by
Damien
F. Mackey
Conventional ancient Roman
history/chronology needs to be subjected to revisionist scrutiny just as we
found to have been the case with ancient Egypt
and the Near East. This
article will be a continuation of efforts towards trying to determine whether
the seemingly impregnable fortress of conventional
ancient Roman history is
firmly based, or if it, too, might be susceptible
to breaches when revisionist
pressure is applied.
Introduction
That the received Roman
history may not be as formidably secure as may have been thought I hope that I
have demonstrated – without initially having considered it to have been
necessary – in articles such as:
Rome
surprisingly minimal in Bible
(11) Rome surprisingly minimal in Bible
Horrible
Histories. Retracting Romans
(12) Horrible Histories. Retracting Romans
Jesus Christ was the Model for some legends surrounding Julius Caesar
(12) Jesus Christ was the Model for some legends
surrounding Julius Caesar
Found me arriving at the conclusion that the
renowned ‘Julius Caesar’ was largely –
if not entirely – a composite figure, based
upon, among others, Jesus Christ;
Alexander the Great; and Octavius (Augustus).
Time to consider Hadrian, that ‘mirror-image’
of Antiochus Epiphanes, as also the census emperor Augustus
Plutarch
and Petrarch
and various other related articles.
My revision (based on the
efforts of many) has already successfully undertaken some necessary folding of
Egyptian and Babylonian history.
For respective examples of
this, see my:
Egypt’s Old and Middle Kingdoms Far Closer in Time than Conventionally
Thought
(12) Egypt's Old and Middle Kingdoms far closer in
time than conventionally thought
and
Aligning Neo-Babylonia with the Book of Daniel
(12)
Aligning Neo-Babylonia with the Book of Daniel
Apart from the inestimable
benefit of getting rid of those artificial ‘Dark Ages’ – cf. Peter James
et al., Centuries of Darkness (1990), being a leader in
the field here – such revisionism can serve to make more realistic certain
ancient genealogies. For instance, it was found that the conventional Egyptian
history, in the case of some detailed genealogies of officials serving a string
of named pharaohs, ends up with a whole lot of octogenarian persons, or
older, still actively functioning in office.
Similarly does the received
Roman Imperial chronology create aged but still active characters: e.g. John
the Evangelist, in his 90’s (according to a tradition) vigorously chasing a
young man on horseback; Yohanan ben Zakkai still going at 120 (highly unlikely),
straddling the supposedly two Jewish Revolts.
Now, reverting back to the
Roman Republican period again, I turn to a brief consideration of Julius
Caesar’s supposedly famous contemporary and fellow triumvir, Gnaeus Pompeius
Magnus, or, as we know him better, Pompey ‘the Great’.
Is Pompey also a composite?
If there is any value in the
conclusions that I reached about ‘Julius Caesar’ in my article, “Jesus Christ
was the Model for some legends surrounding Julius Caesar”, then that, I
believe, must put extreme pressure on the validity of ‘Pompey the Great’
himself, Caesar’s fellow triumvir (along with Crassus).
More especially so as Pompey,
too, like Julius Caesar, was (as we shall now learn) likened to Alexander the
Great – Pompey perhaps even more explicitly so than Caesar was.
Nic Fields tells of it in Warlords
of Republican Rome. Caesar versus Pompey (2008, p. 67):
Meteoric Rise
His flatterers, so it was said, likened Pompey
to Alexander the Great, and whether because of this or not, the Macedonian king
would appear to have been constantly in his mind. His respect for the fairer
sex is comparable with Alexander’s, and Plutarch mentions that when the
concubines of Mithridates were brought to him he merely restored them to their
parents and families. …. Similarly he treated the corpse of Mithridates in a
kingly way, as Alexander treated the corpse of Dareios, and ‘provided for the
expenses of the funeral and directed that the remains should receive royal
interment’. …. Also, like Alexander, he founded many cities and repaired many
damaged towns, searched for the ocean that was thought to surround the world,
and rewarded his soldiers munificently. Finally, Appian adds that in his third
triumph he was said to have worn ‘a cloak of Alexander the Great’. ….
