Caligula and Petronius: the Secret Peter at the Heart of Christianity

Becoming Christ, Part 2

In popular imagination, Christ and Caligula could hardly be more different: one a cynical fisherman who tells his followers to “turn the other cheek”, the other a megalomaniacal despot steeped in sexual violence and absurdity who sought to give civil office to his horse. Yet their legacies overlap each other neatly, as exemplified by the Egyptian obelisk in the courtyard of the Vatican which was originally transported to the outskirts of Rome by Caligula for his Vatican Circus. Why, exactly, does a massive Caligulan phallus grace Saint Peter’s Square? Why was the pagan Vatican necropolis turned into a venue for chariot races and public games by Caligula only a few years after the crucifiction of Christ? Is it a just a coincidence that Saint Peter was supposedly martyred there by Nero less than 20 years later?

If it is a coincidence, it is the first of many. Even if we accept official dates, Christ and Caligula were both alive for the years of 12-30 AD, meaning the majority of their equally short lives overlapped each other. Moreover, both were rejected by the Jews and evidently subject to the death penalty. Christ is condemned after whipping the moneychangers and driving them out of the temple in Jerusalem. Likewise, according to the Jewish philosopher Philo, Caligula placed a massive statue of himself in the Jewish temple. Like Christ, Caligula represents not only temporal authority, but divine authority as well, since he claims to be a living god. Philo repeatedly remarks in his Embassy to Gaius that the penalty for violating the temple is death. One of these remarks even refers to the story of Pilate, yet Philo never mentions Christ.

Like Jesus running afoul of the Jewish senate or Sanhedrin, Caligula made a bitter enemy of the Roman Senate, leading to his betrayal by Cassius and recapitulation of the death of Julius Caesar. Caligula’s name was also Julius Caesar, supposedly named after the original, who was also an adversary of the Senate and also betrayed by a Cassius. Now, the tomb of Saint Peter in the Vatican necropolis was supposedly marked by the tropaion or Trophy of Gaius, which according to church historian Eusebius is named after a Christian called Gaius of Rome. But Gaius was also the first name of Julius Caesar and Caligula. They turn out to be triplets with Christ.

According to Francesco Carotta in Jesus was Caesar, a wax effigy of Julius Caesar complete with lifelike stab wounds and outspread arms was erected on a tropaion (trophy cross) at his funeral, which Appian says was “turned in every direction by a mechanical device, and twenty-three wounds could be seen, savagely inflicted on every part of the body and on the face” (Civil War 2.147). This effigy was literally a trophy of Gaius, and it resembled a crucifix. As Suetonius says “at the head [of Caesar’s funeral bier] was a trophy, with the [bloodstained] robe in which he was slain” (Julius Caesar 84). Appian further elaborates Caesar’s funeral, as Marc Antony “chanted praise to Caesar as a heavenly deity, raising his hands in witness of Caesar’s divine birth”. Does Caesar’s likeness belong on the missing Vatican cross?

Furthermore the name of Peter could be based on Petronius, who according to Philo (and succeeding historians such as Josephus), was used by Caligula as a second in command to erect his statue in the Jewish temple. Petronius was the governor of Syria, and in sympathy to the Jews, he stalled for time as the idolatrous statue was being built. No writer records the fate of Petronius. But the typological relationship to Christianity is clear: like Peter who denies Christ only to become the bedrock of the Christian church, Petronius thwarts Caligula even though he has been deputized to establish his worship among the Jews. Julius Caesar also had a treasurer named Petronius, who tells his enemies “Caesar's soldiers did not use to have their lives given them, but to give others their lives” right before committing suicide (Plutarch).

Underneath the Vatican, the Trophy of Gaius supposedly marked the original grave of Saint Peter, with a nearby ossuary inscribed with Latin graffiti reading “PETR[...] EN I”. Who can say these are not actually the bones of Petronius, interred beside his master’s circus grounds? Who can say that the Trophy of Gaius was not originally the trophy of Gaius Julius Caesar, aka Caligula, looking exactly like Christ on the cross? The cremains of Caligula, which according to Suetonius were deposited at the mausoleum of Augustus, have never been located. Thus like Christ’s, the tomb of Caligula is conspicuously empty. Perhaps the Vatican was his resting place all along. In death, as in life, it was Caligula’s circus. A Christian church was not built on the site until the time of Constantine, nearly 300 years after the mad emperor’s death.

The explanation for this mythohistoric sleight of hand must lie in the attempted erasure of Caligula’s memory, the damnatio memoriae. Statues, busts, and other images of Caligula were defaced, his name erased from monuments, his coins melted down. He is turned into a crude caricature by Philo and succeeding historians. Perhaps there is a kernel of truth to the tales of Caligula’s depraved insanity. Or perhaps we have only been left with libel and slander against an emperor who was condemned to be forgotten. Consider the Annals of Tacitus, written in sixteen volumes by 120 AD, of which the books on Caligula and his successor Claudius have been completely destroyed. Perhaps the true accomplishments of Caligula have been ascribed to his doppelganger Julius Caesar, while his worship has been ascribed to Jesus Christ. As we shall see, it appears that ~14 years were removed from Caligula’s life—and when they are restored, his life overlaps with Christ’s exactly.

