Nature of the Modern Sciences

by Damien F. Mackey “Universities have drifted dangerously towards utility, collapsing into being mere technical institutes”. Dr. Gavin Ardley Gavin Ardley’s Marvellous Perception of the Nature of the Modern Sciences This, by far my favourite book on the philosophy of modern sciences, I have found to be highly enlightening with its explanation of the clear distinction between science and philosophy – a distinction that is becoming more and more blurred with the passing of time. Aquinas and Kant: The Foundations of the Modern Sciences (1950) is available on-line (for example at): https://brightmorningstar-amaic.blogspot.com/2010/06/gavin-ardleys-book-aqunas-and-kant.html Chapter XVIII is the crucial one, for it is there that Gavin Ardley, following an insight from Immanuel Kant, puts his finger right on the nature of the sciences, or what the modern scientist is actually doing. Whilst the precise realisation of this had escaped some of the most brilliant philosophers of science, it had not escaped Kant – who, however, then managed to bury this gem of insight under a mountain of pseudo metaphysics. Other minds went close to discovering the secret, but failed to recognize the Procrustean nature of modern science, that is, the active imposition of laws upon nature, rather than, as is generally imagined, the reading of laws in nature. Dr. Ardley will finally sum up his findings in this splendid piece (but one will definitely need to read his chapter XVIII): Chapter XXI THE END OF THE ROAD The solution to the problem is now before us. The quest of the modern cosmologist for a satisfactory harmony of Thomism with post-Galilean physical science is nearing its goal. The bifurcation made by the Procrustean interpretation of physics rescues the dualist theory from the impasse in which it has been struggling. With our discussion of voluntary active phenomenalism in Ch. XVIII in view, we can see precisely how there come to be two orders, each autonomous. The Scholastic metaphysician functions in one order, the modern physicist in the other, and there is no immediate link whatever between them. There is a clean divorce between the ontological reality, and the physical laws and properties which belong to the categorial order. The link between the physical laws and the underlying causes is no longer of the first remove but of the second. The fundamental dictum of Wittgenstein is our guide here. [See p. 98.]: that a law of physics tells us nothing about the world, but only that it applies in the way in which in fact it does apply, tells us something about the world. This all-important consequence of the Procrustean character of modern physics provides the solution to Phillips’ difficulty. [See p. 224. The difficulty of course arises from the failure to distinguish the physicists’ data from phenomena. We are careful to distinguish them.] It furnishes the essential supplement to the otherwise admirable doctrines of O’Rahilly and Maritain. This doctrine of the two orders, soundly based, is very much more satisfactory than such a palliative as hylosystemism. Now we can retain the Thomist doctrine in all its purity, but we have added to it another chapter, so that the post-Renaissance physical science may at last find a home in the ample structure of the philosophia perennis. It is from Immanuel Kant that this doctrine of the nature of modern physics ultimately derives. Scholastics thus owe to Kant the recognition that he, albeit unwittingly, has made one of the greatest contributions to the philosophia perennis since St. Thomas. It is commonly stated that St. Thomas showed that there is no contradiction between faith and profane science. This is true of sciences of the real. But for sciences of the categorial we must look also to Kant. It is St. Thomas and Kant between them who have shown that there is no contradiction possible between faith and any profane science. Let us now summarise the contents of these chapters. The Bellarmine dichotomy between what actually is the case, and what gives the most satisfactory empirical explanation, has all along been the basic contention of the dualist philosophers. But the absence hitherto of an adequate explanation of how there can be these two separate orders has been the great stumbling block. It has driven other Scholastic philosophers virtually to abandon the dichotomy and try to work out a unitary theory. This has led to such a scheme as hylosystemism with its fundamental distortions of Thomism. We have shown how illusory such unitary schemes must be, founded as they are on the shifting sands of current physical theories. On the other hand we have supplied the missing explanation in the dualist theory. By pointing out the Procrustean categorial nature of modern physics, we have established its autonomy on a satisfactory basis. We have shown how the two orders can exist side by side without clashing. Hence the Thomist structure needs no alterations but only the extension of a wing to the house. We have traced in outline the slow recognition by Scholastic philosophers of the part played by artifacts, or entia rationis, call them what we will, in the new physical learning which has been developing since the 17th century. The time has now come for this recognition to be extended to a wider field than merely that of modern physics. We have seen in this work how systems of artifacts are to be found in a great variety of human pursuits. In nearly all our activities we avail ourselves of their assistance; we find at almost every turn a fabric woven of myths. Such a fabric is necessary to facilitate our passage through the world. But we must never lose sight of the fact that it is only myths and phantoms. We should never allow ourselves to be enslaved by our own creations: there are no bonds more insidious than those we impose on ourselves. Behind the shadowy world we have created to be our servant, there lies the real world. A phantom is but a sorry companion to any man. It is the real world, the world which ever is, to which we must turn our eyes, and from which comes our strength. [End of quote] Christopher Dawson summed it up “If the laws of mathematics are simply the creation of the human mind, they are no infallible guide to the ultimate nature of things. They are a conventional technique which is no more based on the eternal laws of the universe than is the number of degrees in a circle or the number of yards in a mile”. Christopher Dawson The insightful words of Christopher Dawson (d. 1970) here seem to me closely to echo the sentiments of Dr. Gavin Ardley, in his masterpiece, Aquinas and Kant. The Foundations of the Modern Sciences (1950), who wrote in his Chapter III (“The Nature of Modern Physics”): The Classical, or Realist, Theory of Modern Physics The classical writers on scientific method, men like John Stuart Mill, and the English empiricists generally, took it for granted that modern physics was, like ancient physics, endeavouring to discover the nature and functioning of the physical world about us. Only, they believed, it was doing it much more successfully than was the ancient and medieval physics. They saw the change that came over physics in the days of Galileo as a change occasioned by increased attention to observation and experiment. They accused the Aristotelians of paying too little attention to observation and too much to a priori notions. Liberation from the medieval straight-jacket, and careful experiment and measurement, coupled with the powerful instrument of mathematics, was believed to be the reason for the great strides forward in physical science from Galileo onward. Physics was thus regarded as a truly empirical science. The physicist was supposed to observe uniformities in Nature and to generalise these into laws. Some varied this a little by pointing out that physicists take hypotheses and then put them to the test of experiment. If experiment verifies the hypothesis then we have discovered a valid law or theory of physics. By these means, it was believed, were discovered such laws and principles as Newton’s Laws of Motion and the Law of Universal Gravitation, the Conservation of Energy, the Wave Theory of Light, the Atomic Theory of Matter, and so on. Physics was thus held by these philosophers and logicians to be slowly wresting out the secrets of Nature, to be steadily unfolding before us the constitution of the physical world. The uniformity of Nature is revealed in the true laws of physics, and renders them immutable. Physics is subject at every turn to the test of experiment, and anyone can upset a theory simply by showing that some observation is contrary to it. Thus physics abhors authority and anything that smacks of the a priori. Consequently the modern physicist reviles the old Aristotelian physicist who, he believes, was bound hand and foot by authority and a priori notions. By this slow empirical advance, it was believed, there was built up this great edifice of modern physics; an edifice which today occupies one of the most prominent positions in our intellectual horizon, while in practical applications it has transformed daily life by surrounding us with a countless multiplicity of instruments and amenities. Although the classical empiricist logicians were not all agreed on what was, precisely, the scientific method, yet on the general picture they were unanimous. [Footnote: See further Ch. XI, on Scientific Method.] The Eddingtonian Theory Nevertheless there has long been a minority which has held other views about the nature of physics and scientific method. In recent years these views have pushed their way more and more to the fore. The revolt has been rather tentative up to the present, but in this chapter we will extend it further and develop its consequences. The John the Baptist of the Movement was Immanuel Kant. In more recent times the principles were revived by Poincaré. [Footnote: Some account of the various transitional theories will be found in later chapters, notably in Ch. XVIII in the Section on Modern Physics and Scholastic Philosophy.] But the new interpretation has received its greatest impetus from the works of the late Professor Eddington, who gave a most elegant expression to what others had long been struggling to articulate. The new approach is based on the mode of acquiring knowledge in experimental physics. It pays little attention to what the physicist says, but much attention to what he does. It looks away from the world to the activity of the physicist himself. To Eddington and his school of thought, the laws of physics are subjective, arbitrary, conventional, dogmatic, and authoritarian. This is, of course, precisely the reverse of the classical theory which believes the laws to be supremely objective. But the new theory holds that the laws of physics are not the laws of Nature but the laws of the physicists. The laws of physics are always true, not because they represent uniformities of Nature, but simply because the physicist never lets them be untrue. Newton wrote in the Principia that ‘Nature is pleased with simplicity and affects not the pomp of superfluous causes’. The classical empiricist logician would heartily endorse this dictum, although he might be puzzled if asked how he knew it to be true. But the alternative view would insist that it is not Nature which is pleased with simplicity, but the physicist. Whether Nature is pleased with simplicity or not we cannot tell, at least not within the province of experimental science. But we know that the physicist is pleased with simplicity and will exercise all his ingenuity to achieve it. The simplicity of the laws of physics, then, tells us much about the physicist, but nothing immediately about Nature. This reorientation towards physics can be expressed very neatly by using the parable of Procrustes, and saying that physics is a PROCRUSTEAN BED. Procrustes lived in ancient Greece. He was a brigand who terrorised Attica until finally he was vanquished by Theseus. Now Procrustes had a bed, and it was his practice to make travellers conform in length to that bed. If they were too short he stretched them out until they fitted, and if they were too long he chopped of their legs until they were the right length. This is a parable of what the physicist does with Nature. He makes Nature conform to what he wants, and having done so announces that he has discovered a law of Nature: namely that all travellers fit the bed. Hence it is that the laws of physics are always true. It is because the physicist makes Nature conform to them. He runs Nature out into moulds, so to speak. A law of physics is not something discovered in Nature, but something imposed upon Nature. In brief, physics is a put-up job. The physicist puts it all in implicitly at the beginning, and then draws it out explicitly at the end. Physics is manufactured, not discovered. Eddington puts the matter in his own inimitable style. [Footnote: Eddington, A. S.: The Philosophy of Physical Science (Cambridge, 1939), p. 109.] [End of quotes] Christopher Dawson wrote, in Progress and Religion (Sheed and Ward, 1938, p. 236), concerning mathematics and the universe: The rise of modern physics was closely connected with a transcendental view of the nature of mathematics derived from the Pythagorean and Platonic tradition. According to this view, God created the world in accordance with numerical harmonies, and consequently it is only by the science of number that it can be understood. ‘Just as the eye was made to see colours’, says Kepler, ‘and the ear to hear sounds, so the human mind was made to understand Quantity’. (Opera 1, 3). And Galileo describes mathematics as the script in which God has written on the open book of the Universe. But this philosophy of mathematics which underlies the old science, requires a deity to guarantee its truth. If the laws of mathematics are simply the creation of the human mind, they are no infallible guide to the ultimate nature of things. They are a conventional technique which is no more based on the eternal laws of the universe than is the number of degrees in a circle or the number of yards in a mile. …. Why is Modern Physics so Successful? A reader queries: “I did read one review of Ardley's book and the reviewer (who seemed sympathetic to the philosophia perennis) said that [Ardley] doesn't really answer the question as to why modern physics is so successful”. This is the review to which the reader refers: http://bjps.oxfordjournals.org/content/II/6/167.full.pdf REVIEWS Aquinas and Kant, Gavin Ardley, Longmans Green & Co., London, 1950. Pp. x + 256. 