FAVORITE CHRISTMAS QUOTES 2012, # 11:


(An excerpt from Virgil's Fourth Eclogue)

Now the last age of the prophecy begins. . .

the great roll-call of the centuries is born anew:

now Justice returns . . . .

Only favour the child who’s born, under whom

any traces of our evils that remain will be cancelled,

and leave the earth free from perpetual fear.

He will take on divine life. . .

and rule a peaceful world with his father’s powers.

And for you, boy, the uncultivated earth will pour out

her first little gifts . . .

and the cattle will have no fear of fierce lions:

Your cradle itself will pour out delightful flowers:

And the snakes will die off, and deceitful poisonous herbs

will wither: spice plants will spring up everywhere.

The plain will slowly turn golden with tender wheat,

and the ripe clusters hang on the wild briar,

and the tough oak drip with dew-wet honey.

The soil will not feel the hoe: nor the vine the pruning hook:

the strong ploughman, too, will free his oxen from the yoke:. . . .

See the world, with its weighty dome, bowing,

earth and wide sea and deep heavens:

see how everything delights in the future age!

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This poem, written most likely while the Roman emperor Augustus' first wife Scribonia was pregnant with Julia, their only child together, was believed by Christians to be a prophecy of the birth of Jesus for over a thousand years. The pioem is strikingly similar in wording and tone to passages in the Biblical book of Isaiah which speak of a coming era of universal  and cosmic peace extending to all creatures (e.g., the famous "Peaceable Kingdom" of Isaiah 11).

It is also probably one of the reasons Virgil appears as Dante's guide through Hell in the Divine Comedy.

The present translation is by A. S. Kline, and dates from 2001.