Philo’s Flaccus and the Alexandrian Holocaust

Our oldest source on the rule of Caligula (37-41 AD) is Philo’s Flaccus, which along with his later Embassy to Gaius, is written from a point of view before Caligula’s assassination. These documents predate Josephus by a generation, and Suetonius by some 70 years. Yet they still exhibit important divergences. In Embassy, Caligula is a full blown anti Semitic villain, but in Flaccus, that role is played by his titular Alexandrian governor. In fact Caligula can even be seen a dispenser of justice in Flaccus, since he orders the exile and assassination of Flaccus, thus providing karmic retribution for Flaccus’ hatred of the Jews. There are also important Christian motifs, including the tale of Carabbas which anticipates the tale of Barabbas in the gospels. Embassy will later introduce the oldest account of Pilate, absent Christ altogether.

Philo writes that Flaccus began his life as an illustrious leader, who like Jesus, became the master of his own teachers at a young age. Philo says Tiberius died in the last year of Flaccus’ six year term, and at that time Caligula (whom he simply calls Gaius) became emperor with the help of his ally Macro. Philo says Tiberius, deceived by Macro, “left behind him a most irreconcileable enemy, to himself, and his grandson, and his whole family, and to Macro, who was his chief adviser and comforter, and to all mankind”. Indeed Caligula soon betrays Macro and puts him and his family to death. Fearing a similar fate, Flaccus becomes unhinged and begins to persecute the Jews in Alexandria. His actions are nothing less than genocidal.

Flaccus is encouraged in his anti Semitism by the Egyptian natives of the city. They tell Flaccus “you cannot confer a greater benefit upon [Alexandria] than by abandoning and denouncing all the Jews”. When Caligula appoints Agrippa to be the new king of the Jews and sends him to his throne by way of Alexandria, the Egyptians become “indignant at any one's becoming a king of the Jews,” and their anti Semitism increases. Philo remarks “whenever an ungoverned multitude begins a course of evil doing it never desists, but proceeds from one wickedness to another, continually doing some monstrous thing.” Philo’s constant demeaning of the “multitude”, along with his hyperbolic hagiography of the Jews, marks the extreme political bias of his narratives. Throughout his work, the Romans and Egyptians are unspeakably evil even while the Jews are perfectly innocent and indeed superior in their faith.

As part of their envy of Agrippa, the Egyptians seize “a certain madman named Carabbas” and dress him up as the king of the Jews, crowning his head with a papyrus leaf and giving him a doormat for a cloak and a stick for a scepter, so that “like actors in theatrical spectacles, he had received all the insignia of royal authority, and had been dressed and adorned like a king”. Similarly in the gospels of Mark and Matthew, Jesus is dressed up as king and cruelly mocked by Roman soldiers after the Jews choose to spare the criminal Barabbas from the stake. Barabbas not only rhymes with Carabbas, but also forms a pun in Hebrew meaning “son of the father”. In another near relation to Christianity, Philo remarks about parties “who are united by wine, and drunkenness, and revelry, and the offspring of those indulgencies, insolence; and their meetings are called synods”. This is a peculiar usage, since “synod” later became a term for an explicitly Christian gathering.

The anti-Jewish agitation in Alexandria becomes much more serious as “all cried out, as if at a signal given, to erect images in the synagogues”. These idols, which were deeply offensive to Jewish beliefs, “adopted a deep design, putting forth the name of Caesar as a screen, to whom it would be impiety to attribute the deeds of the guilty”. Flaccus “permitted the mob to proceed with the erection of the statues” bearing the name of Caesar. This episode would be remodeled three times over in Philo’s Embassy, becoming two statues of Gaius Caesar (Caligula) and the narrative basis of “Pontius” Pilate. According to both Philo and Josephus, Pilate introduced ensigns of Caesar to Jerusalem, causing the Jews to offer themselves as martyrs. In fact the gospel of Mark can be read in part as an allegory of Pilate’s actions in the Jewish sources, and thus also the actions of Flaccus and Caligula.

The result of introducing statues with the name of Caesar into the Alexandrian synagogues is a pogrom that threatens to engulf the Roman empire. Philo has nothing but praise for imperial rule, viewing Flaccus and Caligula as aberrations from the initial enlightened benevolence of Rome. Flaccus abrogates Jewish law in Alexandria and declares them to be foreigners and aliens, authorizing the populace to “to proceed to exterminate the Jews as prisoners of war”. The Jews are driven into a ghetto, “blockaded and hemmed in by a circle of besieging enemies, being oppressed by a terrible scarcity and want of necessary things, and seeing their wives and their children dying before their eyes by an unnatural famine”.

