The birth of a child throws him into dreams of a universal palingenesis.[1] These dreams were of every-day occurrence, and shaped into a kind of literature which was designated Sibylline.
The quite recent formation of the empire exalted the imagination; the great era of peace on which it entered, and that impression of melancholy sensibility which the mind experiences after long periods of revolution, gave birth on all sides to unlimited hopes.
[Footnote 1: Egl.iv.The _Cumaeum carmen_ (v.

4) was a sort of Sibylline apocalypse, borrowed from the philosophy of history familiar to the East.

See Servius on this verse, and _Carmina Sibyllina_, iii.
97-817; cf.Tac., _Hist._, v.

13.] In Judea expectation was at its height.

Holy persons--among whom may be named the aged Simeon, who, legend tells us, held Jesus in his arms; Anna, daughter of Phanuel, regarded as a prophetess[1]--passed their life about the temple, fasting, and praying, that it might please God not to take them from the world without having seen the fulfillment of the hopes of Israel.