hopes upon
him and was devoted to him, intending to leave him as successor to his
name, authority, and supremacy. He was influenced largely by Attia's
explicit affirmation that the youth had been engendered by Apollo. While
sleeping once in his temple, she said, she thought she had intercourse
with a serpent, and through this circumstance at the end of the allotted
time bore a son. Before he came to the light of day she saw in a dream
her womb lifted to the heavens and spreading out over all the earth; and
the same night Octavius thought the sun rose from her vagina. Hardly
had the child been born when Nigidius Figulus, a senator, straightway
prophesied for him sole command of the realm. [2]

He could distinguish most accurately of his contemporaries the order of
the firmament and the mutations of the stars, what they accomplished
by separation and what by conjunctions, in their associations and
retirements, and for this reason had incurred the charge of practicing
some kind of forbidden pursuits. He accordingly met on that occasion
Octavius, who was somewhat tardy in reaching the senate on account of the
birth of the child,--there happened to be a meeting of the senate that
day,--and asked him why he was late. On learning the cause he cried out:
"You have begotten a master over us." [3] At that Octavius was alarmed and
wished to destroy the infant, but Nigidius restrained him, saying that
it was impossible for it to suffer any such fate. [-2-] This was the
conversation at that time. While the boy was growing up in the country an
eagle snatched from his hands a loaf of bread, and after soaring aloft
flew down and gave it back to him.[4] When he was a lad and staying in
Rome Cicero dreamed that the boy was let down by golden chains to the
summit of the Capitol and received a whip from Jupiter.[5] He did not
know who the youth was, but meeting him the next day on the Capitol
itself he recognized him, and told the vision to the bystanders. Catulus,
who had likewise never seen Octavius, beheld in a vision all the noble
children on the Capitol at the termination of a solemn procession to
Jupiter, and in the course of the ceremony the god cast what looked like
an image of Rome into that child's lap. Startled at this he went up into
the Capitol to offer prayers to the god, and finding there Octavius, who
had ascended the hill for some other reason, he compared his appearance
with the dream and was satisfied of the truth of the