18s. THE author of this book is greatly perturbed about the ultimate basis of our knowledge of the universe, and the conflicting character of modern thought in philosophy and physics. And well he may be. The rise of Neo-Thomism in one form or another is a feature of our generation. No less marked, however, is the advance of theoretical physics associated with the names of Poincaré, Eddington, and one or two others of comparable calibre. Again, as Mr Ardley remarks, St Thomas Aquinas and Kant seem strange bedfellows indeed, as Aristotle and the Fathers were aforetime. Observing that the latter pair were eventually 'reconciled,' he believes that a corresponding state of bliss for the former couple is only a matter of time. Kant's idea of a physicist was that of an extremely active person, by no means content to receive laws from nature, but perpetually engaged in the task of formulating laws of his own which he 'fastened' upon nature, and to which she was obliged to conform. All that is said about the Procrustean bed and the chopper is most apt, and indeed on this view, deserved. Nevertheless, according to Mr Ardley, it is a grave error to imagine that this coercive technique is intrinsically necessary; it is merely a device to secure power for mankind. Over against this stands metaphysics in serene detachment, ready as always to admit the practical advantages of ‘saving appearances,' whether in classical physics or in modern metrical technology, but claiming the absolute title to the possession of philosophical truth. Seldom has the precept 'between us and you there is a great gulf fixed . . .' been restated in starker form. Why, therefore, it is asked, are we in fact confronted with physics heaping triumph upon triumph in almost every department of twentieth-century life? Mr Ardley replies in effect that had a divergent system of 'categorisation' been set up, things might have worked out differently. This riposte is very disappointing, being nothing short of wholly irrelevant, since what we want to know is why physics, as commonly understood, should be any good at all. No reasonable person has anything but reverence for the philosophia perennis, yet this book cannot be said to have helped to bring the natural sciences of to-day within its broad and generous frontiers. Unfortunately, too, Mr Ardley's style lacks attractiveness; it is rather that of a school-teacher admonishing an unwilling class, and underlining for them, as he goes along, what they are meant to learn by heart. IAN RAWLINS Introduction That modern science and technology (centred around modern physics) have been stupendously successful no alert human being today would probably deny. And it is due to its stunning success in our modern world that we humans have tended to elevate “science” to the virtual status of ‘deity’. We, for all intents and purposes, idolise it. Gavin Ardley, author of the book under consideration in this series, Aquinas and Kant: The Foundations of the Modern Sciences (1950), was not critical at all of the modern sciences as a legitimate human endeavour – a part of God’s invitation to man to “subdue the earth” (Genesis 1:28). Ardley’s Chapter XI: “The Quest for a Scientific Method” is relevant to this present article. Speaking of the early efforts to comprehend the methodology that was leading to such scientific success, Ardley wrote: The great success of physical science in the post-Renaissance world led to much speculation about the secret of its success. It has been the general opinion that this secret must lie in some way in the method employed in the new sciences. If we could discover precisely what this method is, and make it explicit, then, so it was thought, we should be able to use it more effectively, and, no doubt, extend its employment to even wider fields. Consequently ever since the 17th century much attention has been paid to the quest for this scientific method. We have already considered Francis Bacon as the ‘politician’ of the new movement to extend man’s power over Nature (Ch. IV). Francis Bacon was also the author of one of the first attempted formulations of the method of the new science. He laid down rules which he believed would, if followed, lead automatically to our complete mastery over Nature. His method consisted in collecting and recording all available facts, performing all practicable experiments, and finally, by means of certain rules, making out connections between all the phenomena so observed. However, this procedure or method, as laid down by Bacon, turns out on closer acquaintance to be barren. It is much too simple and naïve to meet the situation. Nature in fact is not nearly as simple and orderly as Bacon had supposed. The practising scientists went on developing their sciences along their own lines without reference to Bacon’s supposed automatic method. [End of quote] Dr. Ardley, who was both philosopher and scientist, far from reviling the “world of physics”, which he regarded as “a world of deep and abiding beauty”, was at pains, nonetheless, to explain just what kind of world it actually is, and - relevant to the question posed in this article - “why is it so successful?”: Chapter III THE NATURE OF MODERN PHYSICS Physics and Nature The world of modern physics is not the natural world. It is a remote domain of artifacts more removed from the world of Nature than the worlds in which Mr Pickwick and Hamlet dwell. The world of physics is austere and exacting, but withal a world of deep and abiding beauty. It is this aesthetic quality, perhaps even more than the satisfaction of intellectual curiosity and the desire for power, which explains its hold on its exponents. The beauty of pure mathematics has been recognised at least since the days of Plato. Pure physics has this beauty too, and in addition an intangible quality peculiar to itself which is well known to those who have entered its inner temples. This, rather than the exploration of nature, must be the physicist’s apology. But it may well be asked now: what is the relation between physics and Nature? If physics dwells apart, how does it come into contact with Nature. And furthermore, it may be asked, why is it so successful? In a general way, the solution of the first part of this question lies in the fact that the process of systematic experiment is selective and transforming. Hence it is that the transition is made from Nature to the abstract world, and vice versa. This is the link between the two worlds. As regards the second question – why, if physics is an abstract and arbitrary system, is it so successful? – we might ask in return, what is the standard of success? How much more or less successful physics might have been had it been developed in different ways from the way it was in fact developed, we do not know. If the net dragged through the world by the physicists had been quite different, the outcome might have been very different too. It may have been much more successful, or much less so. We have no standard of comparison for success, so the question is scarcely profitable. In discussing success it may be helpful to compare together two different branches of physics. The classical mechanics as applied to the solar system was generally regarded as a dazzling success. But on the other end of the scale the theory of electromagnetics is regarded today by most students of the subject as being in a state of well-nigh hopeless confusion, although with experience it can be made to work moderately well. Evidently some wrong turning was made early in the development of this latter branch of physics, and with the root trouble, whatever it is, firmly entrenched, the subject appears to be growing in disorder and chaos rather than improving. Evidently it would be better to start afresh from the beginning and drag some quite different net through the world in this particular realm. Such considerations as these should give us pause before we speak lightly of the ‘success’ of physical science. A variant on this question Why if arbitrary then success? is to insist that if a law or theory enjoys success, then, in the same measure, it is probable that Nature is really like the situation envisaged by that law or theory. E.g. if the law of Gravitation is well established in physics, then there must really be this Gravitation in the world, and so on. In answer to this objection we cannot do better than quote the words of Wittgenstein in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, where he propounds much the same doctrine concerning the laws of physics as we have in this chapter. In the course of a most penetrating discussion of the subject he remarks: The fact that it can be described by Newtonian mechanics asserts nothing about the world; but this asserts something, namely, that it can be described in that particular way in which as matter of fact it is described. The fact, too, that it can be described more simply by one system of mechanics than by another says something about the world. [Tractatus, 6.342.] If the laws of physics were really found in the world, then the laws would tell us something about the world. But if the laws of physics are superimposed on the world, then the laws themselves tell us nothing about the world. [Footnote: This incidentally provides the solution to the controversy which raged throughout the Middle Ages concerning the status of the various systems of astronomy. See Appendix.] Only the character of the particular description which we effect in terms of the super-imposed law has any bearing on the world. It is only in this second order manner that we make contact with the world. …. Hence there is no foundation for the assertion that in modern physics a law or theory, if successful, tells us what Nature is like. This is a most important conclusion. [End of quote] Yes, the key issue is, as Ardley has put it, “what is the standard of success?” In the writings of two recent popes, Benedict and the present pope, Francis - neither of whom could be accused of being anti-mathematics or anti-science (see below e.g. Benedict’s XVI “the magnificent mathematics of creation”) - one can discern the two orders about which Ardley has written, both legitimate, but with the higher order deserving of the more attention. Josef Ratzinger/Pope Benedict, writing in has this to say about the limitations of modern science, of “functional truth”, and how the total pursuit (idolisation) of it can make one blind to ““truth” itself”: …. Let us say plainly: the unredeemed state of the world consists precisely in the failure to understand the meaning of creation, in the failure to recognize truth; as a result, the rule of pragmatism is imposed, by which the strong arm of the powerful becomes the god of this world. At this point, modern man is tempted to say: Creation has become intelligible to us through science. Indeed, Francis S. Collins, for example, who led the Human Genome Project, says with joyful astonishment: "The language of God was revealed" (The Language of God, p. 122). Indeed, in the magnificent mathematics of creation, which today we can read in the human genetic code, we recognize the language of God. But unfortunately not the whole language. The functional truth about man has been discovered. But the truth about man himself — who he is, where he comes from, what he should do, what is right, what is wrong — this unfortunately cannot be read in the same way. Hand in hand with growing knowledge of functional truth there seems to be an increasing blindness toward "truth" itself — toward the question of our real identity and purpose. [End of quote] Recently someone on TV remarked that “technology has made everything possible”. That it “has improved our health, provided us with a far better lifestyle, and can even bring about peace”. No one argues that science and technology have brought massive material, at least, benefits to our world. And, following Dr. Ardley (and having to disagree with his reviewer, Rawlins), one could say that perhaps it could have provided us with even greater benefits, here and there, if researchers had, say, ‘dragged some quite different net through the world in this particular realm’. But has science and technology actually made our world a happier place in which to live? And is there really a technologically-achieved peace? No, because modern science has not within itself the capacity to bring a deeper peace. That is apparent from Benedict’s comment above that a full immersion in the pursuit of “the functional truth about man” must inevitably lead to “an increasing blindness toward “truth” itself — toward the question of our real identity and purpose”. Hence, the modern phenomenon of ‘identity crisis’, hence alienation, often leading to suicide. Pope Francis has, I believe, come to the rescue with his blueprint for the modern world, Laudato Si’, which, by no means decrying the pursuit of genuine scientific endeavour, warns of excess. Sometimes, less is more. Pope Francis puts modern ‘progress’ into a real perspective when he writes: Pollution, waste and the throwaway culture 20. Some forms of pollution are part of people’s daily experience. Exposure to atmospheric pollutants produces a broad spectrum of health hazards, especially for the poor, and causes millions of premature deaths. People take sick, for example, from breathing high levels of smoke from fuels used in cooking or heating. There is also pollution that affects everyone, caused by transport, industrial fumes, substances which contribute to the acidification of soil and water, fertilizers, insecticides, fungicides, herbicides and agrotoxins in general. Technology, which, linked to business interests, is presented as the only way of solving these problems, in fact proves incapable of seeing the mysterious network of relations between things and so sometimes solves one problem only to create others. 