and the life of Julius Caesar.

C.D.J. singles out one of these parallels: Carotta claims that Pompey's head was presented to Caesar in a bowl, "exactly what the Gospels tell us happened to John the Baptist". However, belatedly realizing that he cannot support this claim, he now recants, questioning whether this really was "exactly what the Gospels tell us happened to John the Baptist". But Carotta said there was an exact parallel between the beheading of Pompey and the beheading of John the Baptist. This is false.

Shaken by this revelation, C.D.J. begins to bluster. First, he decides that it's not important how the decapitated heads were presented. Then, he concocts a different parallel: perhaps both heads were presented on a plank. (A plank?!) "Easy as 1 2 3", he concludes glibly. This is false. The lesson to be drawn is that, when we find fault with one of Signor Carotta's arguments -- and, believe me, it's not difficult! -- another argument sprouts up, even more convoluted than the last one.

6. Which Brutus?

Breathing a sigh of relief that he has extricated himself so nimbly from problem number 5 -- remember, we have forced Carotta to recant on one of his preposterous claims -- he bounces back with more slander: apparently, I am "too senile to notice" the difference between Marcus Junius Brutus and Decimus Junius Brutus. This is false. Perhaps another of C.D.J.'s ploys to ridicule my blog. Signor Carotta clearly draws a parallel between Judas (as betrayer of Jesus Christ) and Decimus Junius Brutus, even though it was Marcus Junius Brutus (a completely different individual) who "betrayed" Caesar.

The point is a minor one. I mentioned it amongst many other errors. But C.D.J. chose to focus attention on it. Bad idea.

7. Dirty tricks

Signor Carotta must, by now, feel like a punch-drunk boxer who is on the ropes. Desperate measures are required. He plays the "smear" card. Apparently, my objection to his suggested transmogrification of Jerusalem into Rome "is clearly a smear". (C.D.J. does not explain how I have "smeared" him, so the allegation is left hanging to further discredit my blog.) But how can the mere quoting of an argument constitute a reputation-damaging exercise?

8. Diegetic transposition!

In a bizarre twist, C.D.J. next objects that I "failed to observe that Jesus did not cross the Jordan". Wait! I think a direct quotation from Signor Carotta is called for:

Both have to cross a fateful river: the Rubicon and the Jordan. Once across the rivers, they both come across a patron/rival.

C.D.J. sweeps another uncomfortable blunder under the rug. "It would be important to ask why the crossing of those boundary rivers is mentioned neither in the Gospel nor in the Bellum Civile", he claims. Important for Carotta, maybe. Remember, it's his preposterous theory that we're discussing. But we've seen already that uncomfortable criticism is deflected by attempting to discredit my blog.

True to form, C.D.J. claims that I am "not interested in relevant questions". This is false. I'm very interested in relevant questions, such as how the sour wine offered to Jesus on the cross could be a secret coded reference to Caesar's funeral pyre. No explanation is given. (No explanation is possible.) Or how Caesar's funeral could be a parallel for Christ's crucifixion at all!

Regarding the latter question, C.D.J. informs us that "the story of Caesar’s funeral was rewritten to form the Gospel account, and it fits into the requirements of a diegetic transposition, of a translation and adaptation of Caesar’s legend from Rome to Jerusalem, from Gallia to Galilaea." See? Easy as 1 2 3, to quote Il signore.

9. Brain teaser, or head-ache?

C.D.J. next addresses my criticism of Signor Carotta's equation of Golgotha (where Jesus was crucified) with the Capitol at Rome (where Caesar was assassinated). Remember, this was another of his ingenious word games, where "the place of the skull" is shown to be a secret coded reference to the Capitol at Rome. "In the mind of the Romans," claims C.D.J., "the Capitol was “the place of the skull of Olus”. This is a fact, and it is sufficient for explaining the translation of Capitol as Golgotha, which also means “place of the skull”."

That is a very ingenious secret code, that creates word-play between a Latin word (capitolium) and a Greek phrase (kraniou topos), and then converts it into Aramaic Golgotha. But this is false, because it doesn't really work. In order to "break the code", the reader must (1) know that the Capitol is really the caput (skull) olii (of Olius, the legendary character whose head was supposedly buried there), (2) change olii back to olium and transfer the t from caput onto the beginning to make tolium; (3) read the word as if it were written in Greek letters, mis-reading the central li as the Greek pi, to give TOPUM, (4) change the made-up "Greek" word TOPUM into the real word topos ("place"), (5) change caput from the nominative to the genitive case, capitis, and (6) translate capitis into Greek (kraniou). Presto! We get the Gospel kraniou topos. Eventually. (But Saint Mark says that the place was called Golgotha.)

