The Greeks and Romans had a great system of cycles and ages, not unlike the Hindu Kalpas and Manvantaras. One cycle follows another, the beginning of each being marked by the sun, moon and stars all occupying their original positions. The Roman phrase for cycle is “great year.” Each great year is subdivided into “months,” that is ages. The first age of each great year is the golden, when Saturn reigns, and a divine race of men occupies the earth; the last is the iron age, when Apollo reigns, and men are sinful.
Virgil declares, then, that the end of the old cycle has come, and that the new cycle is about to begin with all the splendour of the golden age. Saturn will reign; Justice and Peace will return to the earth; a god-like race of men will spring up all over the world; nature will be redeemed; and primitive simplicity and innocence will reappear. Idyllic scenes of peace and plenty—trade and manufacture all forgotten—give the poem a wonderful charm.
The most outstanding idea of the prophecy, however, is that the new age opens with the birth of a boy, who is to receive special divine help, and is to be at once the pattern and the prince of the new time. Who the boy was that Virgil had in mind, the critics have not been able to decide.[[161]] Clearly he was a son born in 40 B. C. to one of the leading Romans; but we can say no more. Evidently Virgil believed that the civil wars were over, that a new era of peace had begun, and that this boy might be looked forward to as the ruler who should effectively transform the empire, revive primitive virtue and simplicity, and banish the foul demon war forever.
His prediction was not verified: no boy born in 40 B. C. became a world-ruler and regenerator; and, besides, nine long years of doubt and fear, horror and blood, had to be endured, before Octavian became, by the battle of Actium, the acknowledged master of the Roman world; and, while he completed the task of Cæsar, and succeeded in doing the work of a great ruler in a marvellous fashion, no one would dream of saying that he fulfilled the ideal of this poem.
It is an unfulfilled prophecy; yet it is not without interest and value for men to-day. First of all it is of interest as a revelation of the ideas and the hopes that filled men’s minds in Virgil’s time. “The anticipation of a new era was widely spread and vividly felt over the world; and this anticipation—the state of men’s minds at and subsequent to the time when this poem was written—probably contributed to the acceptance of the great political and spiritual changes which awaited the world.”[[162]] But it is of still greater interest as a revelation of what Virgil himself thought, Virgil, who was perhaps the purest and most interesting personality in the Græco-Roman world then. Men generally were looking for a regeneration of the world; we have here Virgil’s own thoughts on the great subject. He shared with others the idea that the world was on the verge of the dawning of a new day, a day of renewed justice and peace; but he had an idea of his own, that of a great personality, a man of high moral character, specially endowed by the gods for his great task as leader and ruler of the new time. Scarcely less prominent is his idea of the nobler race of men that shall spring up in the new era. It is no picture merely of good government such as Augustus gave the world that we have here; but a prophecy of the moral regeneration of mankind under the influence of a divinely prepared leader.
CHAPTER V.
JESUS OF NAZARETH.
I. The difference between ancient and modern times in Europe is vital. Human society is never stagnant; development in one direction or another is constant; so that in the course of a few centuries changes, both numerous and noticeable, take place everywhere. Thus the Europe of the middle ages differs very markedly from the Europe of to-day. Yet the one is the direct outcome of the other. On the other hand, the civilizations of Greece and Rome, although we owe them an incalculable debt, are marked off from modern civilization by differences which can only be spoken of as essential. For it is not any single element that has been added externally to ancient life so as to produce modern society; it is rather a subtle spirit, which has modified all thinking, altered the values of things, produced organic changes in government and society, and recreated art and literature. The unexampled development of science and invention, and the extraordinary activity and vigour of European commerce and arms, which are often spoken of as the chief characteristics of modern civilization, are rather to be regarded as indications of unparalleled vitality and efficiency in the social organism than as essential products of its spirit. Science and invention flourished among the Greeks; the Roman empire was as vigorous as any modern state in matters of war. These things prove the healthy vitality of the society of the West; its essential spirit is to be sought elsewhere.
A comparison of ancient and modern life reveals differences at once very numerous and greatly significant. The economics of Europe have been revolutionized; for the labour, the manufacture and the commerce of ancient times rested on a basis of slavery.[[163]] Government has been turned upside down; for the ruling principle of ancient politics was hereditary and exclusive citizenship in a city-state;[[164]] while modern politics have been created by the great principles of the equality of men irrespective of birth or station and the indefeasible sovereignty of the people.[[165]] In ancient society human life as such had no value: infanticide was practised openly by all as a right and proper thing necessary for the well-being of the family and the state;[[166]] prisoners taken in war, if not killed, were made slaves, and as slaves their lives and persons were absolutely at the mercy of their masters;[[167]] aliens had a place in the state only on sufferance: society stood in no relation to them and had no duties towards them.[[168]] The social organism of modern times, on the other hand, is a new creation, produced by the conception of the inherent sanctity of human life and the divine dignity of the human personality.[[169]] Modern education is in form and method Greek; but the results it produces are altogether new; first, because it carries the modern spirit within the ancient forms, and secondly, because modern men regard education as part of the birthright of every human being. Moral ideals show very important differences, chiefly in the direction of the elevation of humility, meekness, sympathy, forgiveness and self-sacrifice, and the extraordinary advance in the conception of the right of individual freedom. In ancient times the individual citizen had no rights as against the State;[[170]] now we demand not only freedom in matters of profession and business, as against caste restrictions, but intellectual, moral and religious liberty. The differences between ancient and modern religion are very extraordinary in many ways. For the present we need only note the one far-reaching distinction, that to the ancients religion was a political duty, which the citizen was bound to fulfil, and a civic privilege, which only those in whose veins ran the sacred blood of the community could share;[[171]] while modern religion is the loftiest activity of the human spirit, as far transcending the narrow limits of the State as it does the petty distinctions of race and blood. The differences, then, between ancient and modern life are not accidental but essential.
A second thing to be noticed is the altogether unexampled vitality and pervasiveness of modern civilization. During the nineteenth century alone, while the population of the rest of the world remained nearly stationary, the actual numbers of the European peoples rose from 170,000,000 to 500,000,000.[[172]] Here is physical life on a gigantic scale. Let readers think, next, of the extraordinary advances made during the nineteenth century in every province of natural science, from mathematics and physics up through the biological sciences to psychology and the science of religion, the swift upward progress made in literary, historical and philosophical method, and the innumerable inventions that have been produced for facilitating every form of human activity. Are not these facts evidence of an amazing store of intellectual vitality in the society of the West? Think also of the buoyancy, the hope, the youthful delight in action, the glance into the future, which characterize the progressive peoples of Europe and America. Colonization, on the other hand, exploration, missions, world-wide commerce, domination over other races, whether you call them bad or good, are incontestable proofs of energy, physical, moral and intellectual. Further, these forms of vital force are clearly of the greatest practical importance in the world. In the process of natural selection which, whether we like it or not, is ceaselessly being carried on among the races of mankind, the possession of such energy is one of the crucial factors in the struggle. But this civilization has also an altogether unique power of entering into other civilizations and working revolutionary changes there: its pervasiveness is almost as remarkable as its vitality. We need only point to India and Japan to-day for proof of this.
Western civilization, then, is a thing by itself, not more clearly distinguished from ancient life than from the civilizations that have arisen in other parts of the world. What is it that has made the difference? What subtle spirit is it that appears in every aspect of the civilization, that assumes so many forms, and generates such transcending energies?