It is interesting to learn
that the original name of king Antiochus IV ‘Epiphanes’, who, like Pompey, supposedly,
would desecrate the Temple of Yahweh in Jerusalem, was likewise a “Mithridates”:
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Antiochus_IV_Epiphanes
Nic Fields again on p. 98:
In a sense Pompey personified Roman imperialism,
where absolute destruction was followed by the construction of stable empire
and the rule of law. It also, not coincidentally, raised him to a pinnacle of
glory and wealth. The client–rulers who swelled the train of Rome also swelled
his own. He received extraordinary honours from the communities of the east, as
‘saviour and benefactor of the People and of all Asia, guardian of land and
sea’. …. There was an obvious precedent for all this. As the elder Pliny later
wrote, Pompey’s victories ‘equalled in brilliance the exploits of Alexander the
Great’. Without a doubt, so Pliny continues, the proudest boast of our ‘Roman
Alexander’ would be that ‘he found Asia on the rim of Rome’s possessions, and
left it in the centre’. ….
Pompey is even supposed to
have gone so far as to have tried to emulate Alexander’s distinctive
appearance:
http://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/encyclopaedia_romana/miscellanea/cleopatra/pompey.html
The marble bust of Pompey is in the Ny Carlsberg
Glyptotek (Copenhagen). Its somewhat incongruous appearance, the round face and
small lidded eyes beneath the leonine mane of hair, is because Pompey, the most
powerful Roman of his day, sought a comparison with Alexander the Great, whose
distinctive portraits were characterized by a thoughtful facial expression and,
more iconographically, locks of hair brushed back high from the forehead, a
stylistic form known as anastole, from the Greek “to put back.”
Did Pompey absorb – like I have
argued may have been the case with Julius Caesar – not only Alexander-like
characteristics, but also general Hellenistic ones?
And might that mean that the
famous event of Pompey’s desecration (by his presence therein) of the Temple of
Yahweh in Jerusalem, supposedly in 63 BC:
http://jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/12264-pompey-the-great
The capture of the Temple mount was accompanied
by great slaughter. The priests who were officiating despite the battle were
massacred by the Roman soldiers, and many committed suicide; while 12,000
people besides were killed.
Pompey himself entered the Temple, but he was so
awed by its sanctity that he left the treasure and the costly vessels untouched
(“Ant.” xiv. 4, § 4; “B. J.” i. 7, § 6; Cicero, “Pro Flacco,” § 67). The
leaders of the war party were executed, and the city and country were laid
under tribute. A deadly blow was struck at the Jews when Pompey separated from
Judea the coast cities from Raphia to Dora, as well as all the Hellenic cities
in the east-Jordan country, and the so-called Decapolis, besides Scythopolis and
Samaria, all of which were incorporated in the new province of Syria. ….
may in fact be a muddled
version of that real historical incident when king Antiochus (Mithridates)
‘Epiphanes’ most infamously desecrated the holy Temple in Jerusalem (2
Maccabees 5:15-18).
Republic
spilling into Empire
What a complete mess is conventional ancient history!
Kingdoms, dynasties and rulers duplicated, or triplicated.
History and culture having a “strange afterglow” centuries later.
Impossible “Dark Ages” procrusteanising time periods by extension.
BC characters and events mysteriously projected into AD 'time’.
And, in this case, the Roman Republic flopping over into its Empire.
Dolly Parton put it well: “It’s
enough to drive you crazy if you let it” (9 to 5).
There is that strange
re-duplication, about 60 years later, of the First Jewish Revolt against Rome.
But it seems that the history
books also ‘know’ of a ‘third’ bloody capture of Jerusalem in Roman history -
one which is thought, however, to have preceded the other supposedly two
assaults by Rome in the Neronic and Hadrianic (so-called) imperial eras. It is
considered to have occurred in Republican times, in 63 BC, when Gnaeus Pompeius
Magnus (Pompey ‘the Great’), one time ally of Julius Caesar, captured Jerusalem
and killed 12,000 Jews.
This is quite a massive event,
to say the least, yet it is often mentioned only in passing.
Strange that it is nowhere
referred to in the Bible.
Hence, I suspect that there
also needs to be a folding of some Roman Republican history with early Roman
Imperial history. There was, for example:
(i)
a
Pompey the Great (Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus) also at the time of Caligula (see A.
Barrett, Caligula - the Corruption of Power, p. 237) about a century
after (presumably) the Republican Pompey. And there was then also a
(ii)
Marcus
Crassus; the same name as the ‘earlier’ Pompey’s fellow consul (see
Mackay, p. 135). Moreover, Caligula may have been murdered by a
(iii)
Cassius
Longinus (Barrett, p. 162); the same name as the chief conspirator against
Julius Caesar.
All very strange indeed and
desperately needing to be explained. ….