10. No crucifixion, after all

Signor Carotta goes to great lengths to try and persuade us that, at Caesar's funeral, a wax effigy of the dictator was nailed upright to a cross. This is false. No ancient text describes this.

At the same time, he denies that Jesus Christ was crucified, preferring to adopt the alternative meaning of the Greek verb stauroô, "to fence in". (The root is the word stauros, which is an upright stake used, on the one hand, for crucifixion or, in a different context, for building a fence.) But Signor Carotta does not waste time on linguistic analysis. He brusquely dismisses the (perfectly acceptable) meaning "to crucify". (I'm still not sure how this qualifies as a parallel, if Caesar's effigy was crucified, but Jesus Christ wasn't.)

However, rather than argue the case, C.D.J. -- as on so many previous occasions -- prefers to resort to slander: apparently, I "not only cannot read, including the primary sources, but cannot think straight either"! Don't try to find any logic in this peculiar insult, because there is none.

11. The fishermen have been tossed

There is, of course, more discrediting and belittling of my blog: apparently, I "often ... skip all details and only recount Carotta’s arguments superficially, surely to make them sound like nonsense". No comment. But what has caused this particular outburst? Namely, my incredulity that Caesar's famous "The die is cast!" could be secretly encoded in a saying of Jesus Christ. The saying that Signor Carotta selected was the famous "I will make you fishers of men".

Admittedly, I "chose not to tell my readers that Caesar’s alea (“dice”) at the Rubicon was misinterpreted as aleeis (“fishers”), and consequently we have the fishermen casting [their nets] into the water", because (quite frankly) that explanation seemed too ridiculous. Perhaps if the word meant "fishing net", there would be some logic. But it doesn't. And there isn't.

(C.D.J. chooses not to engage with my other complaints, such as the continued parallel between Pompey and John the Baptist simply because there is a "shoe story" associated with both individuals.)

12. The final flourish

C.D.J. generously explains the key to Signor Carotta's theory for the benefit of my feeble mind:

the people, who considered Caesar a righteous man, did not accept his assassination, and they “believed” he was elevated to heaven, placed among the immortals. And because he was now an immortal, his story—like the legends or myths of other immortals, for example Zeus and Dionysus—could be transferred into any other place, retold and rewritten. That is the reason why we have so many versions of Christ’s (i.e. Caesar’s) story, canonical and apocryphal, originating from so many different (but all formerly Roman) cultures, giving him different names. Carotta has shown how it all happened.

No, he hasn't. He has started from a false assertion (see numbers 2 and 3, above) and has added a false assumption (see number 4, above) to create a supposedly scientific link between Julius Caesar and Jesus Christ. (He may as well have gone for the same-initials argument, which he so deplores.) Having manufactured this link, he appends a list of supposed parallels, each more preposterous than the last. When he is challenged, he recants and manufactures a new argument (see number 5, above). Some of his evidence is muddled and mistaken (see number 9, above); some of it is simply false (see numbers 6 and 8, above). Rather than defend his theory with reasoned argumentation, his blog (C.D.J.) chooses to ridicule and belittle his critics (see numbers 7, 10 and 11, above).

C.D.J. ends as he began, with more slander: "We could continue to dissect and debunk the rest of his [i.e. my] feeble arguments as well, but it would only be a waste of time." I would venture to suggest that Signor Carotta doesn't have the stomach "to dissect and debunk" any further. With the removal of the keystone (see numbers 2 and 3, above), he is probably busy trying to prop up his collapsing theory.

Jesus Christ and Julius Caesar: same initials, same man?

It is a new year, and high time we had a book review. It has been several months since I linked the names of Jesus Christ and Julius Caesar (here) but, in the meantime, I have come across a much more sensational connection between these two people.

Sensational Theory

It seems that, for several years now, the left-wing Italian philosopher and ancient history aficionado Francesco Carotta has been promoting his bizarre theory that Jesus was Caesar. (Oddly, in the original Continental versions, the title is phrased as a question: "War Jesus Caesar?" or "Jésus, est-il Divus Julius?")

Signor Carotta's theory seems to be that the Gospel of Saint Mark is a coded retelling of Caesar's life, in which the character of Jesus represents the divine Julius himself. Bizarre? You bet!

His publicity breathlessly announces: "Carotta's new evidence leads to such an overwhelming amount of similarities between the biography of Caesar and the story of Jesus that coincidence can be ruled out." However, so trivial and contrived are these alleged similarities that it is no wonder that no serious reviews have ever appeared, and no recognized authority, whether theologian, historian or philosopher, has yet engaged with Signor Carotta. Here, readers may amuse themselves by deciding for themselves: "Was Jesus Caesar?"

