This was taken in the Middle Ages as referring to the birth of Jesus; and on the strength of having thus prophesied, Virgil came to be looked on as either a true prophet or a black magician. Hence his enormous reputation all down the centuries as a master of the secret sciences. The chemist is the successor to the alchemist; and in Wales we still call a chemist fferyll, which is Virgil Cymricized. Well; his reputation was not altogether undeserved; he did know much; you can find Karma, Reincarnation, Devachan, Kama-loka—most of the Theosophical teachings as to the postmortem-prenatal states,— taught in the Sixth Book of the Aeneid. But as to this Pollio Eclogue: even in modern textbooks one often sees it asserted that he must have been familiar with the Hebrew Scriptures;—because in the Book of Isaiah the coming of a Messiah to the Jews is prophesied in terms not very unlike those he used. To my mind this is far-fetched: Virgil had Gaul behind him, if you must look for explanations in outside things; and at least in after ages Celtic Messianism was as persistent a doctrine as Jewish. A survival, of course; in truth the initiated or partly initiated among all ancient peoples knew that avatars come. Virgil, if he understood as much about Theosophy as he wrote into the Sixth Aeneid, would also have known, from whatever source he learnt it, the truth about cycles and Adept Messengers.
There has been much speculation as to who the child born in the year of Pollio's consulship, who was to bring in the new order of ages, could have been. But we may note that in the language of Occultism (and think of Virgil as an Occultist), the 'birth of a child' had always been a symbolical way of speaking of the inititation of a candidate into the (true) Mysteries. So that it does not follow by any means that he meant an actual baby born in that year; he may have intended, and probably did intend, some Adept then born into his illumination,—or that, according to Virgil's own ideas, might be thought likely soon to be. One cannot say; he was a very wise man, Virgil. At least it indicates a feeling,—perhaps peculiar to himself, perhaps general,—that the world stood on the brink of a great change in the cycles, and that an Adept Leader might be expected, who should usher the new order in.
His eyes may have been opened to the possibilities of the young Octavian. It is possible that the two were together at school in Rome, studying rhetoric under Epidius, in the late fifties; and certainly Virgil had recently visited Rome and there interviewed the Triumvir Octavian; and had obtained from him an order for the restitution of his parental farm near Mantua, which had been given to one of the soldiers of Philippi after that battle. Two or three of the Eclogues are given to the praises of Octavian; whom, even as early as that, Virgil seems to have recognised as the future or potential savior of Rome. The points to put side by side are these: Virgil, a Theosophist, expected the coming of an avatar, an Initiate who should save Rome;—H.P. Blavatsky speaks of Augustus as an Initiate;—Augustus did save Rome.
When did he become an Initiate? Was there, at some time, such a change in his life that it was as if a new Soul had come in to take charge of that impersonal unfailing personality? There are tremendous mysteries connected with incarnation; the possibility of a sudden accession of entity, so to say,—a new vast increment of being. As Octavius and Octavian, the man seems like one without will or desires of his own, acting in blind obedience to impersonal forces that aimed at his supremacy in the Roman world. As Augustus, he becomes another man altogether, almost fathomlessly wise and beneficient; a Master of Peace and Wisdom. He gave Rome Peace, and taught her to love peace. He put Peace for a legend on the coinage; and in the west Pax, in the east Irene, became favorite names to give you children. He did what he could to clean Roman life; to give the people high ideals; to make the empire a place,—and in this he succeeded,—where decent egos could incarnate and hope to progress; which, generally speaking, they cannot in a chaos. His fame as a benefactor of the human race spread marvelously: in far-away India (where at that time the Secret Wisdom and its Masters were much more than a tradition), they knew of him, and struck coins in his honor; coins bearing the image and superscription of this Roman Caesar.
I said that he went to work like an Occultist: like one with an understanding of the inner laws of life, and power to direct outward things in accordance with that knowledge. Thus:—the task that lay before him was to effect a complete revolution. Rome could not go on under the old system any longer. That system had utterly broken down; and unless an efficient executive could be evolved, there was nothing for it but that the world should go forward Kilkenny-catting itself into non-existence. Now an efficient executive meant one-man rule; or a king, by whatsoever name he might be called. But the tradition of centureis made a king impossible. There were strongly formed astral molds; and whoever should attempt to break them would, like Caesar, ensure his own defeat. Whoever actually should break them,—well, the result of breaking astral molds is always about the same. H.P. Blavatsky said that she came to break molds of mind; and so she did; but it was not in politics; and the while she was laying her trains of thought-dynamite, and exploding them gloriously, she was also building up fair and glorious mansions of thought to house those made homeless. The situation we are looking at here is on a different plane, the political. You break the astral molds there; and they may be quite worthless, quite effete and contemptible,—yet they are the things which alone keep the demon in man under restraint. It is the old peril of Revolutions. They may be started with the best of intentions, in the name of the highest ideals; but, unless there be super-human strength (like Ts'in Shi Hwangti's) or superhuman wisdom (like Augustus') to guide them, as surely as they succeed in breaking the old molds, they degenerate into orgies,—blood, vice, and crime.