Jews were tortured and murdered in the streets:

“They were treacherously put to death, and then were dragged along and trampled under foot by the whole city, and completely destroyed, without the least portion of them being left which could possibly receive burial; and in this way their enemies, who in their savage madness had become transformed into the nature of wild beasts, slew them and thousands of others with all kinds of agony and tortures, and newly invented cruelties, for wherever they met with or caught sight of a Jew, they stoned him, or beat him with sticks, not at once delivering their blows upon mortal parts, lest they should die speedily.” (Flaccus 66)

Jews were even gassed and incinerated en masse:

“The most merciless of all their persecutors in some instances burnt whole families, husbands with their wives, and infant children with their parents, in the middle of the city, sparing neither age nor youth, nor the innocent helplessness of infants. And when they had a scarcity of fuel, they collected faggots of green wood, and slew them by the smoke rather than by fire, contriving a still more miserable and protracted death for those unhappy people, so that their bodies lay about promiscuously in every direction half burnt, a grievous and most miserable sight.”

This prototypical “holocaust” dated to 38 AD resembles nothing so much as the persecution of Christians by Nero in 64 AD, as well as the siege of Jerusalem by Titus Caesar in 70 AD. Philo writes that Jewish sympathizers “were led away to prison, were scourged, were tortured, and after all the ill treatment which their living bodies could endure, found the cross the end of all, and the punishment from which they could not escape.” Recall that Philo never mentions Christ even though he mentions Pilate in Embassy. Yet he still talks about Jews being tortured and crucified by Roman persecutors, as if they were early Christians.

Again anticipating Nero (who crucified Saint Peter at Caligula’s Vatican Circus):

“[Flaccus] did not order men who had already perished on crosses to be taken down, but he commanded living men to be crucified, men to whom the very time itself gave, if not entire forgiveness, still, at all events, a brief and temporary respite from punishment; and he did this after they had been beaten by scourgings in the middle of the theatre; and after he had tortured them with fire and sword.”

The drama of Flaccus concludes with Caligula ordering the arrest and exile of Flaccus, thus preserving the Jews in Alexandria and preventing the anti Semitic populists from precipitating a global holocaust. Philo says Flaccus was “taken prisoner like an enemy on account of the Jews, as it appears to me, whom he had determined to destroy utterly”. Flaccus laments that he has been exiled to a miserable Grecian island when he had been brought up alongside the house of Augustus in Rome, “the heaven of the world”. He interprets his downfall as proof of the Jewish god, wailing “O King of gods and men! you are not, then, indifferent to the Jewish nation […] And I am an evident proof of this; for all the frantic designs which I conceived against the Jews, I now suffer myself.” Flaccus openly questions whether his life is fictional:

“But now, was not all this a vision rather than reality? and was I asleep, and was this prosperity which I then beheld a dream—phantoms marching through empty space, fictions of the soul, which perhaps registered non-existent things as though they had a being? Doubtless, I have been deceived. These things were but a shadow and no real things, imitations of reality and not a real truth.”

Note the stark difference between Flaccus and the Embassy to Gaius, which we examine more closely in the next sections. In the former, Caligula, though acknowledged for his brutality, punishes the anti Semitism of Flaccus, while in the latter he exemplifies it. Philo emphasizes the karmic justice delivered by Caligula, saying Flaccus “was in consequence mutilated and cut about the hands, and feet, and head, and breast, and sides, so that he was mangled like a victim, and thus he fell, justice righteously inflicting on his own body wounds equal in number to the murders of the Jews whom he had unlawfully put to death”. Philo calls this gruesome fate “the most manifest evidence that the nation of the Jews is not left destitute of the providential assistance of God.” Thus in Flaccus, Caligula is no less than a dispenser of God’s providence. This changes radically in Embassy as he demands to be worshiped as a living god, becoming a precise if twisted reflection of Jesus Christ.

The Changing Story in Embassy to Gaius

Like the initial rule of Flaccus, the initial rule of Caligula in Embassy to Gaius is described by Philo as benevolent. Philo stresses that the rule of Roman Empire has thus far been a time of perfect harmony between Jews and Romans, indeed between all the inhabitants of the world. Philo likens the reigns of Augustus and Tiberius to a golden age that equalized rich and poor, creditors and debtors, masters and slaves:

“Gaius, after the death of Tiberius Caesar, assuming the sovereignty of the whole world in a condition free from all sedition, and regulated by and obedient to admirable laws, and adapted to unanimity and harmony in all its parts, east and west, south and north; the barbarian nations being in harmony with the Greeks, and the Greeks with the barbarians, and the soldiers with the body of private citizens, and the citizens with the military; so that they all partook of and enjoyed one common universal peace.” (Embassy to Gaius 8)

But “in the eighth month a severe disease attacked Gaius who had changed the manner of his living”. Suetonius later characterized Caligula as an epileptic, and the same disease was also said to afflict Julius Caesar. After falling ill, Caligula “began to indulge in abundance of strong wine and eating of rich dishes, and in the abundant license of insatiable desires and great insolence, and in the unseasonable use of hot baths, and emetics, and then again in winebibbing and drunkenness, and returning gluttony, and in lust after boys and women”. Philo consequently describes the body and soul of Caligula becoming “effeminate and broken down”. He remarks “the wages of intemperance are weakness and disease which bring a man near to death,” neatly anticipating Paul in Romans 6:23: “the wages of sin is death”.

