Merging the Chronologies of Christ and Caligula Reveals the True Julius Caesar

My trip down the rabbit hole with Christ and Caligula began with a very simple question: why do two Jews, writing only some 40 years apart, disagree dramatically about how long Augustus reigned as the first Roman emperor? These writers are our two best sources on first century Judaism, as well as our two most important proto Christian influences: Philo and Josephus. Philo, who wrote first, says Augustus reigned for 43 years, but Josephus says 57. Why is there such a chronological discrepancy between these authors who have so much in common, and which one is correct? The answer has deep implications for Roman and Christian history.

Thanks to Francesco Carotta, I was already aware of the alluring thematic and linguistic parallels between the life and death of Julius Caesar and the life and death of Christ. Both were accused of being Kings, both made themselves enemies of their respective Senates in their respective capitals, and after their deaths, both rose to heaven as divine. Caesar is famous for conquering Gallia before crossing the Rubicon and entering Rome, while Jesus comes from Galilee before crossing the Jordan and entering Jerusalem. They even have the same initials in Latin.

One major commonality between Julius Caesar and Christ surrounds their deaths near the time of the spring equinox. Both occur in the middle of the first month of spring (which was originally the first month of the entire year): Jesus on the 15th of Nisan and Caesar on the 15th of March. According to Carotta, during Caesar’s funeral, his wax effigy, complete with lifelike stab wounds, was carried on a “trophy cross” or tropaion, wearing a crown of leaves, exactly resembling the crucified Christ. The new testament speaks of Jesus dying on a “stake” and not a cross per se; thus the iconography of Christianity actually matches Caesar more closely than the bible.

Although Carotta believes that the new testament is based on the history of Julius Caesar, I believe the influence runs the other way around. The missing link is Caligula, who was also named Gaius Julius Caesar, who was also betrayed and assassinated by a Cassius, whose life overlapped with Christ’s for about 20 years on the official timeline. Carotta sets up the line of copycats as Julius Caesar —> Christ —> Caligula, but I suspect the chain is reversed. We must always recall that Caligula was the first emperor to have his memory damned, prone to mutilation and erasure.

The earliest mention of Julius Caesar by a Christian comes from the chronicler Julius Africanus, who describes “Octavius Sebastus, or, as the Romans call him, Augustus, the adopted son of Caius” (Fragment 17, Syncellus). Here Julius Caesar is quite simply called Caius, and there is no mention of his biography or his assassination. And the fragment comes to us from a 9th century Byzantine working 700 years later than Africanus, so its authenticity is automatically suspect.

Julius Caesar would not be properly handled by a Christian until the works of Eusebius, circa 325 AD. Eusebius is interesting, because his Church History and other works show no awareness of Julius Caesar, but his Chronicon, based extensively on the work of Africanus, makes several explicit references to Julius Caesar:

“Julius Caesar became emperor of the Romans, for 4 years and 7 months. And after him, Augustus (Sebastos in Greek) was emperor for 56 years and 6 months. In his reign, Herodes was the first foreigner to be made king of the Jews by the Romans […] In Herodes' reign, Christ the Son of God was born in Bethlehem of Judaea. After Augustus, Tiberius became emperor. In his 15th year, the fourth year of the 201st Olympiad [28 A.D.], our Saviour and Lord, Jesus Christ the Son of God, appeared amongst men.” -Eusebius, Chronicon

Compared to Josephus, Eusebius’ Chronicon lengthens Julius Caesar’s reign by exactly one year while shortening Augustus reign by one year! This relative tradeoff is plain evidence of Eusebius messing around with dates. Recounting Olympics, Eusebius writes that in the “183rd” Olympiad [48 BC] “Julius Caesar was emperor of the Romans” while in the “184th” Olympiad [44 BC] “Augustus became emperor of the Romans”. But if we assume Josephus’ numbers are correct, it means Caesar ruled for one year less and Augustus for one year more. This allows us to move the reign of Augustus back to 45 BC, a move for which we have long sought a reason, because 45 BC was the very first year of the Julian calendar.

Following Hippolytus, Eusebius also varies from Irenaeus by one year in his chronology, claiming Jesus was born in the 42nd year of Augustus and not the 41st. Thus Eusebius moves both the death of Julius Caesar and the birth of Jesus forward by one year on the timeline compared to earlier sources. These tweaks are additive so that Jesus is effectively born two years later on the timeline, in 2 BC rather than 4 BC. But 4 BC is the more proper date since it was the last year of King Herod’s life, and the gospels say that Jesus was born under Herod’s rule.

Thus Eusebius moves Jesus’ birth two years later than it should be by disagreeing with slightly with both Josephus and Irenaeus. The same is true of Julius Caesar’s birthday, since Britannica tells us that he held every political office 2 years before he was legally allowed to. It seems Caesar’s “birth” also needs to move backward 2 years.

By placing Julius Caesar’s death in 44 BC, Eusebius agrees exactly with official history. His Chronicon also neatly aligns with official history in 70 AD, as he writes “And from the 15th year of Tiberius [28 AD] until the final siege of Jerusalem in the second year of Vespasianus, is 42 years”. But as explored in my previous essay, Eusebius’ Church History paints a different picture, as it ignores Julius Caesar altogether. It also argues implicitly that Christ died in 18 AD, based on logic about the last year of the high priest Annas being the first year of Christ’s ministry.

