different individuals. These verses, when brought to Rome, could not be so entirely concealed as the ancient Sibylline books, but were in the hands of many private individuals. The use which the senate proposed to make of them, as a state engine, being thus in a good measure defeated, a law was enacted for the purpose of compelling the delivery of all copies of these prophecies to the prætor of the city, while the retention of any of them was prohibited under the penalty of death. Transcripts, however, continued to be privately kept; and, in consequence, their contents were well known. At length Augustus, on taking upon himself the highpriesthood of Rome, revived the prohibitory law, when many volumes were delivered up. That this new collection of Sibylline verses contained a prediction of the appearance of a great king, we have sufficient evidence from the following circumstance. When Julius Cæsar had attained the summit of his power, he was ambitious of adding to his honours the title of king. In order to gain the consent of the senate, one of his adherents produced a prophecy from the Sibylline books, of a king who was to arise at that time, whose reign was to be universal, and in whose government the happiness of the world was necessarily involved. Cicero, and the party to which he belonged, employed every effort to withstand this innovation, and discredit the plea by which it was supported. But in opposing it, he brought no charge of falsification against those who produced this prophecy. He granted that it was fairly alleged from the Sibylline books, to which, in his official character, he had free access. But he affirmed that these oracles were no prophecies; for they were destitute of that frenzy and disorder which heathens conceived to be the neces sary state of every prophet's mind while he prophesied. "Let us then," says Cicero, "adhere to the prudent practice of our ancestors; let us keep the Sibyl in religious privacy; these writings are, indeed, rather calculated to extinguish than to propagate superstition." Besides those predictions, which had been brought from the East by the deputies of the senate, the contents of the Jewish Scriptures were no secret at Rome. An intimate alliance had long subsisted between the Romans and the Jews, and the number of the latter resident at Rome was very considerable. From the accounts preserved so long after by Tacitus and Florus, of what Pompey saw in the temple at Jerusalem, the nature of the Hebrew worship, which is referred to by Cicero in writing to Lælius, must have been well known. Under the patronage of Julius Cæsar, the free exercise of their religious rites, with all the privileges of their priesthood, was not only confirmed to the Jews by the decrees of the senate, but they were also exempted from taxes during their sabbatical year. In addition to all this, it is obvious, from the public recital every Sabbath day in their synagogues of the law and the prophets, and the translation of them into a language universally read, that their sacred books must have been known both in the provinces and in the capital of the empire. The singularities of their ritual, customs, and history, with which their prophecies were inseparably blended, could not fail to attract attention; while their origin, and even existence as a distinct See Horsley's Dissertation, Henley's Observations, and Prideaux's Connexions. people, all pointed to one great object of consummation, the coming of their predicted sovereign, under whom, notwithstanding their national misfortunes and present depression, they anticipated a glorious restoration, accompanied with the acquisition of unbounded and eternal empire. All this fully explains the cause of that general expectation then existing at Rome, of the appearance of a mighty king who should establish universal dominion, which had long been current all over the East, and which, according to Tacitus, was believed to derive its origin from the Jewish Scriptures. By pretended prodigies, and in various ways, much use was made of this expectation, and different applications of it were attempted, according to the interest or wishes of designing and ambitious men. Sallust relates, that, owing to this expectation, Lentulus was incited to engage in Catiline's conspiracy, and vaunted that the king thus foretold would arise in the Cornelian family. "Julius Marathus tells us," says Suetonius, "that a few months before his (Augustus') birth, a prodigy happened at Rome, by which it was signified, that nature was about to bring forth a king for the Roman people; and that the senate, being alarmed by it, came to a resolution, that no child born that year should be brought up; but that those among them whose wives were pregnant, in order to secure to themselves a prospect of that dignity, took care that the resolution of the senate should not be registered in the treasury." The manner in which Virgil has availed himself of this general expectation, first in his Pastorals, and then in his Æneid, is sufficiently notorious. He wrote his celebrated fourth eclogue in the consulship of Asinius Pollio, during the pregnancy of Scribonia, the wife of Pollio. To the expected child he attributes in that poem the character of the great king who was to appear, and ascribes to his reign the same happy effects which are celebrated by the Hebrew prophets. He begins with saying, that "the last age of the Cumean prophecy is come; the great order of ages again commences; the virgin is already returning, and the Saturnian reign." "The last great age, foretold by sacred rhymes, What Virgil means by the renewal of the Saturnian times, or reign, is explained by his account of it in the Æneid. Speaking of Saturn, he says "He by just laws embodied all the train Who roam'd the hills, and drew them to the plain ; According to this eclogue, the son to be born was to be the offspring of the gods, the great seed of Jupiter. He was to command the world, and to introduce peace. He was to abolish violence and injustice, and to restore the life of man to its original innocence and happiness. He was to KILL THE SERPENT. The bless ings of his reign were to extend to the animal and vegetable kingdoms. The latter was to be purged of its noxious poisons, and the nature of the most savage beasts was to be changed, so that the lowing herds should feed secure from lions. Still there were to remain some traces of ancient fraud. Great cities should still be encompassed with walls, and war should be excited; but at length, under this Sovereign, all was to be composed and happy,-when "No plough shall hurt the glebe, no pruning hook the vine. Shall bless the sacred clew, and bid it smoothly run. Mature in years, to ready honours move, O, of celestial seed! O foster son of Jove ! See, lab'ring Nature calls thee to sustain The nodding frame of heaven, and earth, and main: See, to their base restor'd, earth, seas, and air, And joyful ages from behind, in crowding ranks appear." This poem proves, not only the expectation which at that time prevailed of the great king who was to arise, but describes the precise features of the Messiah's reign, as delineated by the Hebrew prophets, and especially the peculiar characteristics of its effects on the world, which were to be most remarkable, not at the commencement, but after the conclusion of a certain period. Virgil could not have been ignorant of the existence of the Jewish Scriptures; nor is it to be imagined that their poetic beauties could have failed to attract his attention, when it is considered that the whole poetry of Greece was ransacked by him for imitation. And whoever will compare the 2d, 9th, 11th, and 65th chapters of Isaiah with this fourth eclogue of Virgil, cannot doubt whether the same images, united in com |