Embassy to Gaius is a very long and complex document, clocking in at nearly 34,000 words, more than twice the length of Flaccus. It is written from multiple first person perspectives, including those of Philo, Macro, Agrippa, and Caligula himself. After Caligula compels his cousin and co-heir to kill himself, Macro chides his enthusiasm for song and dance, saying he should “remember his position as emperor, like a shepherd and protector of the flock” who “must guide the universal ship of all mankind in a safe and salutary manner”. Thus we have Caligula characterized as the “good shepherd” and universal human king. But unlike Jesus who saves and restores lives, Caligula destroys them, forcing Macro to commit suicide, and “after Macro and all his house had been sacrificed”, putting his own father in law to death.

Everyone marvels at Caligula’s transformation from benevolent Emperor to twitchy murderer. Philo writes, “he no longer chose to remain fettered by the ordinary limits of human nature, but aspired to raise himself above them, and desired to be looked upon as a god.” Caligula himself says, “I who am the leader of the most excellent of all herds, namely, the race of mankind, should be considered as a being of a superior nature, and not merely human, but as one who has received a greater and more holy portion.” Thus again invoking his role as the shepherd of mankind, Caligula claims the authority of a living god, the same identity ascribed to Christ. Caligula in fact is a kind of bizarro Christ, his morally inverted doppelganger. Philo calls him “the man who changed peace and stability into disorder and confusion.”

Philo says Caligula “bore about in himself a fallacious fable and invention as if it had been a most undeniable truth”, climbing the ladder of the gods as he impersonated them, from Bacchus and Hercules and Castor and Pollux to Mercury, Apollo, and Mars; so that “like an actor in a theatre, he was continually wearing different dresses at different times”. Philo asks of what use Mercury’s wand could possibly be “to him, who never either said or did anything bearing upon peace, but who rather filled every house and every city within Greece and in the countries of the barbarians with civil wars?” Philo says Caligula, in a perfect inversion of Christ, “loads those who are in good health with disease, and inflicts mutilations on those who are sound, and in short visits the living with most cruel death”. Philo concludes “Let him cease, then, this pretended Apollo, from imitating that real healer of mankind”.

As part of his denial that Caligula is in any way like the Greco-Roman Gods, Philo pointedly contradicts his attitude towards wine in Flaccus. Remember that in Flaccus, Philo condemns the synods for their Dionysian drunkenness. Yet here he describes wine, the gift of Bacchus, as “a most delicious drink” which is “most beneficial to the souls and bodies of men […] causing to every city on earth, both Grecian and barbarian, incessant festivity, and mirth, and entertainment, and revelry; for of all these things is good wine the cause.” This contradiction is one of many indications that Flaccus and Embassy to Gaius are not actually written by the same author. In fact the contradictions between Flaccus and Embassy begin to undermine each other thoroughly, leading us to question if either document can be considered reliable.

High on the flattery of his Roman subjects, Caligula notices that there is one people who refuses to recognize his inborn divinity: the Jews, who were taught “from their very swaddling-clothes by their parents, and teachers, and instructors, and even before that by their holy laws, and also by their unwritten maxims and customs, to believe that there was but one God”. Philo says Jews would sooner choose death over dishonor, being “accustomed to embrace voluntary death as an entrance to immortality”. Philo writes that because the Jews refused to honor any man as a god, “a most terrible and irreconcilable war was prepared against our nation”. The way Philo describes it, Caligula started the Jewish Roman war. Philo makes no mention of the supposed conquest and violation of the temple by Pompey, dated to 63 BC.

Note how the basic story of Flaccus has been adapted, yet some characterizations have been reversed. Flaccus becomes anti-Semitic out of fear of Caligula, and Caligula later punishes Flaccus for his anti Semitism. But in Embassy to Gaius, Caligula himself becomes the anti Semite after falling seriously ill. In Flaccus, the Alexandrian mob incites Flaccus, but in Embassy, Caligula incites the Alexandrian mob, who take the opportunity to attack the Jews in Alexandria, who Philo says “began to crush our people as if they had been surrendered by the emperor for the most extreme and undeniable miseries, or as if they had been subdued in war”.