21. Account must also be taken of the pollution produced by residue, including dangerous waste present in different areas. Each year hundreds of millions of tons of waste are generated, much of it non-biodegradable, highly toxic and radioactive, from homes and businesses, from construction and demolition sites, from clinical, electronic and industrial sources. The earth, our home, is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth. In many parts of the planet, the elderly lament that once beautiful landscapes are now covered with rubbish. Industrial waste and chemical products utilized in cities and agricultural areas can lead to bioaccumulation in the organisms of the local population, even when levels of toxins in those places are low. Frequently no measures are taken until after people’s health has been irreversibly affected. 22. These problems are closely linked to a throwaway culture which affects the excluded just as it quickly reduces things to rubbish. To cite one example, most of the paper we produce is thrown away and not recycled. It is hard for us to accept that the way natural ecosystems work is exemplary: plants synthesize nutrients which feed herbivores; these in turn become food for carnivores, which produce significant quantities of organic waste which give rise to new generations of plants. But our industrial system, at the end of its cycle of production and consumption, has not developed the capacity to absorb and reuse waste and by-products. We have not yet managed to adopt a circular model of production capable of preserving resources for present and future generations, while limiting as much as possible the use of non-renewable resources, moderating their consumption, maximizing their efficient use, reusing and recycling them. A serious consideration of this issue would be one way of counteracting the throwaway culture which affects the entire planet, but it must be said that only limited progress has been made in this regard. [End of quote] I have found some of what Pope Francis has to say in this Encyclical letter very Ardleian. This led me to write in my article: ‘For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing’. (Luke 12:23) https://www.academia.edu/13601104/_For_life_is_more_than_food_and_the_body_more_than_clothing_._Luke_12_23_ Quality Over Quantity What appeals to me personally about the pope’s Laudato Si’ encyclical letter is the resonance I find in parts of it with my favourite book on the philosophy of science, Dr. Gavin Ardley’s Aquinas and Kant: The Foundations of the Modern Sciences (1950). …. Whereas the ancient sciences (scientiae) involved a study of actual reality, the more abstract modern sciences (e.g. theoretical physics), involve, as Immanuel Kant had rightly discerned, an active imposition of a priori concepts upon reality. In other words, these ‘sciences’ are largely artificial (or ‘categorial’) - their purpose being generally utilitarian. Ardley tells of it (Ch. VI: Immanuel Kant): Kant’s great contribution was to point out the revolution in natural science effected by Galileo and Bacon and their successors. This stands in principle even though all the rest of his philosophy wither away. Prior to Galileo people had been concerned with reading laws in Nature. After Galileo they read laws into Nature. His clear recognition of this fact makes Kant the fundamental philosopher of the modern world. It is the greatest contribution to the philosophia perennis since St. Thomas. But this has to be dug patiently out of Kant. Kant himself so overlaid and obscured his discovery that is has ever since gone well nigh unrecognised. We may, in fact we must, refrain from following Kant in his doctrine of metaphysics. The modelling of metaphysics on physics was his great experiment. The experiment is manifestly a failure, in pursuit of what he mistakenly believed to be the best interests of metaphysics. But, putting the metaphysical experiment aside, the principle on which it was founded abides, the principle of our categorial activity. Later, in Ch. XVIII, we will see in more detail how this principle is essential to the modern development of the philosophia perennis. Kant was truly the philosopher of the modern world when we look judiciously at his work. As a motto for the Kritik Kant actually quotes a passage from Francis Bacon in which is laid down the programme for the pursuit of human utility and power. [Footnote: The passage is quoted again in this work on [Ardley’s] p. 47.] As we saw in Ch. IV, it was Bacon above all who gave articulate expression to the spirit behind the new science. Now we see that it was Kant who, for the first time, divined the nature of the new science. If Bacon was the politician of the new régime, Kant was its philosopher although a vastly over-ambitious one. It appears to be this very sort of Baconian “régime” that pope Francis is currently challenging, at least, according to Stephen White’s estimation: While much has been said about the pope’s embrace of the scientific evidence of climate change and the dangers it poses, the irony is that he addresses this crisis in a way that calls into question some of the oldest and most basic assumptions of the scientific paradigm. Francis Bacon and René Descartes — two fathers of modern science in particular — would have shuddered at this encyclical. Bacon was a man of many talents — jurist, philosopher, essayist, lord chancellor of England — but he’s mostly remembered today as the father of the scientific method. He is also remembered for suggesting that nature ought to be “bound into service, hounded in her wanderings and put on the rack and tortured for her secrets.” Descartes, for his part, hoped that the new science he and men like Bacon were developing would make us, in his words, “masters and possessors of nature.” At the very outset of the encyclical, before any mention of climate change or global warming, Pope Francis issues a challenge to the Baconian and Cartesian view, which sees the world as so much raw material to be used as we please. Neither Descartes nor Bacon is mentioned by name, but the reference is unmistakable. Pope Francis insists that humanity’s “irresponsible use and abuse” of creation has come about because we “have come to see ourselves as [the Earth’s] lords and masters, entitled to plunder her at will.” Not truth, but power lust, will be the prime motivation of these, the Earth’s “lords and masters”, or, as Ardley has put it, “not to know the world but to control it”: What was needed was for someone to point out clearly the ‘otherness’ of post-Galilean physical science, i.e. the fact that it is, in a sense, cut off from the rest of the world, and is the creation of man himself. The new science has no metaphysical foundations and no metaphysical implications. Kant had the clue to this ‘otherness’ in the categorial theory, but he took the rest of the world with him in the course of the revolution and hence only succeeded in the end in missing the point. Most people since then, rightly sceptical about Kant’s wholesale revolution, have been quite hostile to the Kantian system in general. Others, perhaps without realising it, have rewritten the revolution in their own terms, and thus have perpetuated Kant’s principal errors (as e.g. Wittgenstein in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus). A thorough sifting out of Kant has long been required in order to separate the gold from the dross. …. Kant’s mistake was to think that the world had to be transformed to know it. The truth is that the world may be transformed, if we so dictate, and then it is not to know the world but to control it. …. [End of quote] I went on to muse about a possible Ardleian connection: From what follows, I wonder if the pope - or at least White in his comments - may have read Ardley’s book. Dr. Ardley had (on p. 5) pointed out that there are two ways of going about the process of analyzing or dissecting something, depending on one’s purpose. And he well illustrated his point by comparing the practices of the anatomist and the butcher. When an anatomist dissects an animal, he traces out the real structure of the animal; he lays bare the veins, the nerves, the muscles, the organs, and so on. “He reveals the actual structure which is there before him waiting to be made manifest”. The butcher, on the other hand, is not concerned about the natural structure of the animal as he chops it up; he wants to cut up the carcass into joints suitable for domestic purposes. In his activities the butcher ruthlessly cleaves across the real structure laid bare so patiently by the anatomist. “The anatomist finds his structure, the butcher makes his”. Thus White: “Put another way, Pope Francis insists that the material world isn’t just mere stuff to be dissected, studied, manipulated, and then packaged off to be sold into service of human wants and needs”. And again: “The utilitarian mindset that treats creation as so much “raw material to be hammered into useful shape” inevitably leads us to see human beings through the same distorted lens”. White continues: The pope repeatedly warns against the presumption that technological advances, in themselves, constitute real human progress. In a typical passage, he writes, “There is a growing awareness that scientific and technological progress cannot be equated with the progress of humanity and history, a growing sense that the way to a better future lies elsewhere.” The pope writes critically of “irrational confidence in progress and human abilities.” He writes hopefully of a time when “we can finally leave behind the modern myth of unlimited material progress.” Nevertheless: This isn’t to say that Pope Francis is anti-technology or even, as some have suggested, anti-modern, but he is deeply critical of both our technological mindset and modernity’s utilitarian propensities. While he acknowledges with gratitude the benefits humanity has derived from modern technology, which has “remedied countless evils which used to harm and limit human beings,” he also calls into question — forcefully — the idea that utility is the proper measure of our interaction with creation. [End of quote] There may be a better way of doing things in the pursuit of what pope Francis calls an “integral ecology [which] transcend[s] the language of mathematics and biology, and take[s] us to the heart of what it is to be human”. A too rigid mathematics can make for a cruel master. Gavin Ardley’s Obituary [This Obituary of her father was kindly indicated to me by Gavin’s daughter, Elizabeth. Taken from: http://prudentia.auckland.ac.nz/index.php/prudentia/article/view/783/739]. We received earlier this year the sad news of Gavin Ardley’s death on 12 March [1992?]