I. Prima Vista.

Signor Carotta's entire theory springs from one unfortunate misconception: the claim that Julius Caesar was known as chrêstos ("worthy"), a word that could have been misconstrued (he argues) as Christos, "Christ". As proof, he first claims that inscriptions of Julius Caesar name him as archiereus megistos, which he interprets as the Greek equivalent of pontifex maximus (Caesar's official religious title as "high priest"). Then, although he does not (cannot?) cite any source that actually calls Julius Caesar "chrêstos" (if Signor Carotta knows of any, why does he not cite them?), he claims that it "looks like a contraction of archiereus megistos", by missing out several letters.

Clearly, this foundation of his theory depends entirely upon Julius Caesar holding the title archiereus megistos, so that it can first be contracted (why?) into chrêstos, and then misconstrued as Christos, "Christ".

Unfortunate Blunder

Unfortunately for Signor Carotta, the overwhelming majority of Caesar's inscriptions name him as archierea kai autokratora (the equivalent of pontifex maximus et imperator) or archierea hypaton (i.e. pontifex maximus, consul) or archierea hypaton kai diktatora (i.e. pontifex maximus, consul et dictator), and only a single inscription is known to name him as archiereus megistos (probably because the megistos element is tautological: archiereus already means pontifex maximus without the addition of the Greek adjective megistos = maximus).

Undeterred, -- indeed, oblivious to his blunder -- Signor Carotta continues with supplementary claims: (1) that Christos resembles pontifex maximus because both can be abbreviated to two letters (i.e. PM, and the Christian Chi-Rho symbol); and (2) that PM looks a little like the Chi-Rho if you invert the letters! Frankly, this sounds a little desperate.

His conclusion, that Caesar's statues "not only looked like a pietà, but the inscription on the base also evoked the Christ", is patently ridiculous: none of the statues survive, so it is only Signor Carotta's opinion that they would have resembled a Renaissance pietà (don't you require a Virgin Mary to make a pietà, in any case?), and none of the inscriptions (some two dozen are known, I believe) "evoke the Christ". Nevertheless, this is Sig. Carotta's springboard "to place Caesar's history and the Gospel (sic, presumably Mark's Gospel) side by side and see if further resemblances (sic) occur".

II. Vitae Parallelae

Signor Carotta claims that "new ground is being broken". Readers can make up their own minds, as I list each of Sig. Carotta's astonishing (astonishingly trivial) similarities.

• Both Caesar and Jesus begin their careers in northern countries beginning with G: Gallia and Galilee.
• Both have to cross a fateful river: the Rubicon and the Jordan.
• Both meet a patron/rival: Pompey and John the Baptist, and their first followers: Antony and Curio, and Peter and Andrew.
• Both are continually on the move, finally arriving at a capital city: Rome and Jerusalem.
• Both at first triumph, but then undergo their passion.
• Both have a special relationship with a woman: Cleopatra and Mary Magdalene.
• Both have encounters at night with "N of B": Caesar with Nicomedes of Bithynia, Jesus with Nicodemus of Bethany.
• Both run afoul of the authorities: Caesar with the Senate, Jesus with the Sanhedrin.
• Both are contentious characters, but show praiseworthy clemency as well.
• Both have a traitor: Brutus and Judas, or Brutus and Barabbas, or Lepidus and Pilate. (Carotta can't quite decide on this one.)
• Both have famous sayings: Caesar's famous "Veni, vidi, vici", Jesus' "I came, washed and saw" (according to Carotta).
• Both are accused of making themselves kings: King of the Romans and King of the Jews.
• Both get killed: Caesar is stabbed with daggers, Jesus is stabbed in his side.
• Both hang on crosses. (Yes, Carotta has an astonishing theory on this.)

It's probably worth just giving a flavor of Carotta's standard of scholarship here: (1) he claims that Pompey's head was presented to Caesar in a bowl (as far as I can see, no ancient source specifies a bowl), "exactly what the Gospels tell us happened to John the Baptist"; (2) he tries to equate Caesar's Lepidus with Pontius Pilate by "syllabic metathesis" so that the name Lepidus mysteriously becomes Pilatus; (3) he claims that both Barabbas and Judas are equivalent to the traitor Decimus Iunius Brutus ("et tu, Brute"), without realising that he has the wrong Brutus; (4) he claims that Jerusalem is code for Rome, because "the other variant of the name (H)ierosolyma, even contains the letters of Roma in sequence: (H)ieROsolyMA"!