Embassy to Gaius conveniently fails to mention Flaccus the governor at all (though it mentions a different Flaccus). And yet it recapitulates the Alexandrian riots described in Flaccus, starting with the ghettoization of the Jews, who were driven “from every quarter of the city, into a very narrow space as if into a pen” where they were expected to soon become “a heap of corpses all huddled together”. Other Alexandrians blockaded Jewish trade at the river quays and burnt the merchants alive, while:

“Many who were still alive they took and bound, and fastened their ankles together with thongs and ropes, and then dragged them through the middle of the market-place, leaping on them, and not sparing their corpses even after they were dead; for, tearing them to pieces limb from limb, and trampling on them, behaving with greater brutality and ferocity than even the most savage beasts, they destroyed every semblance of humanity about them, so that not even a fragment of them was left to which the rites of burial could be afforded.” (Embassy to Gaius 131)

Note how the above passage matches the earlier description from Flaccus exactly. The Alexandrian mob begins destroying synagogues, for as Philo writes, “they did not fear any chastisement at the hand of Gaius, as they well knew that he cherished an indescribable hatred against the Jews”. Again this quote contradicts the logic of Flaccus, in which Caligula punishes Flaccus for his anti Semitism. Regarding the synagogues, the mob “set up in every one of them images of Gaius, and in the greatest, and most conspicuous, and most celebrated of them they erected a brazen statue of him borne on a four-horse chariot.” Later, an even larger version of this statue will be placed in the temple in Jerusalem, warranting the death penalty against the Emperor. One of the strangest things about Embassy is that it retells the same story three times.

Intriguingly, some of Philo’s comments connect Caligula and Augustus to Alexander the Great, as for example: “some of them even introduced the barbaric custom into Italy of falling down in adoration before [Caligula], adulterating their native feelings of Roman liberty.” This prostration is highly reminiscent of the scandal Alexander caused among Hellenes by adopting the Persian practice of proskynesis. Likewise, Philo characterizes Augustus in terms usually reserved for Alexander the Great, saying “This is he who increased Greece by many Greeces, and who Greecised the regions of the barbarians in their most important divisions”. Augustus is also indistinguishable from Julius Caesar in Philo, who writes:

“The whole race of mankind would have been destroyed by mutual slaughter and made utterly to disappear, if it had not been for one man and leader, Augustus, by whose means they were brought to a better state, and therefore we may justly call him the averter of evil. This is Caesar, who calmed the storms which were raging in every direction, who healed the common diseases which were afflicting both Greeks and barbarians, who descended from the south and from the east, and ran on and penetrated as far as the north and the west, in such a way as to fill all the neighbouring districts and waters with unexpected miseries.”

Thus Philo rhapsodizes about Augustus as a world conqueror, giving him credit for Hellenizing the whole world. In another damning indication of his incongruity, Philo writes of Augustus: “this is he who rendered the sea free from the vessels of pirates, and filled it with Merchantmen”. But this accomplishment is attributed by Roman historians to Pompey, not Augustus. The inescapable fact is that Philo does not mention Alexander, Julius Caesar, Pompey, or Jesus Christ at all; he only mentions Augustus, Tiberius, and Caligula. And yet the latter are variously ascribed the major attributes of the former. This makes Philo’s perspective on ancient history nearly unrecognizable, and begs the question of which perspective is more accurate.

Philo calls Augustus “the man who proffered to all the citizens favours with the most ungrudging liberality, who never once in his whole life concealed or reserved for himself any thing that was good or excellent,” thus evoking the famed liberalism and mercy of Julius Caesar. He says that throughout his long reign, Augustus loved the Jews and the Jews loved him back. Philo praises Augustus as “the first, and greatest, and universal benefactor, having, instead of the multitude of governors who existed before, entrusted the common vessel of the state to himself as one pilot of admirable skill”. Philo even quotes the Iliad, saying “the government of many is not Good” and concluding “a multitude of votes is the cause of every variety of evil”.

Philo notes the worldwide deification of Augustus, which “decreed him honours equal to those of the Olympian gods”. Philo says the temples in honor of Caesar are the biggest and most beautiful throughout the world, and in particular “those raised in our city of Alexandria. For there is no sacred precinct of such magnitude as that which is called the Grove of Augustus, and the temple erected in honour of the disembarkation of Caesar”. Again there are strange parallels, since Alexander himself founded his city in the same location before being deified by the Egyptians, and Herodotus says Paris Alexander was shipwrecked in the same place after kidnapping Helen from Greece, “at the mouth of the Nile at an old shrine of Heracles”.

Philo emphasizes that Augustus adored the Jews and showered them with tribute. Speaking of the Jewish quarter in Rome “on the other side of the river Tiber”, Philo says Augustus “had a regard for Judaea” and “behaved with such piety towards our countrymen, and with respect to all our customs, that he, I may almost say, with all his house, adorned our temple with many costly and magnificent offerings”. Philo claims Augustus commanded “continued sacrifices of whole burnt offerings should be offered up for ever and ever every day from his own revenues, as a first fruit of his own to the most high God, which sacrifices are performed to this very day, and will be performed for ever, as a proof and specimen of a truly imperial disposition.” Thus according to Philo, Augustus honored Judaism no less than the Jews themselves, even striving to avoid lavishing them with gifts on the sabbath.