. Among other achievements in his life, he was a founder of Prudentia, and devoted to its fortunes a great deal of energy and affection. He had also been a member of the Department of Philosophy in the University of Auckland for twenty five years, retiring in 1981. Since we announced his death briefly in our last number, several people have written to us, recording their sorrow and respect. Dr Bruce Harris writes from Macquarie: I first met Gavin Ardley in England, and then knew him as a colleague at Auckland for many years. It soon became apparent that Gavin had much in common with the Classics staff, particularly through his deep attachment to Plato and his love of teaching the Platonic text in the setting of Greek philosophy generally. He valued the study of ancient thought not only for its inherent worth but as the source of those humane values he sought to practise in his own work as an academic. The intellectual history of the western world was for him a continuum from its ancient past, and his religious convictions were also closely linked with that history. His contributions to Prudentia reflected the breadth of his interests and his essential humanitas. He had only a limited sympathy with the linguistic philosophy fashionable in modern Philosophy departments, and would like to claim that it began as footnotes to Plato! The journal began from conversations we had in the late sixties, springing from a feeling that the usual journals in our fields did not sufficiently encourage cross-disciplinary interests. It was launched on a shoe-string budget, dependent entirely on the good offices of Mr Mortimer of the University Bindery. It is good to see that its title has been retained and that its scope is still wide — ‘the thought, literature, and history of the ancient world and their tradition’. In these days of relative neglect of the humanities in universities (at least in funding), it is important that those working in ancient studies and the source of our whole western intellectual tradition be seen to present a united front. Gavin Ardley certainly adorned that tradition in Auckland. Dr Dougal Blyth writes: I knew Gavin only in the final years of his long teaching career at Auckland, when he supervised a research essay on Aristotle’s Metaphysics for me, and taught courses on Plato’s Laws and Republic, which I attended as part of my M.A. in 1979-1980. I was one of a small group of postgraduate students Gavin then had, including Hermann de Zocte, Paul Beech and Carl Page, among others. Gavin’s method of teaching was leisurely, ordered, measured. He displayed in his own pedagogic manner the aversion to that ‘enthusiasm’, as he called it, which he thought so little of in passionate polemic. Among the scholarship on the importance of leisure in education and philosophy to which he directed our attention was a paper of his own on the role of play in Plato’s philosophy, and the balance to be had between the pedant and the boor (a very Aristotelian ideal). In teaching the Laws, he emphasized the appropriateness and significance, for the meaning of the dialogue, of its speakers and their context: old noblemen, with nothing better to do in the heat of the sun than to rest in the shade and discuss government; a conversation neither idle nor practical. Just such a conception seemed to govern the pace and direction of his readings from lecture notes and small group discussion, which form his postgraduate teaching took. I found Gavin’s mode of direction of my independent work congenial, useful and, again, relaxed. In suggesting additions to my bibliography, he drew upon a wide reading knowledge beyond the confines of recent analytical criticism of Aristotle. He delicately elicited slightly more precise formulations of my points, indicating questions yet to be addressed, in a manner almost suggestive of the possibility that if one was so inclined, one might just as well overlook them. One day I was surprised to hear him encourage ‘the clash of ideas’; another to find him asleep in his office armchair. After he retired, I saw Gavin relatively frequently about the campus and in the University Library, researching in the New Zealand and Pacific collection, during the few years before I left to study overseas. He certainly approved, from a distance, of my efforts with the classical tongues. I met him again when I returned on a visit in 1986. He walked more slowly and had more time to chat, quite willing to stop and hear about my intervening experiences and plans. His ever urbane yet humble manner, his cheery yet reserved demeanour, and his kind eye, along with a spirit seemingly embodying a model of gentlemanliness from another, more refined age, will remain as a cornerstone for me of my memories of those years as a student at the University of Auckland. John Morton, Emeritus Professor of Zoology, wrote in the University News: Born in 1915, Gavin Ardley graduated from Melbourne University in both physics and philosophy. For a spell he lectured in nuclear physics and studied the beta ray spectrum of Radium E. From war service in northern Australia, he went to Britain where he researched on Galileo. He came back in 1948 to teach science at Geelong Grammar School. 1954 to 1955 saw him back in Scotland as a master at Gordonstoun. After the war Gavin had a year’s working spell in the Australian outback, moving about by railway jigger. This was an experience he was to value all his life. It was in the bush camps, with their assorted human company, that he determined his future should be in philosophy. This was to bring him to Auckland in 1957. In a University where we could still easily get to know each other, Gavin Ardley was a colleague to be valued. He came to stand for some important things. He’d have been wryly amused if told this. Yet he felt an intense privilege in belonging to the University. Drawing from the past capital of generosity and freedom, he believed we were also there to extend it. He knew how to use time unhurriedly. He’d have deplored nothing so much as crowded classes and syllabi, with students thinking themselves there to be crammed. Universities, he was one to say, ‘have drifted dangerously towards utility, collapsing into being mere technical institutes’. Right through the years Gavin was to take seriously the ties of friendship. As president of the Senior Common Room, in the old Pembridge days across Princes St, he did much to create its early bonds. In the University his personal links went well beyond his own discipline, spacious enough as philosophy (still with psychology and politics) must at first have been. But Gavin’s command also of science, history, theology, English literature, international politics was wide and impressive. With an acute, inquiring mind, there never seemed to be the astringence that would have made him a specialist or, in the modern research sense, a deep-sampler. More than analytic, his world view was reconciling, unfashionable for a philosopher as it might seem. ‘Today’, he once lamented, ‘world views are optional extras, a matter of personal taste, carrying no authority. So we all just muddle along’. For Gavin Ardley, as with Catholic St Anselm, belief needed to precede understanding. On such foundation, any accounting for the world had to rest; never, he would insist, to be ‘comprehended’. But enough of it could be ‘apprehended’ to be enjoyed. It was with this enjoyment — ‘play’ in its best understanding — that he believed philosophy, or even the stringent, self-critical discipline of science, was to be done. For Gavin it involved, too, the versatility to get along with all kinds of people and fortunes. Gavin Ardley’s lectures were beautifully structured and delivered. He was among the last of us to keep the traditional gown. For the last lecture I heard him give (it was on Martin Buber), he’d been called in from retirement and began without introduction. Fascinated, a student broke in, ‘But who are you? Where do you come from?’ With bland enjoyment Gavin explained, ‘I’m a gardener’. In retirement he was devoted to his home garden in Parnell. With the same temper he seemed to cultivate his scholarly field, and to see the world. He never lost his fascination with travel, as in Europe and the Middle East. Above all, there was his abiding love of outback Australia. In Auckland for many years he was a keen stalwart of a tramping group. In political caste Gavin Ardley had to be accounted a fine vintage Tory. Get an ideology, he’d have said, and you’re dead. So he revered Burke. And he most of all distrusted intellectual Pharisaism, and what used to pass for ‘enthusiasm’. He disliked supposed thought that was ill-thought or shoddy. Like modern Oakeshott he might have accepted politics as a civil ‘conversation’. Carried on with integrity, it could occasionally be serviceable to the world. Gavin’s interests in policy and diplomacy went almost globe-wide. As its president, he was to bring Auckland’s Institute International Affairs to a new level of life, with a choice of exciting contemporary speakers. Of his writings, the most pleasurable to a layperson is perhaps his Renovation of Berkeley's Philosophy (1968). Just as lucid was the early book Aquinas and Kant: the Foundation of Modern Science (1949). He jointly founded and edited the classics/ philosophy periodical Prudentia. Here I recall his elegant little essay on Aristotle’s respect for particulars and the diversity of things; it showed me — inter alia — why Aristotle is still the prototypal biologist. Almost to the close of his life Gavin Ardley kept his Common Room ties alive. Where else, but in the opportunity of such exchange, was the centre of a university? He was a generous man that books read, good talk, and the silence of the outback had all contributed to form. Like his own notion of the philosopher, he was himself a ‘grave-merry man on the side of common sense’. In his retired years we’d know where to find him, coming in to Old Government House late on Fridays with the familiar black beret Hilaire Belloc might have worn. As the years drew in, these visits got fewer. I wish that, on those last Fridays, I’d turned up more often. ….

US Founding Fathers were hardly Christian

“Twenty times in the course of my late reading, have I been upon the point of breaking out, ‘This would be the best of all possible Worlds, if there were no Religion in it!!!’.” John Adams Steven Morris has written (1995): https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1995-08-03-me-30974-story.html#:~:text=According%20to%20this%20Orwellian%20revision,the%20relevance%20of%20the%20Bible. America’s Unchristian Beginnings: Founding Fathers: Most, despite preachings of our pious right, were deists who rejected the divinity of Jesus. The Christian right is trying to rewrite the history of the United States as part of its campaign to force its view of religion on others who ask merely to be left alone. According to this Orwellian revision, the Founding Fathers were devout Christians who envisioned a Christian nation. Not true. The early presidents and patriots were generally deists or Unitarians, believing in some form of impersonal Providence but rejecting the divinity of Jesus and the relevance of the Bible. * Thomas Paine, pamphleteer whose manifestoes encouraged the faltering spirits of the country and aided materially in winning the War of Independence: “I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. Each of those churches accuse the other of unbelief; and for my own part, I disbelieve them all.” * George Washington, first President: He seems to have had the characteristic unconcern of the 18th-Century deist for the forms and creeds of institutional religions. Although he often referred to Providence as an impersonal force, remote and abstract, he never declared himself to be a Christian, either in contemporary reports or his voluminous correspondence. Washington championed the cause of freedom from religious intolerance and compulsion. When John Murray, a Universalist who denied the existence of hell, was invited to become an Army chaplain, other chaplains petitioned Washington to reject him. Instead, Washington gave him the appointment. On his deathbed, Washington uttered no words of a religious nature and did not call for a clergyman to be in attendance. * John Adams, second President: Drawn to the study of law but facing pressure from his father to become a clergyman, he wrote that he found among lawyers “a noble air and gallant achievements” but among the clergy, the “pretended sanctity of some absolute dunces.” Late in life he wrote, “Twenty times in the course of my late reading, have I been upon the point of breaking out, ‘This would be the best of all possible Worlds, if there were no Religion in it!!!’ ” It was during Adams’ presidency that the Senate ratified the Treaty of Peace and Friendship, which states in Article XI that “The Government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion.” This treaty with the Islamic state of Tripoli had been written and concluded by Joel Barlow during Washington’s Administration. * Thomas Jefferson, third President and author of the Declaration of Independence: “I trust that there is not a young man now living in the United States who will not die an Unitarian.” He referred to the Book of Revelations as “the ravings of a maniac” and in further criticism of the Bible he wrote: “The Christian priesthood, finding the doctrines of Christ leveled to every understanding and too plain to need explanation, saw, in the mysticisms of Plato, materials with which they might build up an artificial system which might, from its indistinctness, admit everlasting controversy, give employment for their order, and introduce it to profit, power and preeminence. The doctrines which flowed from the lips of Jesus himself are within the comprehension of a child; but thousands of volumes have not yet explained the Platonisms engrafted on them: and for this obvious reason that nonsense can never be explained.” * James Madison, fourth President and father of the Constitution: “Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise,” he wrote. “During almost 15 centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution.” * Ethan Allen, whose capture of Ft. Ticonderoga while commanding the Green Mountain Boys helped inspire the country to pursue the War of Independence: “That Jesus Christ was not God is evident from his own words.” Allen also wrote that he was generally “Denominated a deist, the reality of which I never disputed, being conscious I am no Christian.” Allen stopped his own wedding ceremony when the judge asked if he promised “to live with Fanny Buchanan agreeable to the laws of God.” Allen refused to answer until the judge agreed that the God referred to was the god of nature, and the laws those “written in the great book of Nature.” * Benjamin Franklin, delegate to the Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention: “As to Jesus of Nazareth, my Opinion of whom you particularly desire, I think the System of Morals and his Religion . . . has received various corruption changes, and I have, with most of the present Dissenters in England, some Doubts as to his divinity; tho’ it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it, and think it needless to busy myself with it now, when I expect soon an Opportunity of knowing the Truth with less Trouble.” He died a month later, a deist, not a Christian. See also these articles: Benjamin Franklin linked to the occult https://www.academia.edu/62202808/Benjamin_Franklin_linked_to_the_occult and: Islam and early America (6) Islam and early America | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu

Julius Caesar legends borrowed, in part, from life of Jesus Christ

by Damien F. Mackey “[Virgil] drew upon the saying of the Hebrew prophets concerning the coming Messiah and applied them to Augustus, the first emperor, to make him “scion of a god”.” C. McDowell In 2004 I wrote an article, “The Lost Cultural Foundations of Western Civilisation”, from which has developed this site: http://westerncivilisationamaic.blogspot.com.au Towards the end of this article I included a section titled, “Jesus Christ and Julius Caesar”, showing what I believed to be Roman plagiarisation of the New Testament – Greco-Roman appropriation of Hebrew-Israelite (Jewish) culture in its various forms being the subject matter of this article and of the aforementioned site. Here is that brief and not yet fully developed article: …. 2. Jesus Christ and Julius Caesar We read at the very beginning of this article that Virgil’s Aeneid “is an immortal poem at the heart of Western life and culture.” But it too appears to have been inspired by the Hebrew Bible. According to C. McDowell [“The Egyptian Prince Moses”, Proc. Third Seminar of Catastrophism and Ancient History, C and AH Press, CA, 1986), p. 2]: The Romans, with the advent of the creation of their empire, wanted to give great antiquity to their patriarchs. The first major effort along this line was put forth by Virgil in his Aeneid. This Roman “bible” portrays the imperial city as having been founded and enhanced according to a divine plan: Rome’s mission was to bring peace and civilization to the world. Cyrus Gordon has compared Virgil’s accounts of the royal house of Rome with the New Testament account of the Messianic office as expressed in Jesus of Nazareth. Both Roman and New Testament writers drew upon the Old Testament. Virgil used the Old Testament account of Israel’s national experience as a literary model to recount Rome’s history. But he went much further. He drew upon the saying of the Hebrew prophets concerning the coming Messiah and applied them to Augustus, the first emperor, to make him “scion of a god”. The divinely sired ruler who descended from an ancient line was to rule the world in a golden age. Thus the new theology of Rome was set forth. It was heavily infused with theology appropriated and adapted from the Old Testament of the Jews. This explanation by McDowell may, in part, help to account for the distinct parallels now to be discussed between history’s most famous J.C’s – Jesus Christ and Julius Caesar – both referred to as the greatest man the earth has ever produced [Grant, M., Julius Caesar, Weidenfield and Nicholson, London, 1969, Foreword p. 15: “A hundred or even fifty years ago, Gaius Julius Caesar (J.C.) was variously described as the greatest man of action who ever lived, and even as ‘the entire and perfect man’.”]. Whilst in most aspects Jesus and Julius could not be any more different, there are nevertheless certain incredibly close likenesses, especially in regard to their violent deaths. Both Jesus and Julius were born into poor circumstances; but their ancestry was one of blue blood: Davidic in the case of Jesus, Patrician in the case of Caesar. Their births were notable, a miraculous Virgin birth for Jesus, Julius’ birth giving rise to the term ‘Caesarian’. Julius belonged to the populares, and Jesus was likewise for the common people. “The tax collectors”, said Cicero, “have never been loyal, and are now very friendly with Caesar” [as cited ibid., p. 161]. Likewise, the Pharisees were critical of Jesus for eating with “tax collectors and sinners” (Matthew 9:11). Trial and Death Both Jesus and Julius had spoken of an early death. Both had entered their capital city (Jerusalem, Rome) in triumph, on an ancient feast-day (Passover, Lupercalia), shortly before mid-March, and had been hailed as “king”. This had caused anger and had the plotters conspiring. But there was also an ambivalence about the kingship. Caesar, though a king in deed, had rejected the diadem thrice. And Pilate had tried to get to the bottom of Jesus’ kingship: ‘So you are a king, then?’ (John 18:37); eventually having written in three languages: “Jesus of Nazareth, the king of the Jews” (19:19). The prime mover of Caesar’s fatal stabbing was the soldier, Gaius Cassius Longinus, the last name (Longinus) being the very name that tradition has associated with the Roman soldier who rent Christ’s side with a spear (19:34). The zealot amongst the conspirators was the intense young Brutus, in whom Dante at least had obviously discerned a similarity with Judas, having located “Brutus and Cassius with Judas Iscariot in Hell” [as cited by Grant, op. cit., p. 257]. Even Christ’s words to Judas in Gethsemane, ‘So you would betray the Son of Man with a kiss?’ (Luke 22:48), resemble what is alleged to have been Caesar’s anguished last cry: re-made by Shakespeare as ‘Et tu Brute?’. There is the premonitory dream warning by the woman (cf. Matthew 27:19). There may even be a confused reminiscence of Barabbas: “Caesar … staged an elaborate legal charade against an old man called Rabirius [Barabbas?] … [who] had been allegedly implicated in … murder … not interested in having the old Rabirius actually executed” [ibid., p. 51]. (Cf. Matthew 27:15-23). On the Ides of March Julius Caesar is supposed to have died, like Jesus, riddled with wounds. The ‘heretical’ question must now be asked: Did Julius Caesar really exist? Or was his ‘life’ merely a mixture of his supposed nephew Augustus, who also bore the name Julius Caesar, and aspects of the life of Jesus Christ according to Virgil’s biblical borrowings? And perhaps other composites as well? “Portrait busts are not a safe guide to [Julius Caesar’s] appearance, since they may or may not date from his life-time” [ibid., p. 245]. Do we thus have any primary evidence for Caesar, as apparently we do not for Socrates? Do we have anything for Jesus Christ for that matter? I think that we may have a most precious artifact of his in the enigmatic ‘Shroud of Turin’ [See outstanding article “The Mystery of the Shroud” in National Geographic, June 1980, pp. 730f. Ian Wilson has disputed the 1988 carbon dating of the Shroud in The Blood and the Shroud (Weidenfield and Nicholson, London, 1998), and has traced the Shroud back historically to the early Christian centuries]. [End of article] Further concerning the Shroud, see e.g. my article: Resurrection and the Shroud: ‘a New Dimension’, ‘a New Science’. https://www.academia.edu/11838754/Resurrection_and_the_Shroud_a_New_Dimension_a_New_Science_ Regarding those “perhaps other composites as well” referred to above, from which the character of ‘Julius Caesar’ may have been borrowed, I can now add that one of these “composites” could well have been Alexander the Great. Consider the following compelling comparisons, taken from: http://www.livius.org/aj-al/alexander/alexander_t65.html Alexander and Caesar In Antiquity, a boy who wanted to play a role of some importance in his town, had to visit a rhetorical school, where he learned how to speak and behave in public. Often, a teacher would ask his pupils to make a speech on a historical theme, so that they could show their skills as a rhetor and their ability to deal with historical sources. A well-known theme was the comparison of Alexander the Great and the Roman commander Gaius Julius Caesar (100-44). The following text was written by the Greek historian Appian of Alexandria (c.95-c.165) and is a part of his History of the Civil wars (2.149-154). It is the end of his description of Caesar's career, and Appian, a Greek, gives the Roman the ultimate compliment: he was comparable to Alexander. The translation was made by John Carter. Thus Caesar died on the day they call the Ides of March, about the middle of Anthesterion, the day which the seer said he would not outlive. In the morning Caesar made fun of him, and said, 'The Ides have come.' Unabashed, the seer replied, 'But not gone', and Caesar, ignoring not only the predictions of this sort given him with such confidence by the seer, but also the other portents I mentioned earlier, left the house and met his death. He was in the fifty-sixth year of his life, a man who was extremely lucky in everything, gifted with a divine spark, disposed to great deeds, and fittingly compared with Alexander. They were both supremely ambitious, warlike, rapid in executing their decisions, careless of danger, unsparing of their bodies, and believers not so much in strategy as in daring and good luck. One of them made a long journey across the desert in the hot season [1] to the shrine of Ammon, and when the sea was pushed back crossed the Pamphylian gulf by divine power, for heaven held back the deep for him until he passed, and it rained for him while he was on the march. In India he ventured on an unsailed sea. He also led the way up a scaling-ladder, leapt unaccompanied on to the enemy wall, and suffered thirteen wounds. He was never defeated and brought all his campaigns to an end after one or at most two pitched battles. In Europe he conquered much foreign territory and subdued the Greeks, who are a people extremely difficult to govern and fond of their independence, and believe that they had never obeyed anyone before him except Philip, and that for only a short time on the pretext that he was their leader in a war. As for Asia, he overran virtually the whole of it. To sum up Alexander's luck and energy in a sentence, he conquered the lands that he saw, and died intent on tackling the rest. In Caesar's case, the Adriatic yielded by becoming calm and navigable in the middle of winter. He also crossed the western ocean in an unprecedented attempt to attack the Britons, and ordered his captains to wreck their ships by running them ashore on the British cliffs. He forced his way alone in a small boat at night against another stormy sea, when he ordered the captain to spread the sails and take courage not from the waves but from Caesar's good fortune. On many occasions he was the only man to spring forward from a terrified mass of others and attack the enemy. The Gauls alone he faced thirty times in battle, finally conquering 400 of their tribes, who the Romans felt to be so menacing that in one of their laws concerning immunity from military service for priests and older men there was a clause 'unless the Gauls invade' - in which case priests and older men were to serve. In the Alexandrian war, when he was trapped by himself on a bridge and his life was in danger, he threw off his purple cloak and jumped into the sea. The enemy hunted for him, but he swam a long way under water without being seen, drawing breath only at intervals, until he approached a friendly ship, when he stretched out his hands, revealed himself, and was rescued. When he became involved in these civil wars, whether from fear, as he himself used to say, or from a desire for power, he carne up against the best generals of his time and several great armies which were not composed of uncivilized peoples, as before, but of Romans at the peak of their success and fortune, and he too needed only one or two pitched battles in each case to detect them. Not that his troops were unbeaten like Alexander's, since they were humiliated by the Gauls in the great disaster which overtook them when Cotta and Titurius were in command, in Hispania Petreius and Afranius had them hemmed in under virtual siege, at Dyrrhachium and in Africa they were well and truly routed, and in Hispania they were terrified of the younger Pompey. But Caesar himself was impossible to terrify and was victorious at the end of every campaign. By the use of force and the conferment of favor, and much more surely than Sulla and with a much stronger hand, he overcame the might of the Roman state, which already lorded it over land and sea from the far west to the river Euphrates, and he made himself king against the wishes of the Romans, even if he did not receive that title. And he died, like Alexander, planning fresh campaigns. The pair of them had armies, too, which were equally enthusiastic and devoted to them and resembled wild beasts when it came to battle, but were frequently difficult to manage and made quarrelsome by the hardships they endured. When their leaders were dead, the soldiers mourned them, missed them, and granted them divine honors in a similar way. Both men were well formed in body and of fine appearance. Each traced his lineage back to Zeus, the one being a descendant of Aeacus and Heracles, the other of Anchises and Aphrodite. They were unusually ready to fight determined opponents, but very quick to offer settlement. They liked to pardon their captives, gave them help as well as pardon, and wanted nothing except simply to be supreme. To this extent they can be closely compared, but it was with unequal resources that they set out to seek power. Alexander possessed a kingdom that had been firmly established under Philip, while Caesar was a private individual, from a noble and celebrated family, but very short of money. Neither of them took any notice of omens which referred to them, nor showed any displeasure with the seers who prophesied their deaths. On more than one occasion the omens were similar and indicated a similar