III. Crux.

Carotta claims that "We have shown some similarities and parallels between Caesar and Jesus". That's true, though they are all trivial (e.g. both crossed a river) and many are mistaken (e.g. a supposed parallel between Marius and Lazarus as an "uncle" figure). Carotta is so unaware of the fragility of his theory that he sees only one stumbling-block: "Caesar was stabbed and Jesus crucified".

Nevertheless, he claims that a "structural correspondence is plain to see" in the sequence: conspiracy, capture, trial, crucifixion, burial, resurrection. And in order to make this sequence fit both men, he claims that Jesus was actually killed during his capture, and that both he and Caesar were paraded on a cross after their death. This kind of nonsense is surely easy meat for theologians. But let's have a go from the historical perspective.

Jesus' Funeral Pyre

Carotta reinterprets the entire crucifixion as "the erection of a funeral pyre and the ritual deposit of gifts for the dead". Amongst his hotch-potch of evidence, he suggests that the biblical "myrrh" is a linguistic mistake for "(funeral) pyre", and the sour wine is a misinterpretation of the "quickly assembled stakes" (of the funeral pyre? Carotta does not explain this point). He clearly has Plutarch's description of Caesar's funeral pyre in mind, rather than an honest attempt to interpret the Gospel accounts. "It is easy to detect that the passage from Mark is an abridgement of Caesar's funeral". Yes, it's easy when you completely and totally misinterpret it! "No word has been taken away or added", he claims. No, not much! Just a complete rewriting of the Gospel account to fit the story of Caesar's funeral!

Golgotha ("the place of the skull") is equated with the Capitol at Rome, because "the Romans derived Capitolium from caput", the Latin for head. He claims that Mark calls the place Kraniou Topos, which can be altered, "Capi > Kraniou; tolium > Topos", to read Capitolium. (But Mark explains that the place was called Golgotha, so shouldn't Carotta be employing his ingenuity to find some parallel between Golgotha and Capitolium?)

Christ's Tropaeum

Carotta describes Caesar's funeral procession, as a parallel to the Passion of Christ, concentrating on the wax figure of the dead dictator "dressed in his triumphal robes". (Appian, BC 2.147 refers to a wax effigy on which the 23 wounds could be seen, but Suetonius, Div. Jul. 84, mentions only the funerary couch "and, at its head, a tropaeum with the clothing in which he had been killed".) Carotta combines the two descriptions, claiming that the effigy must have been attached to a cross "not only because on a tropaeum the arms could only be fastened like that [but Appian doesn't say that the effigy was on the tropaeum] but because somebody who falls down dead stretches out his arms and because Caesar's body had been seen like that when three servants carried him home with the arms hanging out of the litter on both sides" (the latter is apparently a reference to FGrH 26.97, which I have not seen).

However, if (as Carotta claims) the wax effigy required a wooden core ("they were actually wooden figures with a wax outer-layer"), surely it could adopt any position? Carotta again links the effigy with the tropaeum (two separate items in the story) when he claims that "the most functional and direct way to fasten such a wooden figure coated with wax to a tropaeum would involve nails through the hands" -- of course, this is patently false: there are all sorts of ways to fix a wooden mannequin to a supporting structure, if you decide to do so.

Carotta appeals to the late antique "atypical and unnatural representation of Christ standing on the cross" as proof that such artworks were depicting "the expositio of a stabbed one lying on the floor who was only erected that all could see him". (The reason surely has more to do with artistic limitations in late antiquity.)

IV. Words And Wonders

When Carotta claims that "we determined that Jesus was not crucified, and that a cross had indeed played the main role ... during the cremation of Caesar", he has deluded himself on both counts. There is much more in similar vein.

Caesar's siege of the Pompeians in Corfinium is supposed to be encoded as Jesus' exorcism of the demon called Legion: the giveaway, besides the obvious mention of a Roman "legion" (!), is the fact that both men crossed over: Caesar crossed the Rubicon; Jesus crossed the Sea of Galilee. Jesus walking on water is Caesar crossing from Brundisium. A servant-less Pompey, obliged to take off his own shoes, is John the Baptist claiming to be unworthy of loosening Christ's sandals. Caesar's famous saying, Alea iacta est! ("The die is cast") is paralleled by the Galilee fishermen "casting" their nets. (Yes, Carotta really does employ such facile arguments.) Caesar's visit to Zela is encoded as Jesus visiting Siloam, because "Zela > Siloah is almost the exact same pronunciation"!

It is rather depressing that Carotta is satisfied with such threadbare evidence: "Our question as to whether or not the Gospel is based on an original Caesar source has been answered positively by successfully verifying our suppositions." Clearly, Carotta is no historian.

