nd the Sibyl but Etruscan seers had seen in the skies
that the tenth and last astronomical cycle had begun.[42] Plutarch, in
his life of Sylla, testified to the general belief in an approaching
cataclysm. Lucretius announced that at any moment it might occur.[43]
That was in the latter days of the republic. In the early days of the
empire the theory persisting may have induced the hope of a saviour.
Suetonius said that nature in her parturitions was elaborating a
king.[44] Afterward he added that such was Asia's archaic belief.[45]
Recent discoveries have verified the assertion. In the Akkadian Epic
of Dibbara a messiah was foretold.[46] That epic, anterior to a cognate
Egyptian prophecy,[47] anterior also to the _Sibylline Books_, was
anterior too to the Hebrew prophets and necessarily to those of Rome.

[Footnote 42: Censorinus: De die nat. 17.]

[Footnote 43: De rerum nat., v. 105.]

[Footnote 44: In Augusto, 74.]

[Footnote 45: In Vesp. 4.]

[Footnote 46: Jastrow: _op. cit._]

[Footnote 47: See back, Chapter III.]

Among these was Vergil. In the fourth Eclogue he beheld an age of
gold, preceded by the advent on earth of a son of Jove, under whose
auspices the last traces of sin and sorrow were to disappear and a new
race descend from heaven. "The serpent shall die," he declared,
adding: "The time is at hand."

The Eclogue was written 40 B.C., during the consulate of Pallio, whom
the poet wished perhaps to flatter. Then presently Ovid sang the
deathless soul and Tibullus gave rendezvous hereafter. The atmosphere
dripped with wonders. The air became charged with the miraculous. At
stated intervals the doors of temples opened of themselves. Statues
perspired visibly. There was a book that explained the mechanism of
these marvels. It interested nobody. Prodigies were matters of course.

The people had a heaven, also a hell, both of them Greek, a purgatory
that may have been Asiatic, and, pending the advent of the son of
Jove, in Mithra they could have had a redeemer. Had it been desired,
Buddhism could have supplied gospels, India the trinity, Persia the
resurrection, Egypt the life. From Iran could have been obtained an
Intelligence, sovereign, unimaged, and just. That was unnecessary.
Long since Socrates had displayed it. In addition, Epicurus had told
of an ascension of heavens, skies beyond the sky, worlds without
number, the many mansions of a later faith.

Meanwhile, austerity was an appanage of the st