But unlike his original namesakes, Caligula “puffed himself up with pride, not only saying, but actually thinking that he was a god. And then he found no people, whether among the Greeks or among the barbarians, more suitable than the Alexandrians to confirm him in his immoderate and unnatural ambition”. Philo says about the Egyptians, “the name of God is held in so little veneration among them, that they have given it to ibises, and to the poisonous asps which are found in their country, and to many other savage beasts which exist in it”. Again Philo fails to note that the very founder of Alexandria, Alexander the Great, was also deified in Egypt.

Caligula Denied by Petronius, Swayed by Pilate

Philo claims that Caligula never openly accused the Jews, instead employing a poet named Helicon to mock and denounce them. By now the action that occurred in Flaccus has ended, and Embassy begins a parallel narrative about Caligula threatening the temple in Jerusalem, having already placed a massive statue of himself in the chief synagogue of Alexandria. A messenger finds Philo and the rest of his delegation waiting on Caligula in Rome, informing them “our temple is destroyed! Gaius has ordered a colossal statue of himself to be erected in the holy of holies, having his own name inscribed upon it with the title of Jupiter!” Philo fears that Caligula “will also order the general name of our whole nation to be abolished”. Compare this to the Jews’ lament in John 11:48: “If we let [Jesus] go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and then the Romans will come and take away both our temple and our nation”.

Philo waxes superlative about the Jewish temple:

“[Caligula] desires to be considered a god; and he conceives that the Jews alone are likely to be disobedient; and that therefore he cannot possibly inflict a greater evil or injury upon them than by defacing and insulting the holy dignity of their temple; for report prevails that it is the most beautiful of all the temples in the world, inasmuch as it is continually receiving fresh accessions of ornament and has been for an infinite period of time, a never-ending and boundless expense being lavished on it.” (Embassy to Gaius 198)

Philo finally introduces Petronius, “the lieutenant and governor of all Syria”, whom Caligula commands to escort his grand statue into Judea. But Petronius “knew that the Jews would willingly, if it were possible, endure ten thousand deaths instead of one, rather than submit to see any forbidden thing perpetrated with respect to their religion”. Philo also wastes no time in pointing out the death penalty, saying Jewish “zeal for their holy temple is the most predominant, and vehement, and universal feeling throughout the whole nation; and the greatest proof of this is that death is inexorably pronounced against all those who enter into the inner circuit”. Petronius is well aware of this death penalty and therefore reluctant to carry out Caligula’s orders.

One of the most interesting things about Philo is just how much political power he ascribes to the Jews. He explains that the Jewish nation is not contained by one border, but instead “had spread over the whole face of the earth; for it is diffused throughout every continent, and over every island, so that everywhere it appears but little inferior in number to the original native population of the country. Was it not, then, a most perilous undertaking to draw upon himself such innumerable multitudes of enemies?” Philo goes hyperbolic, saying “the inhabitants of Judaea are infinite in numbers, and a nation of great stature and personal strength”, whose courage “is beyond that of any barbarian nation, being the spirit of free and nobly born men.” He points out that the East was also filled with Jews, saying “the state of all the nations which lie beyond the Euphrates added to [Petronius’] alarm; for he was aware that Babylon and many others of the satrapies of the east were occupied by the Jews”.

Philo continues, “every year sacred messengers are sent to convey large amounts of gold and silver to the temple, which has been collected from all the subordinate governments”. Note that Philo’s perspective is not messianic, in fact it is post-messianic, written from the perspective of a triumphant Judea unplagued by conflict for centuries. Referring to the Ptolemaic dynasty, Philo says “one may derive them from about ten kings or more who reigned in order, one after another, for three hundred years, and who never once had any images or statues of themselves erected in our synagogues”. It is only Caligula who threatens to end the eternal tribute of the gentiles to Jerusalem, by instigating a worldwide holocaust.

Petronius confirms of Caligula’s divine pretension: “now having passed beyond all human nature he has actually recorded himself to be God”. Yet Petronius “had himself some sparks of the Jewish philosophy and piety”, having “studied it still more ever since he had come as governor of the countries in which there are vast numbers of Jews scattered over every city of Asia and Syria”. Seeking to delay the delivery of Caligula’s statue into Jerusalem, Petronius orders it to be built in Sidon by “the most skilful and renowned artists in Phoenicia”. He also summons the Jewish leadership, “both to announce to them the commands which he had received from Gaius and also to counsel them to submit cheerfully to the commands which had been imposed by their master”, threatening that otherwise “the most warlike of the military powers in Syria were all ready, and would soon cover all the country with dead bodies.”