Finally, if you have managed to read this far, you will be amused to learn that the "fact" that Julius Caesar was historical, but that some scholars dispute the historicity of Jesus, proves that they were one and the same man.

"It must be recognized that the two figures are complementary and that it is only when they are combined that they provide the complete person of a God incarnate", writes Carotta. "Caesar is a historical figure who as a god has vanished without leaving a trace. Jesus, on the other hand, is a god whose historical figure cannot be found."

And all of this nonsense because Caesar was chrêstos. (Or was he?)

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Now read the continuing saga: The Carotta Code Cracked | The Parrot Replies | Three strikes, and Carotta is out!

Christ Illustrated

It is Christmas time, a season that calls for a religious blog post. Fortuitously, I recently discovered the magisterial La Vie de Notre-Seigneur Jésus-Christ ("The Life of Our Lord Jesus Christ") by Jacques (James) Tissot, which is suitably biblical.

The French painter Tissot (1836-1902) had a fairly conventional artistic career, until his support for the Paris Commune forced him to flee to London, where he lived and worked for ten years. Some years after his return to Paris in 1882, he experienced a spiritual conversion during a visit to the Church of Saint-Sulpice, which led him to devote the remainder of his life to religious painting.

Religious Revival

By chance, the nineteenth century had seen the birth of the pictorial Bible, along with related works such as the Landscape Illustrations of the Bible (published by John Murray in 1836). The German artist Julius Schnorr was an early exponent of the genre. Alongside this new trend came a revival in religious painting, by artists such as Ford Madox Brown, William Dyce (more famous for his Arthurian scenes), and particularly William Holman Hunt (famous for his 1860 painting of The Finding of the Saviour in the Temple). At roughly the same time, Tissot's countryman Gustav Doré had great success when the publication of a Bible illustrated with 228 of his engravings led to a London exhibition which ran almost continuously throughout 1868-9, closing only on Sundays.

Travelling In The Footsteps

Like Holman Hunt, who had travelled in Egypt and Palestine in order "to make more tangible Jesus Christ's History and Teaching", Tissot headed east. (However, unlike Hunt, he does not appear to have experienced any street scuffles or colourful scenes in brothels.) Between 1886 and 1889, he made studies for an ambitious series of paintings that became La Vie de Notre-Seigneur Jésus-Christ.

Completed in 1894, the 365 paintings were exhibited in Paris (1894-5), London (1896) and New York (1898-9), before being purchased by the Brooklyn Museum in 1900.

Tissot's scenes have been influential, as (for example) the inspiration for D. W. Griffith's cinematic biblical epic of 1916, and doubtless many of its successors. I'm sure we can still see Tissot's influence in the biblical epics of today.

Counting Down from Marathon

On November 13, long distance runners from all over the world converged on Athens for the 29th Athens Classic Marathon. This old arithmetically-challenged emperor assumed that it was organized to celebrate the 2,500th anniversary (25th centenary) of the Battle of Marathon, fought in 490 BC. However, the official logo of the Association of International Marathons and Distance Races (pictured here) makes it clear that they considered 2010 to be the centenary. So who's correct?

An Ancient Event

It used to be thought that the Battle of Marathon was fought in 491 BC. That date can be found in the Cambridge Ancient History (original edition) volume 4 (1926) by J.A.R. Munro, although others had long championed 490 BC.

It was well known that ten years had separated the two Persian invasions of Greece. The Greek victory over Xerxes at Salamis, ending the second Persian attempt, occurred in 480 BC, but some scholars clung to the view that, because Xerxes had actually set out from Susa in 481 BC, counting back 10 years gave 491 BC for Marathon.

(Thucydides may have contributed to the confusion when he wrote that the Battle of Marathon occurred ten years after the expulsion of the tyrant Hippias from Athens, which had occurred in 511/0 BC. Confusingly, the Attic calendar ran from summer to summer, so that, technically speaking, the tenth anniversary of the expulsion of Hippias spanned 491 and 490 BC. However, it is known that Phainippos, the Athenian archon for 490/89 BC, was in office at the time of the Battle of Marathon, which virtually guarantees that it fell in 490 BC.)

Dating Problem

However, the AIMDR (and they're not the only ones) have fallen foul of a different problem; a problem that continues to bedevil chronological calculations involving BC and AD dates. (See previous post for BC and AD dates.) This problem is caused by the absence of Year Zero.

Arithmetic calculations involving negative numbers (like BC dates) and positive numbers (like AD dates) assume that zero is the pivot, the fixed point between the two types of numbers. Subtract minus-10 from 10 and the result is 20.

