"messianic" element into the symbolism of his poem, for he measures the
progress of the new era by the stages in the growth of a child who is
destined finally to bring the prophecy to fulfillment. This happy idea
may well have been suggested by table talks with Philodemus or Siro, who
must at times have recalled stories of savior-princes that they had heard
in their youth in the East. The oppressed Orient was full of prophetic
utterances promising the return of independence and prosperity under the
leadership of some long-hoped-for worthy prince of the tediously unworthy
reigning dynasties. Indeed, since Philodemus grew to boyhood at Gadara
under Jewish rule he could hardly have escaped the knowledge of the very
definite Messianic hopes of the Hebrew people. It may well be, therefore,
that a stray image whose ultimate source was none other than Isaiah came
in this indirect fashion into Vergil's poem, and that the monks of the
dark ages guessed better than they knew.

[Footnote 2: Sellar, _Horace and the Elegiac Poets_, p. 123. Ramsay,
quoted by W. Warde Fowler, _Vergil's Messianic Eclogue_, p, 54.]

To attempt to identify Vergil's child with a definite person would be a
futile effort to analyze poetic allegory. Contemporary readers doubtless
supposed that since the Republic was dead, the successor to power after
the death of Octavius and Antony would naturally be a son of one of
these.

The settlements of the year were sealed by two marriages, that of
Octavian to Scribonia and that of Octavian's sister to Antony. It was
enough that some prince worthy of leadership could naturally be expected
from these dynastic marriages, and that in either case it would be a
child of Octavian's house.[3] Thus far his readers might let their
imagination range; what actually happened afterwards through a series of