end for both. Twice each was confronted with a lobeless liver. The first time it indicated extreme danger. In Alexander's case this was among the Oxydracans, when after he had climbed on to the enemy's wall at the head of his Macedonian troops the scaling-ladder broke, and he was left isolated on top. He leapt audaciously inwards towards the enemy, where he was badly beaten around the chest and neck with a massive club and was about to collapse, when the Macedonians, who had broken down the gates in panic, just managed to rescue him. In Caesar's case it happened in Hispania, when his army was seized with terror when it was drawn up to face the younger Pompey and would not engage the enemy. Caesar ran out in front of everyone into the space between the two armies and took 200 throwing-spears on his shield, until he too was rescued by his army, which was swept forward by shame and apprehension. Thus the first lobeless victim brought both of them into mortal danger, but the second brought death itself, as follows. The seer Peithagoras told Apollodorus, who was afraid of Alexander and Hephaestion and was sacrificing, not to be afraid, because both of them would soon be out of the way. When Hephaestion promptly died, Apollodorus was nervous that there might be some conspiracy against the king, and revealed the prophecy to him. Alexander, smiling, asked Peithagoras himself what the omen meant, and when Peithagoras replied that it meant his life was over, he smiled again and still thanked Apollodorus for his concern and the seer for his frankness. When Caesar was about to enter the senate for the last time, as I described not many pages back, the same omens appeared. He scoffed at them, saying they had been the same in Hispania, and when the seer said that he had indeed been in danger on that occasion, and that the omen was now even more deadly, he made some concession to this forthrightness by repeating the sacrifice, until finally he became irritated by being delayed by the priests and went in to his death. And the same thing happened to Alexander, who was returning with his army from India to Babylon and was already approaching the city when the Chaldaeans begged him to postpone his entry for the moment. He quoted the line 'That prophet is the best, who guesses rightly' but the Chaldaeans begged him a second time not to enter with his army looking towards the setting sun, but to go round and take the city while facing the rising sun. Apparently he relented at this and began to make a circuit, but when he became annoyed with the marshes and swampy ground disregarded this second warning too and made his entrance facing west. Anyway, he entered Babylon, and sailed down the Euphrates as far as the river Pallacotta which takes the water of the Euphrates away into swamps and marshes and prevents the irrigation of the Assyrian country. They say that as he was considering the damming of this river, and taking a boat to look, he poked fun at the Chaldaeans because he had safely entered and safely sailed from Babylon. Yet he was destined to die as soon as he returned there. Caesar, too, indulged in mockery of alike sort. The seer had foretold the day of his death, saying that he would not survive the Ides of March. When the day came Caesar mocked the seer and said, 'The Ides have come', but he still died that day. In this way, then, they made similar fun of the omens which related to themselves, displayed no anger with the seers who announced these omens to them, and were none the less caught according to the letter of the prophecies. In the field of knowledge they were also enthusiastic lovers of wisdom, whether traditional, Greek or foreign. The Brahmans, who are considered to be the astrologers and wise men of the Indians like the Magians among the Persians, were questioned by Alexander on the subject of Indian learning, and Caesar investigated Egyptian lore when he was in Egypt establishing Cleopatra on the throne. As a result he improved much in the civilian sphere at Rome, and brought the year, which was still of variable length due to the occasional insertion of intercalary months which were calculated according to the lunar calendar, into harmony with the course of the sun, according to Egyptian observance. [End of quote] Carotta’s Extraordinary Claim Such apparent close similarities between Jesus Christ and Julius Caesar has a scholar named Francesco Carotta perceived that he has gone so far as to claim that: Jesus was Caesar. Whilst this is not my own view, which is rather that “Jesus Christ was the Model for some legends surrounding Julius Caesar”, the similarities found by Carotta are indeed intriguing. Some of these I have already listed above. Carotta, not failing to notice the same sorts of stunning parallels between the two lives, has written a book which is the other way round to my article, that Julius Caesar was, in part, based on Jesus Christ. For Francesco Carotta, Jesus Christ was instead based on Julius Caesar. Whilst I believe that Carotta is wrong, I am intrigued that he, too, has attempted to fuse the two lives. Here is one review of Carotta’s fascinating book: http://www.prnewswire.co.uk/news-releases/jesus-was-caesar-new-book-by-philosopher-and-linguist-francesco-carotta-claims-that-the-real-identity-of-jesus-christ-has-been-discovered-154575075.html – Carotta: ‘Everything of the Story of Jesus can be Found in the Biography of Caesar.’ The Italian-German linguist and philosopher Francesco Carotta proves in his book Jesus was Caesar that the story of Jesus Christ has its origin in Roman sources. In more than fifteen years of investigation Carotta has found the traces which lead to the Julian origin of Christianity. He concludes that the story of Jesus is based on the narrative of the life of Julius Caesar. …. 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. – Both Caesar and Jesus start their rising careers in neighboring states in the north: Gallia and Galilee. – Both have to cross a fateful river: the Rubicon and the Jordan. Once across the rivers, they both come across a patron/rival: Pompeius and John the Baptist, and their first followers: Antonius and Curio on the one hand and Peter and Andrew on the other. – Both are continually on the move, finally arriving at the capital, Rome and Jerusalem, where they at first triumph, yet subsequently undergo their passion. – Both have good relationships with women and have a special relationship with one particular woman, Caesar with Cleopatra and Jesus with Magdalene. – Both have encounters at night, Caesar with Nicomedes of Bithynia, Jesus with Nicodemus of Bethany. – Both have an affinity to ordinary people - and both run afoul of the highest authorities: Caesar with the Senate, Jesus with the Sanhedrin. – Both are contentious characters, but show praiseworthy clemency as well: the clementia Caesaris and Jesus’ Love-thy-enemy. – Both have a traitor: Brutus and Judas. And an assassin who at first gets away: the other Brutus and Barabbas. And one who washes his hands of it: Lepidus and Pilate. – Both are accused of making themselves kings: King of the Romans and King of the Jews. Both are dressed in red royal robes and wear a crown on their heads: a laurel wreath and a crown of thorns. – Both get killed: Caesar is stabbed with daggers, Jesus is crucified, but with a stab wound in his side. – Jesus as well as Caesar hang on a cross. For a reconstruction of the crucifixion of Caesar, see: http://www.carotta.de/subseite/texte/jwc_e/crux.html#images – Both die on the same respective dates of the year: Caesar on the Ides (15 th) of March, Jesus on the 15 th of Nisan. – Both are deified posthumously: as Divus Iulius and as Jesus Christ. – Caesar and Jesus also use the same words, e.g.: Caesar’s famous Latin ‘Veni, vidi, vici’-I came, I saw, I conquered-is in the Gospel transmitted into: ‘I came, washed and saw’, whereby Greek enipsa, ‘I washed’, replaces enikisa, ‘I conquered’. …. [End of quote] To which we find this rejoinder: “Good try, boys. But I think that our site provides copious evidence for the fact that the Greeks and the Romans tended to be the plagiarisers”. And I would fully agree with this last observation, having by now written many articles on what I consider to have been the Greco-Roman appropriation of Hebrew (Jewish) culture and civilisation at various levels. To give but a recent example of this: First philosopher, Thales, likely a Greek borrowing from Joseph of Egypt (3) First philosopher, Thales, likely a Greek borrowing from Joseph of Egypt | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu Hellenistic Influence A common theme of mine has been the constant Greco-Roman appropriations of various aspects of ancient Near Eastern culture and civilisation – most notably that of the Hebrews. The younger histories borrowing from the vastly older ones. But might not the younger Roman Republican ‘history’ have also absorbed, and appropriated, certain elements of the widespread Hellenistic empire? Biblically (I accept the Catholic canon), Rome emerges very late, but with glowing praise. I refer to 1 Maccabees 8, in which Judas Maccabeus makes a treaty with Rome. The conventional date for this is c. 160 BC, but I would imagine that this will need to be, through astute revisionism, significantly lowered. The Maccabean writer eulogises both Roman military might and Roman fair dealing (1-13): Judas had heard of the reputation of the Romans. They were valiant fighters and acted amiably to all who took their side. They established a friendly alliance with all who applied to them. He was also told of their battles and the brave deeds that they performed against the Gauls, conquering them and forcing them to pay tribute; and what they did in Spain to get possession of the silver and gold mines there. By planning and persistence they subjugated the whole region, although it was very remote from their own. They also subjugated the kings who had come against them from the far corners of the earth until they crushed them and inflicted on them severe defeat. The rest paid tribute to them every year. Philip and Perseus, king of the Macedonians, and the others who opposed them in battle they overwhelmed and subjugated. Antiochus the Great, king of Asia, who fought against them with a hundred and twenty elephants and with cavalry and chariots and a very great army, was defeated by them. They took him alive and obliged him and the kings who succeeded him to pay a heavy tribute, to give hostages and to cede Lycia, Mysia, and Lydia from among their best provinces. The Romans took these from him and gave them to King Eumenes. When the Greeks planned to come and destroy them, the Romans discovered it, and sent against the Greeks a single general who made war on them. Many were wounded and fell, and the Romans took their wives and children captive. They plundered them, took possession of their land, tore down their strongholds and reduced them to slavery even to this day. All the other kingdoms and islands that had ever opposed them they destroyed and enslaved; with their friends, however, and those who relied on them, they maintained friendship. They subjugated kings both near and far, and all who heard of their fame were afraid of them. Those whom they wish to help and to make kings, they make kings; and those whom they wish, they depose; and they were greatly exalted. This terrifying military strength and domination was, however, modified by wise government (vv. 14-16): Yet with all this, none of them put on a diadem or wore purple as a display of grandeur. But they made for themselves a senate chamber, and every day three hundred and twenty men took counsel, deliberating on all that concerned the people and their well-being. They entrust their government to one man every year, to rule over their entire land, and they all obey that one, and there is no envy or jealousy among them. Unfortunately, the Maccabean account of the journey to Rome for Treaty purposes by “Eupolemus, son of John, son of Accos, and Jason, son of Eleazar” (vv. 17-32) does not include any Roman names whatsoever. “Later, Simon sent Numenius to Rome with the gift of a large gold shield weighing half a ton, to confirm the Jews’ alliance with the Romans” (14:24). Judas Maccabeus was now dead and his brother Simon was High Priest. Conventionally, this second Jewish approach to Rome is dated about 20 years later (c. 140 BC) than the one at the time of Judas. Finally, this time, we are given a Roman name, “Lucius”, a consul, most generally thought to have been Lucius Calpurnius Piso. http://biblehub.com/topical/l/lucius.htm A Roman consul who is said (1 Maccabees 15:16;) to have written a letter to Ptolemy Euergetes securing to Simon the high priest and to the Jews the protection of Rome. As the praenomen only of the consul is given, there has been much discussion as to the person intended. The weight of probability has been assigned to Lucius Calpurnius Piso, who was one of the consuls in 139-138 B.C., the fact of his praenomen being Cneius and not Lucius being explained by an error in transcription and the fragmentary character of the documents. The authority of the Romans not being as yet thoroughly established in Asia, they were naturally anxious to form alliances with the kings of Egypt and with the Jews to keep Syria in check. The imperfections that are generally admitted in the transcription of the Roman letter are not such as in any serious degree to invalidate the authority of the narrative in 1 Maccabees. The Maccabean text reads as follows (15:5-24): Meanwhile, Numenius and those with him arrived in Jerusalem from