A Star Shall Guide Them
i know its not Christmas time, but i read this little cool fact in a book for my New Testament History class.
When Julius Ceasar died, there was a comet in the sky and people saw it as a sign of his spirit leaving. Then when Augustus Ceasar was living, there was another comet that people said was a good omen for him. And on the Roman coins, a star appears above the heads of both Julius Caesar and Augustus Caesar's head.
Think what people would have thought when the Magi came seeking the King of the Jews saying they followed a star.
posted by Tim Costine @ 9:46 AM
5 comments
5 Comments:
Which translation of Seutonius are you reading - J.C. Rolfe (Loeb Edition) or Robert Graves (Penguin)? Michael Grant says the Graves version is "entertaining, but has to be used with caution". Graves wrote "The Twelve Caesars" based on Seutonius, citing updated historical findings. I suppose you could be learning Latin and reading the original! (In which case you would have the Rolfe edition, which has both Latin and English.) You've turned into such a "language guy"!
Excuse me, I meant Michael Grant wrote "The Twelve Caesars"...
Oh, and it wasn't the Robert Fitzgerald translation of the Iliad and The Odyssey I meant to recommend - it was the Robert Fagles translation. I really enjoyed Fagles. I've ordered you hard cover copies as part of your b'day gift. After you have read them (I'm not expecting that to be any time soon...), I'll get you good translations of The Aeneid and Dante's Inferno. You really have to read them in sequence to get the most out of them, otherwise you miss most of the allusions to the earlier works. [I consider this part of your "lifetime reading" program. You just jumped ahead with Milton! ;)]
we're reading through the Penguin series.
I suspect you're not reading the entire book. It gets a little strange! Whether or not everything that was alleged to have occurred actually DID happen is speculative. Seutonius (like Herodotus) wrote down every rumor he ever heard. They hadn't developed the fine art of corroboration yet. I'm glad MY reputation won't go down in history based on every vicious rumor someone thought up! The Romans certainly had different morals that the early Christians (looking at the artifacts shows us that), but our age would probably be considered just as immoral!
we're reading the whole thing, but there are times where he writes that there were different views on something or that the story may be a rumor. but the thing that you can really get from the book is that a lot of the rumors aren't far from the character of the man. i just finished the section on Augustus. man, he could be cruel.
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