Questioning the historicity of Jesus c.325 CE?

[GakuseiDon]

Is there any literary evidence from antiquity to suggest that Julius Caesar
(or any other historical identity in antiquity)
did not die their own death?

One that quickly comes to mind: Nero. There were rumours for many years after his death that he was still alive and looking to make a comeback. Second Century Christians seemed to have thought he might come back as the anti-Christ. From Wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nero#Nero_and_religion

• The Sibylline Oracles, Book 5 and 8, written in the 2nd century, speak of Nero returning and bringing destruction.[199] Within Christian communities, these writings, along with others,[200] fueled the belief that Nero would return as the Antichrist.

[Leucius Charinus]

Is there any literary evidence from antiquity to suggest that Julius Caesar
(or any other historical identity in antiquity)
did not die their own death?

One that quickly comes to mind: Nero. There were rumours for many years after his death that he was still alive and looking to make a comeback. Second Century Christians seemed to have thought he might come back as the anti-Christ. From Wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nero#Nero_and_religion

• The Sibylline Oracles, Book 5 and 8, written in the 2nd century, speak of Nero returning and bringing destruction.[199] Within Christian communities, these writings, along with others,[200] fueled the belief that Nero would return as the Antichrist.

Thanks G'Don. I was about to write that this looks like the Second Coming of Nero rather than the First Leaving of Nero but then noticed that the WIKI page continues thus:

• In 310, Lactantius wrote that Nero ........ "suddenly disappeared, and even the burial place of that noxious wild beast was nowhere to be seen. This has led some persons of extravagant imagination to suppose that, having been conveyed to a distant region, he is still reserved alive; and to him they apply the Sibylline verses."
  
  * Lactantius, Of the Manner in Which the Persecutors Died II.

So what we have here is literally a "disappearance" rather than a death, similar to, for example, the death of Apollonius of Tyana in Philostratus. There are probably any number of literary accounts attesting to such disappearance deaths. What I have listed above are multiple accounts where a person does not die their own death, where the death is supposedly in public view, with crowds, peanut salesman, reporters, gangsters, fruit sellers, the Monty Python crew, the Romans, etc.

Although I nevertheless thank you for turning up Lactantius' tale of Nero's Spook, I still think that these multiple "false deaths" are quite remarkable.

When an identity in a play or novel does not die their own death, is this some form of literary trope?

IDK. How is this literary evidence to be interpreted? Just heretics having fun or what?

Best wishes



LC