Not alone David and 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.
[42] Censorinus: De die nat. 17.
[43] De rerum nat., v. 105.
[44] In Augusto, 74.
[45] In Vesp. 4.
[46] Jastrow: op. cit.
[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.