Unfortunately, historical chronology doesn't work the same way. AD 10 is only 19 years after 10 BC, not the 20 years that we might naturally assume. (Think about it: 9 BC is one year later, 8 BC is two years later, ..., 1 BC is nine years later, AD 1 is ten years later, AD 2 is eleven years later, ..., AD 10 is nineteen years later.) Similarly, AD 2010 (the anniversary celebrated by AIMDR on their logo) is only 2,499 years after 490 BC. (Let's ignore the fact that they've gone for "2010 AD" instead of AD 2010.)

Only J.A.R. Munro and his fellow supporters of a battle in 491 BC could justifiably have celebrated last year! However, this year, all those keen runners who braved the unseasonal chill of Athens last week to run in the 29th Athens Classic Marathon were, perhaps unknowingly, celebrating the real anniversary, the 25th centenary of the greatest battle in ancient Greek history. Congratulations to all of them!

AD, CE, does it matter?

I think it may have been Voltaire's fault.

Recently, there has been a certain amount of internet discussion about the terms CE and BCE as replacements for the venerable AD/BC dating system. The wickedly subversive commentator Mary Beard (that's her description, not mine) helpfully informs us that "CE and BCE have been around for years, and < are > often used instead of BC and AD". But surely the question is: "why?"

I know that, in English, pedigree is everything. A bit like a squatter in someone else's house: if he's been there long enough, he gets to stay. If Mary Beard's friends have been using CE long enough, they get to continue. Thank goodness they haven't been using YsHtGD ("Years since Herod the Great Died"). However, Mary Beard prefers BC and AD because BCE and CE sound alike when she says them in a lecture theatre (so she probably wouldn't have liked YsHtGD and YbHtGD, either).

A Christian System?

Of course, not everyone uses the BC/AD system: Jews and Muslims have their own chronologies. Many supporters of BCE/CE claim that it is more respectful to these other faiths. This is a spurious argument. (Would we expect Jews and Muslims to give up their traditional systems in order to find a universal, neutral chronology?) In fact, the average history student (for who else uses the terms?) has no interest in knowing what BC and AD stand for, only what they mean chronologically.

A better point might be that the BC/AD system is a western tradition. As Mary Beard observes, "it is now impossible to imagine unpicking the Christian calendar". And, in any case, why should we be expected to overturn a perfectly good tradition that everybody understands?

A neutral system?

As many perceptive readers already realise, the BCE/CE system actually perpetuates the so-called "Christian" system by adopting the same cross-over point. The underlying system remains the same. 27 BCE is still the same as 27 BC, only it takes an extra letter to say so. So why change the abbreviations? Why does it matter?

It's all Voltaire's fault

Historical chronology began with biblical scholars. Writing in Latin, they naturally used the phrases ante Christum (before Christ) and anno Domini (in the year of the Lord) for dating biblical events. When secular historians tackled the chronology of ancient Greece, they naturally slotted events into the biblical timescale of "years before J.C." For example, in 1732, when James Anderson compiled his Royal Genealogies (subtitled The Genealogical Tables of Emperors, Kings and Princes, from Adam to these Times), he tabulated thousands of events beginning with the creation of the world "in the imaginery Year of the Julian Period 710, on the 23rd Day of October, Afternoon, before the Christian Era 4004 Years". He acknowledged that the only existing chronological framework was a Christian one.

Subsequent events were dated "A.M." (Anno Mundi, "in the year of the world"), with the equivalent year "before Christ" (being 4004 minus the year A.M.), with alternatives in the "Julian Period" (being A.M. + 710) and various other chronologies (olympiads, "era of Rome", "era of Nabonassar"). The Year 4714 of the Julian Period (= A.M. 4004) began a new era, according to Anderson, "which by long use is call'd the Era of Christ, and its Year call'd (Anno Domini) the Year of our Lord; tho' strictly it should be call'd (Anno Erae Christianae) the Year of the Christian Era". All subsequent dates are given A.D.

This was the milieu in which historians were working in the 18th and 19th centuries. When men like Voltaire came to write, they used phrases like "in the common era" or "in the Christian era" or "in the vulgar era" interchangeably. There was no Christian overtone. They simply made use of the chronologies worked out by men like James Anderson.

Which is better?

Any chronological system requires a fixed point. AD 1 painlessly gives us our fixed point, whether or not we agree with the reason for its invention. Any alternative chronological system would require a different fixed point to be agreed upon.

Perhaps it's simplest to stick with the BC/AD system. If some people feel the need to disguise its origins by relabelling it CE, who am I to complain?

Antonine Wall Museum

It has been a while since the Antonine Wall was in the news.