The Jews respond to Petronius, saying “you may either preserve us all, or destroy us all together by one general and complete destruction.” They offer themselves to be killed rather than live to see the desecration of their temple. As Philo says, “a glorious death in defence of and for the sake of the preservation of our laws, is a kind of life”. The Jews even offer to kill their own families and themselves, literally bathing in blood:

“We willingly and readily submit ourselves to be put to death; let your troops slay us, let them sacrifice us, let them cut us to pieces unresisting and uncontending, let them treat us with every species of cruelty that conquerers can possibly practise, but what need is there of any army? We ourselves, admirable priests for the purpose, will begin the sacrifice, bringing to the temple our wives and slaying our wives, bringing our brothers and sisters and becoming fratricides, bringing our sons and our daughters, that innocent and guiltless age, and becoming infanticides. Those who endure tragic calamities must needs make use of tragic language. Then standing in the middle of our victims, having bathed ourselves deeply in the blood of our kinsfolk (for such blood will be the only bath which we shall have wherewith to cleanse ourselves for the journey to the shades below), we will mingle our own blood with it, slaughtering ourselves upon their bodies. And when we are dead, let this commandment be inscribed over us as an epitaph, 'Let not even God blame us, who have had a due regard to both considerations, pious loyalty towards the emperor and the reverential preservation of our established holy laws.’”

Moved both by the threat of death at the hands of the Jews and his respect for Jewish piety, Petronius stalls for time, deciding “to write a letter to Gaius […] to explain the delay which was taking place in the erection of the statue”. This letter of Petronius infuriates Caligula, who remarks of Petronius’ rejection of his authority:

“Of a truth, Petronius, you seem but little to comprehend that you are the subject of the emperor; the uninterrupted series of governments to which you have been preferred have filled you with guile. Up to the present time it seems to me that you have no notion of acknowledging that you know, even by hearsay, that Gaius is emperor, but you shall very speedily find it out by your own experience, for you are careful about the laws of the Jews, a nation which I hate above every other, and you are indifferent about the imperial commands of your sovereign.”

Confirming the warnings of Philo, and foreshadowing his own imminent stabbing, Caligula tells Agrippa, “your loyal and excellent fellow citizens, the only nation of men upon the whole face of the earth by whom Gaius is not esteemed to be a god, appear now to be even desiring to plot my death in their obstinate disobedience”. Thus it is directly implied that the Jews could be responsible for Caligula’s death.

Agrippa appeals to Caligula in a letter, again emphasizing the worldwide fecundity of the Jews, who had settled “into Europe, into Thessaly, and Boeotia, and Macedonia, and Aetolia, and Attica, and Argos, and Corinth and all the most fertile and wealthiest districts of Peloponnesus. And not only are the continents full of Jewish colonies, but also all the most celebrated islands are so too”. Agrippa implores, “it is not one city only that would then be benefited by you, but ten thousand of them in every region of the habitable world, in Europe, in Asia, and in Africa, on the continent, in the islands, on the coasts, and in the inland parts.” Agrippa confirms that Caligula’s predecessor Tiberius, like Augustus, was never anti Semitic:

“What again did your other grandfather, Tiberius Caesar, do? does not he appear to have adopted an exactly similar line of conduct? At all events, during the three and twenty years that he was emperor, he preserved the form of worship in the temple as it had been handed down from the earliest times.” (Embassy to Gaius 141)

Agrippa introduces the story of Pilate in his reminiscence amount the times of Tiberius Caesar. Like his treatment of Caligula, Philo’s treatment of Pilate is the oldest written resource on his character. The tale of Pilate turns out to be a miniature recap of the tale of Flaccus. Like Flaccus, “Pilate was one of the emperor's lieutenants, having been appointed governor of Judaea” (instead of Alexandria). Like Flaccus, Pilate is characterized by “his corruption, and his acts of insolence, and his rapine, and his habit of insulting people, and his cruelty, and his continual murders of people untried and uncondemned, and his never ending, and gratuitous, and most grievous inhumanity”. And like Flaccus, who oversaw the introduction of statues bearing the name of Caesar into the synagogues, Pilate “dedicated some gilt shields in the palace of Herod, in the holy city” bearing the name of Tiberius Caesar.

The Jews tell Pilate, “do not cause a sedition; do not make war upon us; do not destroy the peace which exists […] Tiberius is not desirous that any of our laws or customs shall be destroyed.” Like the Alexandrian Jews who write a letter about Flaccus’ misdeeds to Caligula, the Jews in Jerusalem “wrote a most supplicatory letter to Tiberius”, who like Caligula in Flaccus, sympathizes with the Jews and not the renegade governor. Tiberius becomes enraged at Pilate and commands him “immediately to take down the shields and to convey them away from the metropolis of Judaea to Caesarea, on the sea which had been named Caesarea Augusta, after his grandfather, in order that they might be set up in the temple of Augustus”.

