Here was a mighty plant
flowering twice a year and giving its seed to the four winds. Every
July and January its erection was celebrated in the imperial republic.
Vergilius stood beside the emperor that day when, at the Ars Pacis
Augustas, he addressed the people.
"I have been reading," he said, "the words of a certain dreamer of
Judea, who, in the olden time, wrote of a day when swords should be
beaten into ploughshares and spears into pruning-hooks, and when peace
should reign among the nations of the earth. Well, give me an army for
a hundred years, good people, and then I may voice the will of the gods
that iron be used no more to plough its way in living flesh, but only
to turn the furrow and to prune the tree. Meanwhile, believe me, every
man must learn to love honor and virtue, and to respect his neighbor,
and the gods above all."
A hundred years! The playful emperor knew not how quickly a man passes
and how slowly, how exceeding slowly, moves the great procession of
mankind. But so it befell; the very right hand of Jupiter had helped
in the sowing of that seed which, as it grew, was to lift the
foundations of his power.
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