One of the recurring features of this blog -- besides championing a sensible interpretation of the disappearance of the Lost Ninth Legion (most recently here) -- is to follow developments on the Roman frontier in Scotland (most recently here). So this emperor was excited to learn that Glasgow University's Hunterian Museum -- home of many spectacular finds from the Antonine Wall -- has re-opened after a two-year refurbishment.

The Guardian newspaper reports, with not a little hyperbole, that "one of the Roman empire's most enigmatic monuments is set to reveal some of its secrets". Enigmatic? Secrets? (Well, I suppose journalists have got to drum up interest in their stories somehow.)

In fact, journalist Charlotte Higgins' second attempt at the story is a lot better: no hyperbole; just the bare facts (to parody her headline). She draws attention to the beautiful new gallery showcasing the permanent "Antonine Wall: Rome's Final Frontier" exhibition, and praises the designers' avoidance of gimmicky interactive displays. Here, rather than a "most enigmatic monument", the Antonine Wall is described -- perfectly -- as "this relatively little-known patch of Britain's Roman past". Second time's a charm, Charlotte.

Medieval Armour Was Heavy

Various press reports have latched onto the recent publication of some findings in the field of armour research.

A team involving academics from Leeds, Milan and Auckland measured the effects of walking and running in a 30-40kg suit of plate armour, and discovered -- surprise, surprise -- that wearing armour has a detrimental effect on a man's breathing.

Actually, their analysis is slightly more detailed than this. They have discovered that distributing the weight around a man's body and along his limbs in a suit of armour has a rather different effect from loading the same weight into a backpack. When suited up, a man's energy expenditure is around 2.2 times higher when walking, and 1.9 times higher when running, although his mass has increased by only 1.4 times.

Press reports (e.g. The Guardian newspaper, with video) have enthusiastically attributed the English victory at Agincourt in 1415 to the fact that "the French knights were knackered". Hopefully, historians will have a more sophisticated analysis of the battle!

Report: G.N. Askew, F. Formenti & A.E. Minetti, "Limitations imposed by wearing armour on Medieval soldiers' locomotor performance", in: Proceedings of the Royal Society B, online content: 10.1098/rspb.2011.0816

Under The Sun

Recently, I saw an advert for a book called "Everything Under The Sun". I don't know what kind of associations that phrase evokes for you, but for me it evokes King Solomon. And not in a good way.

There is, of course, a better known sun-related phrase, which I was reminded of while flicking through the Meditations of my adopted son (!), the emperor Marcus Aurelius.

I happened to be reading the wonderful old translation of Casaubon (1692), and came to the passage (VII.1) where he writes:

Generally, above and below, thou shalt find but the same things. The very same things whereof ancient stories, middle-age stories, and fresh stories are full: whereof Towns are full, and Houses full. There is nothing that is new. All things that are, are both usual and of little continuance.

C.R. Haines translates the same passage in the 1916 Loeb edition:

Look up, look down, everywhere thou wilt find the same things, whereof histories ancient, medieval, and modern are full; and full of them at this day are cities and houses. There is no new thing under the sun. Everything is stereotyped, everything fleeting.

His addition of the words "under the sun" betray the fact that Haines knew the Casaubon edition with its commentary by Monsieur and Madam Dacier, who wrote (in 1692) "Seeing there is nothing new under the Sun, and all things are at all times the same, we can renew our whole Life by renewing and bringing under our review, the things that have happened in our own time; for they are the same that we shall see afterwards".

The Wisdom of King Solomon

Of course, the Daciers did not invent the phrase. And here we return to King Solomon, because the phrase was first coined by him three millennia ago, as the writer of The Book of Ecclesiastes (1:9):

What has been will be again, What has been done will be done again, And there is nothing new under the sun.

The sentiment, evoking universal familiarity, is a hopeful one. Everything is renewed, everything begins again.

Perhaps less well known is another of Solomon's sayings, based around the phrase with which I began this post. The saying encapsulates quite a different sentiment: the opposite, negative version. On the subject of the vanity of pleasures, riches and wordly goods, he writes:

I was weary of my life, when I saw that all things under the sun are evil, and all vanity and vexation of spirit.

These words, which seem to sum up the opposite meaning, struck a chord with the seventeenth-century proponents of the "decaying world" theory. Far from everything repeating itself in a naturally renewing cycle, on the contrary, the world is constantly decaying.

In his History of the World in Five Books of 1614, Sir Walter Raleigh wrote:

And as all things under the sun have one time of strength and another of weakness, a youth and beauty, and then age and deformity; so time itself (under the dreadful shade of whose wings all things decay and wither) hath wasted and worn out that lively virtue of nature in man, and beasts, and plants, yea the heavens themselves, being of a most pure and cleansed matter, shall wax old as a garment.

