It happened at the time when Augustus was Emperor in Rome and Herod was
King in Jerusalem.
It was then that a very great and holy night sank down over the earth.
It was the darkest night that any one had ever seen. One could have
believed that the whole earth had fallen into a cellar-vault. It was
impossible to distinguish water from land, and one could not find one’s
way on the most familiar road. And it couldn’t be otherwise, for not a
ray of light came from heaven. All the stars stayed at home in their own
houses, and the fair moon held her face averted.
The silence and the stillness were as profound as the darkness. The
rivers stood still in their courses, the wind did not stir, and even the
aspen leaves had ceased to quiver. Had any one walked along the
seashore, he would have found that the waves no longer dashed upon the
sands; and had one wandered in the desert, the sand would not have
crunched under one’s feet. Everything was as motionless as if turned to
stone, so as not to disturb the holy night. The grass was afraid to
grow, the dew could not fall, and the flowers dared not exhale their
perfume.
On this night the wild beasts did not seek their prey, the serpents did
not sting, and the dogs did not bark. And what was even more glorious,
inanimate things would have been unwilling to disturb the night’s
sanctity, by lending themselves to an evil deed. No false key could have
picked a lock, and no knife could possibly have drawn a drop of blood.
In Rome, during this very night, a small company of people came from the
Emperor’s palace at the Palatine and took the path across the Forum
which led to the Capitol. During the day just ended the Senators had
asked the Emperor if he had any objections to their erecting a temple to
him on Rome’s sacred hill. But Augustus had not immediately given his
consent. He did not know if it would be agreeable to the gods that he
should own a temple next to theirs, and he had replied that first he
wished to ascertain their will in the matter by offering a nocturnal
sacrifice to his genius. It was he who, accompanied by a few trusted
friends, was on his way to perform this sacrifice.
Augustus let them carry him in his litter, for he was old, and it was an
effort for him to climb the long stairs leading to the Capitol. He
himself held the cage with the doves for the sacrifice. No priests or
soldiers or senators accompanied him, only his nearest friends.
Torch-bearers walked in front of him in order to light the way in the
night darkness and behind him followed the slaves, who carried the
tripod, the knives, the charcoal, the sacred fire, and all the other
things needed for the sacrifice.
On the way the Emperor chatted gaily with his faithful followers, and
therefore none of them noticed the infinite silence and stillness of the
night. Only when they had reached the highest point of the Capitol Hill
and the vacant spot upon which they contemplated erecting the temple,
did it dawn upon them that something unusual was taking place.
It could not be a night like all others, for up on the very edge of the
cliff they saw the most remarkable being! At first they thought it was
an old, distorted olive-trunk; later they imagined that an ancient stone
figure from the temple of Jupiter had wandered out on the cliff. Finally
it was apparent to them that it could be only the old sibyl.
Anything so aged, so weather-beaten, and so giant-like in stature they
had never seen. This old woman was awe-inspiring! If the Emperor had not
been present, they would all have fled to their homes.
“It is she,” they whispered to each other, “who has lived as many years
as there are sand-grains on her native shores. Why has she come out from
her cave just to-night? What does she foretell for the Emperor and the
Empire—she, who writes her prophecies on the leaves of the trees and
knows that the wind will carry the words of the oracle to the person for
whom they are intended?”
They were so terrified that they would have dropped on their knees with
their foreheads pressed against the earth, had the sibyl stirred. But
she sat as still as though she were lifeless. Crouching upon the
outermost edge of the cliff, and shading her eyes with her hand, she
peered out into the night. She sat there as if she had gone up on the
hill that she might see more clearly something that was happening far
away. _She_ could see things on a night like this!
At that moment the Emperor and all his retinue marked how profound the
darkness was. None of them could see a hand’s breadth in front of him.
And what stillness! What silence! Not even the Tiber’s hollow murmur
could they hear. The air seemed to suffocate them, cold sweat broke out
on their foreheads, and their hands were numb and powerless. They feared
that some dreadful disaster was impending.
But no one cared to show that he was afraid, and everyone told the
Emperor that this was a good omen. All Nature held its breath to greet a
new god.
They counseled Augustus to hurry with the sacrifice, and said that the
old sibyl had evidently come out of her cave to greet his genius.
But the truth was that the old sibyl was so absorbed in a vision that
she did not even know that Augustus had come up to the Capitol. She was
transported in spirit to a far-distant land, where she imagined that she
was wandering over a great plain. In the darkness she stubbed her foot
continually against something, which she believed to be grass-tufts. She
stooped down and felt with her hand. No, it was not grass, but sheep.
She was walking between great sleeping flocks of sheep.
Then she noticed the shepherds’ fire. It burned in the middle of the
field, and she groped her way to it. The shepherds lay asleep by the
fire, and beside them were the long, spiked staves with which they
defended their flocks from wild beasts. But the little animals with the
glittering eyes and the bushy tails that stole up to the fire, were they
not jackals? And yet the shepherds did not fling their staves at them,
the dogs continued to sleep, the sheep did not flee, and the wild
animals lay down to rest beside the human beings.
