some account of the way in which he attained this
object. Let us briefly examine the famous ritual of the _Ludi
saeculares_, of which we have more detailed knowledge than of any other
Roman rite of any period; it marks the zenith of his prosperity and
religious activity, and belongs to the year 17 B.C., two years after the
death of Virgil,--a date which may be said to divide the long power of
Augustus into two nearly equal halves.

This famous celebration is an epoch in the history of the Roman
religion, if not in the history of Rome herself. It stands on the very
verge of an old and a new regime. It was the outward or ritualistic
expression of the idea, already suggested by Virgil in the fourth
_Eclogue_ and the _Aeneid_, that a regeneration is at hand of Rome and
Italy, in religion, morals, agriculture, government; old things are put
away, new sap is to run in the half-withered trunk and branches of a
noble tree. The experience of the past, as with Aeneas after the descent
into Hades, is to lead to new effort and a new type of character, of
which _pietas_ in its broadest sense is the inspiring motive.
Henceforward the Roman is to look ahead of him in hope and confidence,
_virtutem extendere factis_. Augustus, the Aeneas of the actual State,
was firmly established in a prestige which extended beyond Italy even to
the far East; his faithful and capable coadjutor Agrippa was by his side
to take his part in the ritual, and no cloud in that year 17 seemed to
be visible on the horizon.

The _Ludi saeculares_ are also unique in respect of the records we have
of them. By wonderful good fortune we can construct an almost complete
picture of what was done in that year on the last days of May and the
first three of June. We have the text of the Sibylline oracle,--how
manufactured we do not know, nor does it much matter,--which prescribed
the ritual, preserved by Zosimus, a Greek historian of the fifth century
A.D., together with his own account.[929] Thus the outline of the ritual
has been known all along, together with many details; and to help it out
we have also the perfect text of the hymn written by Horace for the
occasion, and sung by two choirs of boys and girls respectively. But
great was the delight of the learned world when, in September 1890,
workmen employed on the Tiber embankment, close, as it turned out, to
the spot where the nightly rites of the _ludi_ took place, came upon a
mediaeval wall partly made of ancie