Raleigh well knew the connotations of the phrase "Everything under the sun". And they are quite different from the philosophy of "Nothing new under the sun". A philosopher like Marcus Aurelius would never make the mistake of confusing the two.

Another book, another wall

The latest book to land on my imperial desk is The Aurelian Wall and the Refashioning of Imperial Rome by art historian Hendrik W. Dey, whose c.v. is eclectic in the extreme. (He has jointly authored papers on "Evidence for Holocene Marine Transgression and Shoreline Progradation Due to Barrier Development in Iskele, Bay of Izmir, Turkey" and "Tsunami waves generated by the Santorini eruption reached Eastern Mediterranean shores".)

The title of the book intrigued me, as it misuses the adjective "Aurelian". Dey requires a word that means "belonging to Aurelian", the emperor universally credited with building the visible walls of Rome. But the adjective "Aurelian" means "belonging to Aurelius" (as, for example, Marcus Aurelius' column at Rome is known as the Aurelian Column).

Think of Julius and the adjective "Julian", Augustus and the adjective "Augustan", Tiberius and the adjective "Tiberian", ... and then think of Trajan and the adjective "Trajanic", Hadrian and the adjective "Hadrianic", Diocletian and the adjective "Diocletianic". The word Dey needed is "Aurelianic".

This obvious error set my mind working: how did such an elementary mistake get past the editors at Cambridge University Press?

Aurelian's Wall

Although Dey's book is called The Aurelian Wall, and he mostly uses this phrase to describe it, he is well aware that "Aurelianic" is the correct form of the adjective: he refers to Aurelianic brickwork, and even occasionally (admittedly, very occasionally) risks confusing his readers by writing about the "Aurelianic Wall" (I counted only three instances). Clearly, he and his editors at Cambridge University Press have made the decision to re-christen the famous muri Aureliani "the Aurelian Wall".

It seems that Dey is not the first to make this mistake, though the perpetrators are usually North American. In 1898, the Canadian poet Bliss Carman wrote a poem entitled "By the Aurelian Wall", in memory of John Keats. Contemporary editions of the Encyclopedia Britannica were perhaps the source, as they seem to have opted for this same erroneous version. Yet a century earlier, the Scots philosopher David Hume correctly referred to "Aurelian's wall" in his 1758 essay "Of the Populousness of Antient Nations", and Edward Gibbon used the same phrase. Characteristically, the German wikipedia entry has it right, but not the American version.

So it must remain a curious puzzle, exactly when the mistaken form originated, and why. We wouldn't refer to Hadrian's Wall as "the Hadrian Wall", nor the Baths of Diocletian as "the Diocletian Baths", but for some reason, Cambridge University Press have chosen to throw their weight behind "the Aurelian Wall". Odd.

The Biggest Inscription of the Ancient World

I recently noticed that the University of Köln, in collaboration with publishers Rudolf Habelt, have begun to put the journal Epigraphica Anatolica online. The latest available issue, EA volume 40 (2007), includes a paper by Martin F. Smith and Jürgen Hammaerstaedt entitled "The inscription of Diogenes of Oinoanda". It seems that work is continuing on this, the biggest inscription of the ancient world.

Giant Inscription

Smith, an independent scholar based in Shetland, has been studying this remarkable inscription, set up by the Epicurean philosopher Diogenes of Oinoanda, since 1968. Prior to that year, eighty-eight fragments were known to nineteenth century scholars; Smith added a further 125 during the years from 1968 to 1994, 10 more in 1997, another in 2003, and five in 2007, bringing the total to 229 pieces.

It seems that the inscription, proclaiming the wisdom of the third century BC philosopher Epicurus, occupied an entire wall of a stoa, or collonaded gallery, perhaps 100m long, which Diogenes had built in the city agora at Oinoanda (Turkey). When the city fell into disrepair, the stoa must have been gradually dismantled and the individual blocks dispersed for reuse across the site, some of them in an emergency defensive wall.

Scholars believe that the inscription includes several individual works; the title of one of them, Old Age, appears on Fragment 137. Others include miscellaneous Epicurean maxims, and a treatise on ethics, around half of which survives. One of the fragments explains that "I wanted, by making use of this stoa, to set out the remedies which bring health and safety".

Smith has estimated that only around one-third of the enormous jigsaw has so far been pieced together. Much work remains to be done. Hammerstaedt and Smith promise more discoveries in Epigraphica Anatolica volume 41 (2008), which will soon be going online, too.

Official Oinoanda, City of Diogenes web site: http://www.dainst.de/index_8097_de.html.