Was not
Antiochus Epiphanes himself a "god," while as a member of the sect he
belittled divinity?
Naples, too, was a Greek city always filled with Oriental trading folk,
and these carried with them the language of subject races. It is at
Pompeii that the earliest inscriptions on Italian soil have been found
which recognize the imperial cult, and it is at Cumae that the best
instance of a cult calendar has come to light. It is a note, one of the
very few in the great poet's work, that grates upon us, but when he wrote
as he did he was probably not aware that his years of residence in the
"garden" had indeed accustomed his ear to some un-Roman sounds.[6]
Octavian was of course not unaware of the advantage that accrued to the
ruler through the Oriental theory of absolutism, and furtively accepted
all such expressions. By the time Vergil wrote the Aeneid the Roman world
had acquiesced, but then, to our surprise, Vergil ceases to accord divine
attributes to Augustus.
[Footnote 6: Julius Caesar began as early as 45 B.C. to invite
extraordinary honors for political purposes, but Roman literature seems
not to have taken any cognizance of them at that time.]
Again, I would suggest that it was at Naples that Vergil may most readily
have come upon the "messianic" ideas that occur in the fourth _Eclogue_,
for despite all the objections that have been raised against using that
word, conceptions are found there which were not yet naturalized in the
Occident.
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