Veleda prophecies about her goddess:
"'Wrathful she rides to bring down Rome..." (p. 556)
But other gods have an opposite agenda.
Anchises prophesies to his son, Aeneas:
And this in truth is he whom you so often hear promised you, Augustus Caesar, son of a god, who will again establish a golden age in Latium amid fields once ruled by Saturn; he will advance his empire beyond the Garamants and Indians to a land which lies beyond our stars, beyond the path of year and sun, where sky-bearing Atlas wheels on his shoulders the blazing star-studded sphere. Against his coming both Caspian realms and the Maeotic land even now shudder at the oracles of their gods, and the mouths of sevenfold Nile quiver in alarm. Not even Hercules traversed so much of earth’s extent
-copied from Aeneid, Book 6, here.
A Roman interstellar empire?
Finally, Biblical and Classical traditions converge as an enduring universal spiritual authority is exercised from Rome.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
Or, to repeat another line from Virgil oft quoted in Stirling's Antonine books: "imperium sine fine"!
IIRC, it was the opinion of Fr. Raymond Brown and Fr. John Meier, in their study of the early history of the Church, ANTIOCH & ROME, it was St. Peter's deliberate decision, as the first of the popes, to move his seat to Rome. The grand strategy being to boldly begin the spiritual conquest of the mightiest empire of ancient times from its very heart and capital.
Ad astra! Sean
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