Rome with the following letter addressed to various kings and countries: From Lucius, consul of the Romans, to King Ptolemy, greetings. A delegation from our friends and allies the Jews has come to us to renew the earlier treaty of friendship and alliance. They were sent by the High Priest Simon and the Jewish people, and they have brought as a gift a gold shield weighing half a ton. So we have decided to write to various kings and countries urging them not to harm the Jews, their towns, or their country in any way. They must not make war against the Jews or give support to those who attack them. We have decided to accept the shield and grant them protection. Therefore if any traitors escape from Judea and seek refuge in your land, hand them over to Simon the High Priest, so that he may punish them according to Jewish law. Lucius wrote the same letter to King Demetrius, to Attalus, Ariarathes, and Arsaces, and to all the following countries: Sampsames, Sparta, Delos, Myndos, Sicyon, Caria, Samos, Pamphylia, Lycia, Halicarnassus, Rhodes, Phaselis, Cos, Side, Aradus, Gortyna, Cnidus, Cyprus, and Cyrene. A copy of the letter was also sent to Simon the High Priest. The Divine Julius That the ‘Julius Caesar’ that has come down to us exhibits some marked Hellenistic aspects is apparent from the account of Caesar given by N. Fields in his Warlords of Republican Rome. Caesar versus Pompey (2008). Fields, writing in his section, “The Second Dictator”, finds himself confronted with those vexed questions regarding Caesar’s status and intentions (pp. 175-176): [Caesar’s] acceptance of the title dictator perpetuus demonstrates that Caesar did intend to retain power indefinitely, but this then raise two further extraordinary questions. First, was Caesar seeking a quasi-divine status, and second, was he going to convert the perpetual dictatorship into a hereditary monarchy? Even to this day both of these points are fiercely argued about by academics. Balsdon, for instance, coolly argues that the notion that Caesar hankered after divine status and kingship was the invention and elaboration of his assassins. On the other hand, others such as Taylor and Weinstock earnestly believe that Caesar was seeking divine status, that is to say, a Hellenistic-type monarch, despotic and absolute, worshipped with god-like honours …. N. Fields becomes more explicit in his section, “The ‘Divine King’”. Following the battle of Munda, Fields writes (pp. 176-177): … the Senate awarded Caesar another heap of honours in his absence. Again this included an ivory statue, which was inscribed ‘To the undefeated God’ and carried in procession with a statue of Victory at the opening of all games in the circus. The inscription itself had strong overtones of Alexander the Great and admittedly this is a difficult one to explain away, especially as the master of Rome did not over-rule the Senate this time. Post-Alexander But such excessive honour also smacked of the post-Alexander Ptolemies (p. 177): “Naturally Caesar was worshipped in the Greek east, where Hellenistic monarchs (and powerful Romans before Caesar) had been typically granted divine status while alive, the most celebrated being the Ptolemies of Egypt”. Without my having yet done any really thorough research on the matter, I would nonetheless anticipate that Hellenistic history - just like I have shown to be the case with Egyptian, Assyro-Babylonian and Persian history - will require significant streamlining. How many of those many Ptolemies and Cleopatras are actually repetitions? And how much belongs to Greece, and how much to Rome? Contemporaneous with the famous Cicero (c. 106-43 BC), or “Chickpea”, for example, was a Ptolemaïc “Chickpea”, Ptolemy IX Lathyrus (= Chickpea). There is much sorting out to be done here. N. Fields’ account of the enigmatic Caesar is full of questions, often with Hellenistic answers. P. 178: Herein lies a possible solution to the question of Caesar’s so-called divine status. It is certainly true that the divine worship of Hellenistic monarchs became the model for the Roman emperors, and thus we could argue that Caesar, dictator for life, was the first example of this practice. …. King of Rome? But why did Caesar need the more glamorous but invidious title of rex, especially as he now held all the power he required by ruling Rome through the position of dictator perpetuus? Syme believes it is not necessary to accept that he sought to establish a Hellenistic-style monarchy, because the dictatorship was sufficient …. Did Julius Caesar really exist? Stay posted. Divine Augustus Finally, the ‘Julius Caesar’ that has come down to us is also found to have similarities remarkably akin to those of that historically verifiable Julius Caesar, Octavianus Augustus. The Lord of History and the Emperor of Rome Jesus Christ, whose birth occurred during the reign of emperor (Julius Caesar) Augustus, is the absolute Fulcrum of history. He is the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. Professor P. Kreeft, writing of Jesus as the philosopher par excellence, has reminded us that, owing to Jesus, history is now divided between what came before his birth and whatever is subsequent to it (The Philosophy of Jesus): Amazingly, no one ever seems to have looked at Jesus as a philosopher, or his teaching as philosophy. Yet no one in history has ever had a more radically new philosophy, or made more of a difference to philosophy, than Jesus. He divided all human history into two, into "B.C." and "A.D."; and the history of philosophy is crucial to human history, since philosophy is crucial to man; so how could He not also divide philosophy? http://www.staugustine.net/our-books/books/the-philosophy-of-jesus He, as Paul tells us (Philippians 2:6-7): Who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God something to be grasped. Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness; and found human in appearance …. And He ‘found that human appearance’, as a helpless baby, during the reign of the aforesaid emperor Augustus (Luke 2:1-7. NIV): The Birth of Jesus In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) And everyone went to their own town to register. So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them. …. He, whose kingdom is Truth, came to correct every manner of human falsehood. Replying to the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, Jesus proclaimed (John 18:37): ‘You say that I am a king. In fact, the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me’. The Lord of the Cosmos and the Alpha and Omega of Creation, will even defer, in part, to the lord of empire and kingdoms (Mark 12:17): “Jesus said to them, ‘Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s’. And they marvelled at him”. Yet this was He about whom: http://zimmerman.catholic.ac/ Paul instructs us that God made our existence take its origin in Christ Jesus as our Alpha; that God created all things in and through the First Born, the Incarnate Christ; through that same Christ who is now fully in charge of this universe; who, when He will finalize His work of submitting the Cosmos to Himself, will deliver it back to God: "When everything is subjected to him, then the Son himself will [also] be subjected to the One who subjected everything to him, so that God may be all in all" (1 Cor 14:28). Exploring Comparisons: ‘Julius Caesar’ and Octavianus Some of the ‘Julius Caesar’, ostensibly the ‘perfect man’, that has come down to us may have picked up elements from the Divine Jesus (Ecce Homo), the God-Man; and from the Hellenistic king worship; the undefeatable Alexander the Great, the military genius. But even if that were so, does it mean that there was not an actual Julius Caesar apart from all of this? In the case of my studies of the Prophet Mohammed, I eventually came to the firm conclusion that ‘he’, a composite biblical character, did not exist in reality as a C7th AD person, and that ‘his’ biography actually plays havoc with real history: Biography of the Prophet Mohammed (Muhammad) Seriously Mangles History (3) Biography of the Prophet Mohammed (Muhammad) Seriously Mangles History | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu And that the ‘Mohammed’ that has come down to us was based largely - at least up until the time of ‘his’ marriage - upon Tobias (my Job), the son of Tobit. Is the same type of conclusion to be reached about ‘Julius Caesar’, that he was a non-real composite, from whose biography a significant piece of presumed Roman history may need to be rescued? Military Campaigns These took ‘Julius Caesar’ to the same places wherein Octavianus would campaign: namely, Gaul; Britain; Greece; Spain; Africa (Egypt), with a famous civil war also involved. Julius Caesar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_campaigns_of_Julius_Caesar The military campaigns of Julius Caesar constituted both the Gallic War (58 BC-51 BC) and Caesar's civil war (50 BC-45 BC). They followed Caesar's consulship (chief magistracy) in 59 BC, which had been highly controversial. The Gallic War mainly took place in what is now France. In 55 and 54 BC, he invaded Britain, although he made little headway. The Gallic War ended with complete Roman victory at the Battle of Alesia. This was followed by the civil war, during which time Caesar chased his rivals to Greece, decisively defeating them there. He then went to Egypt, where he defeated the Egyptian pharaoh and put Cleopatra on the throne. He then finished off his Roman opponents in Africa and Spain. Once his campaigns were over, he served as Roman Dictator until his assassination on March 15, 44 BC. These wars were critically important in the transition from the Roman Republic to the Roman Empire. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman%E2%80%93Parthian_Wars Julius Caesar elaborated plans for a campaign against Parthia, but his assassination averted the war. Octavianus http://applet-magic.com/caesaraugustus.htm • 46 BCE: Octavius accompanied Julius Caesar in the public precession celebrating the victory of Caesar over his opponents in Africa. • 45 BCE: Octavius accompanied Caesar on his military expedition to Spain to defeat and destroy the sons of Pompey, his defeated rival, who were trying to perpetuate their father's opposition to Caesar. • 44 BCE: …. The troops of Octavius joined with troops which the Senate has at its command. The combined forces drove Antony out of Italy into Gaul. In the battle with Anthony's forces the two elected Consuls of Rome were killed. Octavius's troops demanded that the Senate confer the title of Consul on Octavius. Octavius was officially recognized as the son of Julius Caesar. He then took the name Gaius Julius Caesar (Octavianus). He was more generally known as Octavian during this period. • 42 BCE: The Senate deemed Julius Caesar as having been a god. This enhanced Octavian's status still further. Antony and Octavian undertook a military expedition to the East to defeat Brutus and Cassius. In two battles at Philippi the troops of Brutus and Cassius were defeated and Brutus and Cassius killed themselves. The Triumvirate then divided up the Empire. Anthony got the East and Gaul. Lepidus got Africa and Octavian got the West except for Italy which was to be under common control of all three. • 31 BCE: Antony decided to bring his forces to the western side of Greece. Cleopatra accompanied him. Octavian sent a military expedition under the command of Agrippa to challenge Antony's control of Greece. Octavian later joined Agrippa and their fleet bottled up Antony and Cleopatra's fleet in the Gulf of Ambracia. A naval battle ensued at Actium in which Cleopatra, for fear of being captured, pulled her ships out of the battle and headed back to Egypt thus ensuring the defeat of Anthony's forces. Anthony and some of his ships escaped from the battle and followed Cleopatra. • 30 BCE: Octavian invaded Egypt; Anthony commits suicide and Cleopatra follows suit in a tragic sequence of events. ….Octavian annexed Egypt into the Roman Empire and put it under his direct control. • 20 BCE: The empires of Rome and Parthia reached a peace agreement in which Parthia accepted Armenia as being within the Roman sphere of influence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_conquest_of_Britain Augustus prepared invasions [of Britain] in 34 BC, 27 BC and 25 BC. The first and third were called off due to revolts elsewhere in the empire, the second because the Britons seemed ready to come to terms.[1] According to Augustus's Res Gestae, two British kings, Dubnovellaunus and Tincomarus, fled to Rome as supplicants during his reign,[2] and Strabo's Geography, written during this period, says that Britain paid more in customs and duties than could be raised by taxation if the island were conquered.