The association of the crucifixion of Christ with a violent convulsion of nature, and the resurrection of the long-buried saints, events not supported by anyone in contemporary history, can only discredit the whole story. To appeal to Romans, Jesus was partly given a parallel history to Romulus (Quirinus). The death of this Roman saviour is remarkable for the parallel features to that of the Judaean saviour, not only in the circumstances of his crucifixion, but also in much of his antecedent life.

• Romulus and Remus were of royal blood, their mother, Rhea Silvia, being of kingly descent from Aeneas,
• Romulus and Remus were conceived and born of a virgin because Rhea Silvia was made a Vestal Virgin by the usurping king Amulius, so that she could not bear a son,
• Romulus and Remus were sought by the reigning king, Amulius, to be put to death, but were saved in the fashion of Moses and Sargon of Assyria by being floated down a river (another ancient legend),
• Romulus and Remus were watched over by shepherds as children,
• Remus was put to death by his brother, perhaps crucified,
• Romulus was put to death by wicked hands, and the whole earth was covered in darkness,
• Romulus finally was resurrected, and ascended to heaven.

In the canonical narrative, Romulus dies as an old man by disappearing during a thunder storm whereupon he was deified, but there are many variations in which he is murdered. Romulus was supposed to be favoured by Jupiter (Zeus), the sky god, to whom he dedicated a temple in his myth, and Rome was founded at the spring equinox.

In the myth, the twin who dies is Remus, killed by Romulus, and the reason is that he stepped across the boundary of Rome before the wall was built, an obvious parallel of the sun crossing the celestial equator. But it is Romulus who goes on to ascend to the godhead as Quirinus. Remus is the Roman Haman, who dies to permit the city of the sun to rise. The two brothers, Romulus and Remus, have echoes of Prometheus and Epimetheus, and could be distant variants of them. Mitra had his dark twin Varuna (perhaps evolved into Ahuramazda in Persia). Krishna had his twin Balarama. And sure enough, we find in the Christian myth that Jesus was a twin too, his brother being “doubting” Thomas Didymus (the twin)—not that we hear anything of it in the birth narratives!