Augustus effected his revolution and kept all that out; he substituted peace and prosperity for the blood and butchery of a century. And it was because he went to work with the knowledge of an Occultist that he was able to do so.
He carefully abstained from breaking the molds. He labored to keep them all intact,—for the time being, and until new ones should have been formed. Gently and by degrees he poured a new force and meaning into them; which, in time, would necessarily destroy them; but mean-while others would have been growing. He took no step without laboriously ascertaining that there were precedents for it. Rome had been governed by Consuls and Tribunes; well, he would accept the consulate, and the tribuniciary power; because it was necessary now, for the time being at any rate, that Rome should be governed by Augustus. It is as well to remember that it was the people who insisted on this last. The Republican Party might subsist among the aristocracy, the old governing class; but Augustus was the hero and champion of the masses. Time and again he resigned: handed back his powers to the senate, and what not;—whether as a matter of form only, and that he might carry opinion along with him; or with the real hope that he had taught things at last to run themselves. In either case his action was wise and creditable; you have to read into him mean motives out of your own nature, if you think otherwise. Let there be talk of tyrants, and plots arising, with danger of assassination,—and what was to become of re-established law, order, and the Augustan Peace? The fact was that the necessities of the case always compelled the senate to reinstate him: it was too obvious that things could not run themselves. If there had been any practicable opposition, it could always have made those resignations effectual; or at least it could have driven him to a show of illegalism, and so, probably, against the point of some fanatic theorist's dagger. In 23 B.C. there was a food shortage; and the mob besieged the senate house, demanding that new powers should be bestowed on the Caesar: they knew well what mind and hands could save them.
But he would run up no new (corrugated iron or reinforced concrete) astral molds, nor smash down any old ones. There should be no talk of a king, or, perpetual dictator. Chief citizen, as you must have a chief,—since a hundred years had shown that haphazard executives would not work. Primus inter Pares in the senate: Princeps,—not a new title, nor one that implied royalty,—or meant anything very definite; why define things, anyhow, now while the world was in flux? Mr. Stobart, who I think comes very near to showing Augustus as he really was, still permits himself to speak of him as "chilly and statuesque." But can you imagine the mob so in love with a chilly and statuesque—tyrant, or statesman, or politician,—as to besiege the senate-house and clamor for an extension of his powers? And this chilly statuesque person was the man who delighted in sharing in their games with children!
Another reason why there was no talk of a king: he was no Leader of a spiritual movement, but merely dealing with politics, with which the cycles will have their way: a world of ups and downs, not stable because linked to the Heart of Things. Supposing he should find one to appoint as his worthy successor: with the revolutions of the cycles, could that one hope to find another to succeed him? Political affairs move and have their being at best in a region of flux, where the evils, and especially the duties, of the day are sufficient therefor. In attending to these,— performing the duties, fighting the evils,—Augustus laid down the lines for the future of Rome.
He tried to revive the patriciate; he wanted to have, cooperating with him, a governing class with the ancient sense of responsibility and turn for affairs. But what survived of the old aristocracy was wedded to the tradition of Republicanism, which meant oligarchy, and doing just what you liked or nothing at all. The one thing they were not prepared to do was to cooperate in saving Rome. At first they showed some eagerness to flatter him; but found that flattery was not what he wanted. Then they were inclined to sulk, and he had to get them to pass a law making attendance at the senate compulsory. Mean views as to his motives have become traditional; but the only view the facts warrant is this: he lent out his personality, not ungrudgingly, to receive the powers and laurels that must fall upon the central figure in the state, while ever working to vitalize what lay outward from that to the circumference, that all Romans might share with him the great Roman responsibility of running and regenerating the world. Where there was talent, he opened a way for it. He made much more freedom than had ever been under the Republic; gave all classes functions to perform; and curtailed only the freedom of the old oligarchy to fleece the provinces and misdirect affairs.