[3] Crossing the Rubicon This is a defining moment in the ambitious progress of Julius Caesar. N. Fields tells of it in Warlords of Republican Rome. Caesar versus Pompey (2008, pp. 145-146): … on the night of 10 January Caesar crossed the Rubicon into Italy accompanied by a single legion, legio XIII, apparently repeating, in Greek, a proverb of the time, ‘let the die be cast’. …. On one side [of the Rubicon] Caesar still held imperium pro consule and had the right to command troops, on the other he was a mere privatus, a private citizen. It was frank initiation of a civil war. …. Moreover, just as Julius was then faced with the situation of “the fugitives Antonius and Cassius” (p. 146), so was Octavianus - as we shall shortly learn - when he crossed the Rubicon. In fact, he would cross it twice. N. Fields (p. 204): For the second time in ten months Octavianus set out to march on Rome. Crossing the Rubicon at the head of his eight legions, he then pushed on to Rome with the celerity of Caesar …. On 19 August Octavianus took over one of the vacant consulships. Cicero’s protégé, the ‘divine youth whom heaven had sent to save the state … was not quite 20 years old. …. Antonius entered Gallia Transalpina unopposed …. (P. 207): Their next chief task was to eliminate Brutus and Cassius …. Triumvirate Again an item common to Julius Caesar and Octavianus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Triumvirate The First Triumvirate was a political alliance between three prominent Roman politicians (triumvirs) which included Gaius Julius Caesar, Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (Pompey the Great) and Marcus Licinius Crassus. "Pompey and Caesar now formed a pact, jointly swearing to oppose all legislation of which any one of them might disapprove. It lasted from approximately 59 BCE to Crassus' defeat by the Parthians in 53 BCE.[1] The alliance was "not at heart a union of those with the same political ideals and ambitions", but one where "all [were] seeking personal advantage."[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Triumvirate The Second Triumvirate is the name historians have given to the official political alliance of Gaius Octavius (Octavian, Caesar Augustus), Marcus Antonius (Mark Antony), and Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, formed on 26 November 43 BCE with the enactment of the Lex Titia, the adoption of which is viewed as marking the end of the Roman Republic. The Triumvirate existed for two five-year terms, covering the period 43 BCE to 33 BCE. Unlike the earlier First Triumvirate,[2][3] the Second Triumvirate was an official, legally established institution, whose overwhelming power in the Roman state was given full legal sanction and whose imperium maius outranked that of all other magistrates, including the consuls. Conclusion Whether or not Julius Caesar really existed as an entity distinct from, for example, Octavianus, by the time that all of the accretions that have been added to that presumed historical person have been removed from him, and from his history, the original model will have thinned out about as radically as Julius Caesar’s famous receding hairline. Julius Caesar did not invade Britain (First written on 13th August 2015) “… there is a very good chance that Caesar’s ‘Commentaries’ did not survive, and that ‘Bellum Gallicum’ (BG), the title it is known as today, was the work of other writers. Historians are wrong to treat it as gospel and to suppose this was the true voice of Caesar”. Ben Hamilton King Alfred the Great may have been the culprit, according to Ben Hamilton: http://cphpost.dk/news/caesar-conquering-britain-a-9th-century-invention-by-alfred-the-great.html Caesar conquering Britain a 9th century invention by Alfred the Great Saxon king fabricated 54 BC invasion to replace Viking-friendly heir and protect England from the Danes August 16th, 2017 6:41 pm| by Ben Hamilton The Saxon king Alfred, a late ninth century ruler who unified several kingdoms of England and thwarted the Danish Vikings from taking over at every turn, is commonly referred to as ‘the Great’ by historians. But maybe ‘the Magnificent’ club of Suleiman, Lorenzo de’ Medici and co should make room for one more, contends Rebecca Huston, a former National Geographic Channel producer and American screenwriter who after ten years of original research and analysis believes the king single-handedly saved the country from being permanently absorbed into Scandinavia. Never mind a one-nation Brexit, this was a one-man Brepel! Caesar the non-conqueror This wasn’t through force. Alfred simply demonstrated that the pen is mightier than the sword. Over a thousand years before the exploits of Bletchley Park saw off one army of foreign invaders, he delved into old manuscripts to stop another. By doctoring a Latin version of one of the ancient world’s most famous writings, and altering several Old English manuscripts, he was able to convince his council of nobles that his son Edward was the rightful heir to his throne, not his nephew Æthelwold, a Saxon susceptible to alliances with the Danes. And the astonishing upshot of this discovery is that Julius Caesar neither invaded nor conquered Britain in 54 BC. Alfred the great storyteller Along with the collected letters of Cicero, the memoirs written by Caesar while he was conquering France and other areas of central Europe in the fifth decade of the first century BC is believed by many to be one of the few manuscripts to have survived the period. But there is a very good chance that Caesar’s ‘Commentaries’ did not survive, and that ‘Bellum Gallicum’ (BG), the title it is known as today, was the work of other writers. Historians are wrong to treat it as gospel and to suppose this was the true voice of Caesar. But many do, and therefore they duly accept that he invaded Britain. Ancient writings only survived because they were painstakingly recopied by hand, and also translated, mostly by monks at monasteries when it was judged the current version was becoming a little worse for wear. This made them vulnerable to change. As an avid translator of Latin texts into Old English with all his kingdom’s manuscripts at his disposal, Alfred was ideally placed to meddle, and Huston claims she has found compelling evidence among 6,000 pages of ancient and medieval texts that Alfred fabricated Caesar’s two ‘invasions’ of Britain in 55 and 54 BC and added them to what would become BG. In reality, she says, the first ‘invasion’ did not take place, and the second was a passing visit. Many academics concur the king of Wessex, Kent, Essex, Sussex and the western part of Mercia also translated and revised five old English works – including translations of ‘Ecclesiastical History’, an eighth century work by the Venerable Bede, and ‘History Against the Pagans’, a fifth century work by Orosius. Significantly the old English versions of the pair’s works include details about Caesar’s invasions, but the Latin versions do not. Bede, for example, relied on the sixth century monk Gildas for all of his early British history, but Gildas never mentioned Caesar or his invasions, suggesting the inclusion is not Bede’s work. Tellingly, the earliest-known copy of BG dates back to the last quarter of the ninth century, coinciding with the latter years of Alfred’s life. Traces of the Englishman “Alfred was the anonymous author of ‘Bellum Gallicum’ because highly-specific details about Alfred’s own life appear in the text that could not have been written by Caesar nor be known prior to Alfred’s lifetime,” Huston told CPH POST. Huston points out that many scholars, including Germany’s Heinrich Meusel and Alfredus Klotz, have shared doubts over the authenticity of the passages – with Klotz suggesting that a “pseudo-Caesar” added false details, and Meusel questioning why Caesar wrote like an Englishman. Historians have for centuries been stumbling over the truth, but have either not noticed or ignored the evidence – in some cases, suggests Huston, because Alfred was believed to be the spiritual founder of Oxford University and it would have been highly controversial! For example, the early 20th century work ‘The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes’ acknowledges Alfred’s idiosyncratic style of drawing on his experience in describing the military exploits of others, while 19th century scholar Charles Plummer contends that the pious Alfred could not resist adding Christian elements, claiming that ‘History against the Pagans’ shows a “remarkable divergence from historical fact”. Additionally, as a champion of indirect discourse (when he wasn’t saying “Veni, Vidi, Vici”!), Caesar would have never lapsed into the first person, as is often the case in BG – such a writing style was abhorrent to him and he even included his dislike in a book on classical Latin grammar. Spun like Keyser Söze Huston’s groundbreaking analysis of BG has yielded 120 examples of Alfred’s idiosyncratic writing style (including word choice, verbose style and peculiar errors) along with 40 references to his own life and times. For example, BG records that Caesar arrived in 54 BC on clinker-built ships – a vessel never used by the Romans and not by anyone until the third century – which were familiar to Alfred as they featured heavily in his own West Saxon fleet. In addition, the description of the Britons in BG closely matches that of the Danes in the ninth century, while Caesar’s experience fighting them is similar to Alfred’s against the Vikings. The ancient Brits, according to BG, wore animal skins and did not eat grain – a claim contradicted by modern archaeologists. Throughout BG, Celtic and Old English terms frequently appear, geography is referenced that is six centuries premature and anachronistic errors are made regarding Roman weapons not yet invented nor used. For example, the Latin term ‘equites’ is used to mean knights, but in Caesar’s day it meant money-lenders, while the four kings of Kent who surrendered to Caesar were family members of Alfred’s, and one of the surrendering British tribes, the Ancalites, is named after a sixth century shield used by Alfred’s ancestors. “Similar to the mastermind character Keyser Söze in ‘The Usual Suspects’, Alfred adroitly spun the tale of Caesar’s British ‘invasions’ by fictionalising objects likely found in his immediate environment,” contended Huston. A lack of evidence No archaeological evidence has ever been found in southern England to confirm the Romans under Caesar fought the Britons as claimed in BG, with modern historian Richard Warner (in ‘British Archaeology’, 1995) asserting that the only reason people believe Caesar invaded Britain is because of his memoirs. Not one ancient writer prior to Alfred mentions the invasion – not even Suetonius, who as the first official Roman biographer of Caesar and head of the Imperial Archives in Rome, had access to Caesar’s personal papers, daily military diaries and reports to the Roman Senate. In 36 of Cicero’s letters from 54 BC, of which some were written directly to Caesar, not one mentions an invasion or fighting or transport problems despite many references to Britain. Cicero had good reason to be interested, as his brother took part in Caesar’s visit. There is no mention of Caesar conquering Britain in the work of three prominent first century AD writers: the Roman historian Tacitus, the Greek essayist Plutarch, and the Roman poet Lucan, who observed that “Caesar came looking for the British and then terrified, turned tail.” There is no evidence of the Roman camp which would have stood for three months and housed 25,000 soldiers, the battlesites – others have yielded countless finds – or the voyage over. According to BG, 800 ships were launched from Port Itius in France in 54 BC – a location that would struggle to see off more than a hundred, according to a French admiral serving in the Napoleonic Wars. A five-year mission launched in 2000, which was co-sponsored by the British Museum, tried to find the remains of 52 ships that supposedly sunk when Caesar ‘invaded’ Britain (12 in 55 and 40 in 54 BC), searching predominantly seven miles northeast of the cliffs of Dover – the area identified by BG. BG also details the loss of 120 Roman anchors, of which each one weighed 680 kg and measured 2.8 metres across. The mission used SONAR technology that can identify a teapot at a depth of 500 metres, but nothing was found. Ancient shipwrecks and anchors will deteriorate faster in warmer waters, but while dozens have been found in the Mediterranean, not one has been discovered in British waters. Mission accomplished Before his accession Alfred had promised his predecessor, his brother Æthelred I, that the dying king’s sons would take precedence over his own offspring and one of them, Æthelwold, was accordingly the senior heir. Under Saxon law the kingship was not Alfred’s gift to bestow. But he did his best to make his son Edward the most logical heir, leaving him the bulk of his lands and even having the bones of his predecessor moved from Steyning, an estate left to Æthelwold, to Winchester, his capital. Alfred’s citation from BG helped to strengthen his claim to the same rights and responsibilities as Caesar, the ‘conqueror’ of the five territories he ruled over, because of an additional lie that no records support: that he had been consecrated in Rome by Pope Leo IV during a pilgrimage he made aged four in 853. Accordingly, he claimed he had inherited the ancient right of a conqueror to name his successor, thus superseding his agreement with his brother. Furthermore, by claiming the ancient nobles of Britain accepted Caesar’s choice of ruler of the exact same kingdom Alfred presided over, he could argue Roman authority superseded that of the Saxons, and that the ancient right was inseparable from the land. “The anonymously-forged ‘memoirs’ were good enough to fool Alfred’s Latin-illiterate council of nobles,” contended Huston. Edward duly succeeded Alfred in 899, prompting Æthelwold to launch a rebellion backed by Scandinavian allies, which he died fighting in three years later. Edward’s grandson Edgar the Peaceful went on to unify the kingdoms of England in 957, although this was shortlived. While the Danes did eventually conquer the whole of England in 1013, their 29-year rule was not long enough to permanently absorb the country into a Nordic empire. Had Alfred not intervened, they could have ruled England for 143 years, or even longer.