This the sibyl saw, but she knew nothing of what was being enacted on
the hill back of her. She did not know that there they were raising an
altar, lighting charcoal and strewing incense, and that the Emperor took
one of the doves from the cage to sacrifice it. But his hands were so
benumbed that he could not hold the bird. With one stroke of the wing,
it freed itself and disappeared in the night darkness.
When this happened, the courtiers glanced suspiciously at the old sibyl.
They believed that it was she who caused the misfortune.
Could they know that all the while the sibyl thought herself standing
beside the shepherds’ fire, and that she listened to a faint sound which
came trembling through the dead-still night? She heard it long before
she marked that it did not come from the earth, but from the sky. At
last she raised her head; then she saw light, shimmering forms glide
forward in the darkness. They were little flocks of angels, who, singing
joyously, and apparently searching, flew back and forth above the wide
plain.
While the sibyl was listening to the angel-song, the Emperor was making
preparations for a new sacrifice. He washed his hands, cleansed the
altar, and took up the other dove. And, although he exerted his full
strength to hold it fast, the dove’s slippery body slid from his hand,
and the bird swung itself up into the impenetrable night.
The Emperor was appalled! He fell upon his knees and prayed to his
genius. He implored him for strength to avert the disasters which this
night seemed to foreshadow.
Nor did the sibyl hear any of this either. She was listening with her
whole soul to the angel-song, which grew louder and louder. At last it
became so powerful that it wakened the shepherds. They raised themselves
on their elbows and saw shining hosts of silver-white angels move in the
darkness in long, swaying lines, like migratory birds. Some held lutes
and cymbals in their hands; others held zithers and harps, and their
song rang out as merry as child-laughter, and as care-free as the lark’s
trill. When the shepherds heard this, they rose up to go to the mountain
city, where they lived, to tell of the miracle.
They groped their way forward on a narrow, winding path, and the sibyl
followed them. Suddenly it grew light up there on the mountain: a big,
clear star kindled right over it, and the city on the mountain summit
glittered like silver in the starlight. All the fluttering angel throngs
hastened thither, shouting for joy, and the shepherds hurried so that
they almost ran. When they reached the city, they found that the angels
had assembled over a low stable near the city gate. It was a wretched
structure, with a roof of straw and the naked cliff for a back wall.
Over it hung the Star, and hither flocked more and more angels. Some
seated themselves on the straw roof or alighted upon the steep
mountain-wall back of the house; others, again, held themselves in the
air on outspread wings, and hovered over it. High, high up, the air was
illuminated by the shining wings.
The instant the Star kindled over the mountain city, all Nature awoke,
and the men who stood upon Capitol Hill could not help seeing it. They
felt fresh, but caressing winds which traveled through space; delicious
perfumes streamed up about them; trees swayed; the Tiber began to
murmur; the stars twinkled, and suddenly the moon stood out in the sky
and lit up the world. And out of the clouds the two doves came circling
down and lighted upon the Emperor’s shoulders.
When this miracle happened, Augustus rose, proud and happy, but his
friends and his slaves fell on their knees.
“Hail, Cæsar!” they cried. “Thy genius hath answered thee. Thou art the
god who shall be worshiped on Capitol Hill!”
And this cry of homage, which the men in their transport gave as a
tribute to the Emperor, was so loud that the old sibyl heard it. It
waked her from her visions. She rose from her place on the edge of the
cliff, and came down among the people. It was as if a dark cloud had
arisen from the abyss and rushed down the mountain height. She was
terrifying in her extreme age! Coarse hair hung in matted tangles around
her head, her joints were enlarged, and the dark skin, hard as the bark
of a tree, covered her body with furrow upon furrow.
Potent and awe-inspiring, she advanced toward the Emperor. With one hand
she clutched his wrist, with the other she pointed toward the distant
East.
“Look!” she commanded, and the Emperor raised his eyes and saw. The
vaulted heavens opened before his eyes, and his glance traveled to the
distant Orient. He saw a lowly stable behind a steep rock wall, and in
the open doorway a few shepherds kneeling. Within the stable he saw a
young mother on her knees before a little child, who lay upon a bundle
of straw on the floor.
And the sibyl’s big, knotty fingers pointed toward the poor babe. “Hail,
Cæsar!” cried the sibyl, in a burst of scornful laughter. “There is the
god who shall be worshiped on Capitol Hill!”
Then Augustus shrank back from her, as from a maniac. But upon the sibyl
fell the mighty spirit of prophecy. Her dim eyes began to burn, her
hands were stretched toward heaven, her voice was so changed that it
seemed not to be her own, but rang out with such resonance and power
that it could have been heard over the whole world. And she uttered
words which she appeared to be reading among the stars.
“Upon Capitol Hill shall the Redeemer of the world be
worshiped,—_Christ_—but not frail mortals.”
When she had said this, she strode past the terror-stricken men, walked
slowly down the mountain, and disappeared.
But, on the following day, Augustus strictly forbade the people to raise
any temple to him on Capitol Hill. In place of it he built a sanctuary
to the new-born God-Child, and called it Heaven’s Altar—_Ara Cœli_.
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[Illustration: The Wise Men’s Well]