In reference to the actions of Pilate, Agrippa reiterates that the Jews would sooner murder each other than profane their law: “I verily believe that they would rather slay all their whole families, with their wives and children, and themselves last of all, in the ruins of their houses and families, and Tiberius knew this well.” Agrippa also repeats the warning that any man who violates the sanctity of the temple “is subjected to inevitable death for his impiety, so great are the precautions taken by our lawgiver with respect to the holy of holies, as he determined to preserve it alone inaccessible to and untouched by any human being.” Embassy to Gaius is like a narrative nesting doll containing the same drama surrounding Pilate that surrounds Flaccus and Caligula.

Momentarily convinced by Agrippa’s letter about Pilate, Caligula relents and commands “letters to be written to Publius Petronius the governor of Syria, enjoining him not to allow any alterations or innovations to be made with respect to the temple of the Jews.” But then Caligula changes his mind again, and “a second time orders his statue to be erected in the temple.” He cancels the statue being built by Petronius in Sidon for “another statue to be made, of colossal size, of brass gilt over, in Rome” so that it may “suddenly brought to the country in a ship, and be suddenly erected without the multitude being aware of what was going on.” Philo says:

“An indescribable desire occupied his mind to see Alexandria, to which he was eager to go with all imaginable haste, and when he had arrived there he intended to remain a considerable time, urging that the deification about which he was so anxious, might easily be originated and carried to a great height in that city above all others, and then that it would be a model to all other cities of the adoration to which he was entitled, inasmuch as it was the greatest of all the cities of the east, and built in the finest situation in the world.”

And continues to the climactic profaning of the temple in Jerusalem:

“Beginning in Alexandria he took from them all their synagogues there, and in the other cities, and filled them all with images and statues of his own form; for not caring about any other erection of any kind, he set up his own statue every where by main force; and the great temple in the holy city, which was left untouched to the last, having been thought worthy of all possible respect and preservation, he altered and transformed into a temple of his own, that he might call it the temple of the new Jupiter, the illustrious Gaius.” (Embassy to Gaius 346)

Thus we observe that the Embassy to Gaius actually retells the story of Flaccus three times in three different ways, while failing to ever mention Flaccus at all! It provides the beginning of the narrative, as Caligula incites the mob in Alexandria. It provides the middle of the narrative, as Agrippa retells the fable in the context of Pilate and Tiberius, and it provides the end of the narrative, as for some reason Caligula is again gone to Alexandria to be deified by the rabble and to begin the new religion that would see his idol at the center of every temple in the world. Embassy to Gaius is nothing short of a mess and there is no way to believe it was all written by Philo. It contradicts Flaccus and repeats itself in impossible ways. It also ends right before Caligula’s death despite heavily implying that Caligula deserves the death penalty.

Encapsulating the essentially Christian drama of his history, Philo asks Caligula, “do you, who are a man, seek to take to yourself the air and the heaven, not being content with the vast multitude of continents, and islands, and nations, and countries of which you enjoy the sovereignty?” Caligula responds, “you are haters of God, inasmuch as you do not think that I am a god, I who am already confessed to be a god by every other nation, but who am refused that appellation by you”. Again repeating his incriminating emphasis that his history is like a stageplay, Philo complains of “being mocked and ridiculed by our adversaries like people at a play in the theatre; for indeed the whole matter was a kind of farce”. Caligula’s not-so-famous last words are “these men do not appear to me to be wicked so much as unfortunate and foolish, in not believing that I have been endowed with the nature of God”.

More than thirty years after Philo, Josephus would tell the story of Petronius and Caligula slightly differently, claiming that after Petronius stalled for time, Caligula sent him a letter ordering him to kill himself. But Josephus says Caligula was then assassinated, and news of his death reached Petronius before the letter commanding suicide. Despite providing an eyewitness account to the Alexandrian riots and depredations of Caligula in 38-41 AD (less than ten years after the supposed death of Christ), despite portraying Caligula as Christlike in his claim to living divinity and his emphasis on converting the Jews to idolatry (and his usage of a reluctant Petronius as his “apostle” to the Jews), and despite the fact that Philo mentions the death penalty in retaliation for violating the temple (once even in the context of Pilate), Philo never mentions the death of Caligula. This makes no sense, since Embassy to Gaius ends just before the assassination supposedly took place in 41 AD, and Philo is believed to have lived until 50 AD. Why would Philo leave out the moral to his story?

One of the most interesting facts is that 42 AD is the Easter date that best aligns with the descriptions of the crucifiction in the synoptic gospels, as first determined by Annianos in 412 AD. This is only a year later than the official date of Caligula’s death as defined by Suetonius. The Christian church in Alexandria was traditionally established by Mark in 42 AD, a year after Caligula’s worship was supposedly established in Alexandria. The first letters of Paul date to 48 AD, the final years of Philo’s life, and in the next chapters we will examine the possibility that the letters of Paul were in fact ghost written by Philo. We will also nail down the impossibly contradictory chronology of early Christianity, proving that Christ = Caligula = Julius Caesar. Surprisingly, we will find Cleopatra at the center of the chronological paradox.

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