Eusebius’ timeline clarifies that he counts the reign of Augustus from the death of Julius Caesar, and not a slightly later date such as the formation of the second triumvirate. He puts the birth of Christ in 2 BC according to his reasoning; Dionysius Exiguus later relocated Christ’s birth year to 1 AD when he invented the Anno Domini chronology. Dionysius also put a definite death year on the calendar: 31 AD, which basically agrees with Eusebius. But Eusebius and Dionysius disagree about Jesus’ age at death: Eusebius thinks 33, and Dionysius 30.

Let’s build a new speculative timeline measuring from 45 BC, using Philo’s reign lengths for Augustus and Tiberius, and adding 14 years to the life and rule of Caligula to account for the reign length discrepancy introduced in Josephus:

45 BC: Dawn of the Julian Calendar and beginning of the reign of Augustus
4 BC Birth of Christ/Caligula (in the 41st year of Augustus per Irenaeus)
2 BC: Tiberius becomes Emperor, Augustus deified after death
22 AD: Caligula becomes Emperor
40 AD: Death of Caligula (reign of 3 years, 8 months plus 14 years shifted to Augustus in Josephus)
41 AD: Official death of Caligula
42 AD: Ideal Synoptic Easter Date (first noted by Annianos)

The advantages of this timeline are as follows: 1) it eliminates Julius Caesar completely, 2) it aligns the birth years of Christ and Caligula, 3) it keeps the birth of Christ within the lifetime of Herod, 4) it puts the death of Caligula one year off from the official date when adding back the 14 year discrepancy, 5) the death of Caligula remains only 1-2 years off from the ideal synoptic Easter date, 6) with a historical Easter date in 42 AD, “Christ” becomes over 40 years old at the time of his death, thus agreeing with the gospel of John and the arguments of Irenaeus.

We are still left with the 1 year gap between 41 AD as the official year of Caligula’s death and 42 AD as the year with the perfect synoptic Easter date. We must keep in mind that all these chroniclers were liable to shift a year here and there because they had so many calendrical cycles to incorporate, including the 4 year leap cycle and the 15 year indiction cycle. For example, it appears that Dionysius placed the birth year of Christ in 1 AD for counting convenience as much as anything else. At the end of the day, the lunar and solar cycles do not line up exactly, meaning there is always a temporal remainder. Or I am still making an error or oversight.

Giving us more hard dates, Eusebius writes in the Chronicon that in 198th Olympiad [13 A.D.] “Tiberius became emperor of the Romans”, while in the 204th [37 AD] “Gaius became emperor of the Romans” and the 205th [41 AD] “Claudius became emperor of the Romans. It’s pretty amazing that so many important Roman dates fall right on the first year of an Olympiad: Caesar’s rule in 48 BC, his death and Augustus’ ascension in 44 BC, Tiberius’ ascension in 13 AD, the traditional Western Easter date in 29 AD, Caligula’s ascension in 37 AD, Caligula’s death and Claudius’ ascension in 41 AD. (Olympiads begin on odd numbered years in Anno Domini because there is no year zero). Thus maybe Eusebius put Caligula’s death in 41 AD for pure convenience.

The question becomes, if Caligula reigned for ~14 years longer than commonly accepted, what exactly was he doing during this time? One possibility is that he was doing the things ascribed to Julius Caesar, i.e. conquering Gaul. The lurid biographer Suetonius mocks Caligula as invading Britain and making off with seashells as the spoils of war. Can it be that Caligula’s achievements, as part of the damnation of his memory, were moved back in time by a century and ascribed to a sockpuppet?

In summary, Eusebius’ Chronicon says Augustus reigned from 44 BC for 56 years and 6 months, placing his death and the beginning of Tiberius’ reign in 13 AD. This puts the 15th year of Tiberius in 28 AD and the death of Christ in 31 AD (according to the Church History, Christ ministered for 3-4 years). 31 AD became the traditional year of Easter in the east, and it was later fixed in that year by Dionysius Exiguus, who also fixed the birth of Christ in 1 AD, effectively ignoring many of Eusebius’ arguments. Annianos had previously placed Easter in 42 AD because of its ideal Easter attributes.

But the exact birth year of Christ, except as it can align with the birth year of Caligula, is superfluous. What counts is the interval between the dawn of the Julian calendar and the death of Christ. According to Eusebius, it is a 75-76 year interval, and this was codified by Dionysius Exiguus in his Anno Domini chronology. This length of time represents a Calippic cycle, which is just one day short of 76 years. It proves that the Christian chroniclers needed to relate Roman history and Christian history by the phases of the moon, while preserving the same dates of the year. As if they needed to erase and or double some historical event related to the full moon.

It is commonly understood that Christianity was the new vine grafted onto the rootstock of Judaism. But it was also grafted onto the rootstock of the Roman imperial cult. The veneration of Caesar as God became the veneration of Christ as God. Caligula’s memory was damned and that is likely the source of his doppelgangers.

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