Equating the anchor with the Cross, as those who espouse the standard crux dissimulata theory, is an artificial stretch, since anchors associated with early Christian symbolism often do not even have a stock, eliminating their similarity to a cross altogether. A cross, however, could easily be grafted onto a pre-existing anchor symbol at a later date.
If they feared persecution by the Roman state, why didn’t the earliest Christians simply choose a unique but innocuous non-pagan symbol that did not directly reference Imperial Rome? Even if it were just a cynical disguise for Roman eyes, why would Christians go so far as to mark it conspicuously on the graves of their loved ones?
As St. Clement of Alexandria demonstrates in the 3rd Century, early Christians were well aware of the pagan king Seleucus’s prior use of the anchor image. The Christians who first adopted the symbol in the early 2nd Century so soon after the reign of Domitian surely knew it was a symbol favored by his brother, the beloved Titus, since his coins were still in wide circulation.
A century later, St. Clement of Alexandria does not even mention the anchor symbol used by Jewish rulers when he recommends Christians use an anchor, along with fish and doves (the latter symbols being blasphemous to Jewish religious sensibilities). While Clemens does not specifically mention the use of the dolphin-and-anchor motif by the Roman dynasty with which he shares the names “Titus Flavius,” it is clear from archeological evidence that the dolphin-and-anchor motif was already commonly used by Christians during St. Clement of Alexandria’s time. His list was therefore in part a retrospective inventory of already accepted Christian symbols.
It is quite possible that Clemens assumed the dolphin-and-anchor association with his own “Flavian” ancestors. Given the symbol’s connection to a long defunct imperial dynasty, however, Clemens might have sought a broader justification for the symbol in his time by invoking earlier pagan sources. In any case, the unique Flavian/Christian symbol has ancient pagan roots stretching back to Seleucus, as St. Clement himself confirms.
Many scholars have observed similarities between Jesus and the gods of the so-called pagan “Mystery Cults,” as we have noted. Now that similarity can also be seen in their shared use of symbols. But if paganism had been anathema to the first Christians—if Christianity’s roots are really Jewish—why are such pagan symbols the first to appear in Christian history?
Observe that the Emperor Titus himself took his dolphin-and-anchor symbol from Seleucus—the very same precedent cited by his possible relative, Titus Flavius Clemens, as an appropriate source for Christian use of the symbol. The Emperor Titus and the later Christian Titus Flavius Clemens of Alexandria derive this symbolism from the same source.
The dolphin-and-anchor motif is not so empty and common that it could have referred to just about anything, like a smiley face or a peace sign. If it was, the symbol would not have been useful as a distinctive motif for Titus on his coinage—or for the Christians. And, though emperors often recycled iconography from other emperors, we know that Titus was the first Roman to use it. Except for a few early issues by his younger brother, only Hadrian, who fought the second Jewish War, would also briefly employ it—at a time when it was already publicly used to identify Christians. Seleucus, who had used a variation of it, had lived almost four centuries earlier. Its use at Apollo’s temple at Delos predates even that.
As a symbol of the god Apollo, a healing and solar deity associated with Serapis, it was almost certainly a religious symbol of Titus’s imperial cult, and therefore Christians adopting it is especially difficult to explain.
To add to the extraordinary mosaic floor preserved by the eruption of Vesuvius at Herculaneum during the reign of Titus, which mirrors the early Christian iconography in the catacombs so perfectly, we find this mosaic from its sister city, Pompeii, also frozen in time in 79 CE by the eruption. This mosaic gives the “House of the Black Anchor,” an archeological site at Pompeii, its name. This anchor has a stock (notice the cruciform top of the anchor) in this purely pagan and pre-Christian use of the image:
Pagan cruciform anchor
The popularity of the images of the anchor or the trident combined with one or two fish by supposed pagans seems to have reached its height during the Flavians’ rule. This gladiatorial shoulder-guard, for example, was discovered at Pompeii:
Flavian era Roman shoulder guard
Notice the broad syncretism represented by the symbols in this pre-Christian artifact. (Again, no Christian artifact anywhere dating before the 2nd Century has ever been confirmed.) The trident has the ribbons (sometimes shown as serpents) of the “caduceus” indicating the staff of Mercury, who guided the souls of the dead to the afterlife. The dolphin is wrapped around a trident here, Neptune’s symbol, rather than an anchor, but it is flanked by a stockless anchor and a rudder.
Far from avoiding paganism, with the adoption of anchors, tridents and fish Christians were employing the most fashionable pagan images of the late 1st and early 2nd Centuries that were linked to healing and a happy afterlife. A Jewish provenance for Christianity is becoming harder and harder to believe.
Any similarity of anchors or tridents to crosses was, surely, a later super-imposition onto the pre-existing symbols. If it was the pagan origins of these images that made later Christians uncomfortable and motivated their discontinuation of them, then the adoption of the Cross was the actual “disguise.” Instead of the anchor/fish symbols being a crux dissimulata, the crucifix itself is probably more accurately understood as an anchora dissimulata. At that later time, any pagan symbolism, especially any reference to the Flavians, would have been viewed as awkward and obsolete by Constantine’s imperial administration.
Before that time, however, anchors and fish had been the dominant symbols of Christianity. Here, from the 4th Century, is a mosaic from a Christian catacomb in Tunisia. Here, all of the early Christian iconography now familiar to us comes together:
From the Christian Catacombs of Hermes, 4th Century, Sousse, Tunisia
III.
Roman Messiahs
The parallels between early Christianity and the imperial cult of the Flavians already seem undeniable.
In the case of Christians, fish-and-anchor symbology was in part chosen to celebrate Jesus’s deeds and miracles on the Sea of Galilee.
In the case of the Roman Emperor Titus, the dolphin-and-anchor motif appears to have been chosen, in part, to celebrate his miraculous naval victories on the same body of water.
Fishers on the Sea of Galilee
Like Jesus, Titus drove “demons” (his Jewish rebel enemies) into the Sea at Galilee.
Both Jesus and Titus descended from Galilee to “triumphal” entries into Jerusalem at the age of 33. And Titus fulfilled Jesus’s apocalyptic prophecy within the predicted timeframe.
Titus and Jesus both held the title “Son of God.” Both were that distinctly Roman, un-Jewish and un-monotheistic thing that caused such friction with Jewish culture: a man-god.
Titus and his father, Vespasian, were associated with another man-god, the benevolent and bearded Serapis. Serapis is represented by his dual identity, Aesclepius, the son of a god and a mortal woman who suffered on earth only to be martyred for resurrecting the dead and experience his own apotheosis.