Francesco Carotta:
Christianity originated in Rome, as the religion of the landless in the struggle against the Roman latifundists. The first prominent martyrs were the Gracchi, whom many followed, until a change came with Caesar, insofar as, although he was also murdered, his agrarian laws were not annulled, and he himself was elevated to God status whereby his land distributions remained sacred and inviolable. He is the Christ to whom the small Roman peasant owes his piece of land. When during the Spanish Holy Week the ritual saying «el Cristo es la tierra», «the Christ is the Earth» is sounded, nothing else is expressed than the memory of the great imperator who, by his sacrificial death, guaranteed to the small veteran his piece of farmland. This name Christós, in its original form Chrestós, «the good, the best, the useful one», corresponds to the compromise formula negotiated with the murderers, according to which the murder of Caesar was not to be judicially pursued, but all of his measures and decisions should nevertheless keep their validity: «because this served the best interest of the city.» For the friends of the pardoned murderers had, for their own safety, most emphatically insisted that Caesar’s measures should not so much retain their validity for legal reasons, but «because (they are) useful»: διὰ χρείαν—in which the root of χρηστός can be recognized, and by which Caesar had been declared «the useful one», i. e. «of outstanding merit to the state, meritorious».
The name expresses the same in Greek as that which was engraved on the base of the statue that Antonius erected for the murdered Caesar in the autumn of 44 BC: PARENTI OPTIME MERITO, which is ususally translated as «to the most meritorious father», although, at that time, «most meritorious» did not signify only the citizens who had rendered outstanding services to the state, but especially those who had given their lives, the moribund fallen in battle, the martyrs.
The inviolability of the Acta Caesaris, Antonius bought with the amnesty of the murderers.
Shocking:
The people saw the God Julius Caesar [Divus Iulius] as a god of clemency, trust and settlement of disputes. They saw his statues throughout the
Empire as places of asylum.
Not Octavian.
Instead of building the previously decreed temple to Caesar’s Virtue Clementia / Mercy and Merciful Justice, Octavian Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus had one built to his Iniquity of Vengeance, the avenging Mars.
Caesaris Clementia secured the acta Caesaris.
Because, although he advanced to the position of Augustus and eventually to Divus himself, since he had no successors, he had to adopt some, amongst them the later emperor Tiberius, the child, of all people, of the wife of a man, who had fought on Fulvia’s side against him in Perusia and who
after the fall of the town had to save herself from him and, like Fulvia, had fled to Antonius, lover of Cleopatra of Egypt—which was to become the flight to Egypt in the Gospel.
When the Julio-Claudian dynasty died out with Nero, and the following one, the Flavian dynasty, established itself with Vespasianus, the Gospels, in the version known to us today, emerged: and, lo and behold, they narratively relocate the events from Gallia—the land where Caesar had risen to power—to Galilaea—the land where Vespasianus, for his part, had come to power—whereby the foundation account of the first dynasty was adapted and made usable for the second one.
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