ed. It so happened for prognosticating futurity, in regard to every
thing that was asked, except death and marriage, about which it was not
allowed to ask any questions.

Those who consulted the oracle of Amphiarus, lay on the skins of
victims, and received the answer of the oracle in a dream. Virgil
attests the same thing of the oracle of Faunus in Italy.

A governor of Cilicia, who gave little credit to oracles, and who was
always surrounded by unbelieving Epicureans sent a letter sealed with
his signet to the oracle of Mopsus, requiring one of those answers that
were received in a dream. The messenger charged with the letter brought
it back in the same condition, not having been opened; and informed
him, that he had seen in a dream a very well made man, who said to him
'Black' without the addition of even another word. Then the governor
opening the letter, assured the company, that he wanted to know of the
divinity, whether he should sacrifice a white or black bull.

In the temple of the goddess of Syria, when the statue of Apollo was
inclined to deliver oracles, it deviated, moved, and was full of
agitations on its pedestals. Then the priests carrying it on their
shoulders, it pushed and turned them on all sides, and the high-priest,
interrogating it on all sorts of affairs, if it refused its consent, it
drove the priests back; if otherwise, it made them advance.

Suetonius says, that, some months before the birth of Augustus, an
oracle was current, importing, that nature was labouring at the
production of a king, who would be master of the Roman Empire; that the
Senate in great consternation, had forbid the rearing of any male
children who should be born that year, but that the senators whose wives
were pregnant, found means to hinder the inscribing of the decree in the
public registers. It seems that the prediction, of which Augustus was
only the type, regarded the birth of Jesus Christ, the spiritual king of
the whole world; or that the wicked spirit was willing, by suggesting
this rigorous decree to the Senate, to depose Herod; and by this
example, to involve the Messiah in the massacre that was made by his
orders of all the children of two years and under. The whole world was
then full of the coming of the Messiah. We see by Virgil's fourth
eclogue, that he applies to the son of the Consul Asinius Pollio the
prophecies which, from the Jews, had then passed into foreign nations.
This child the object of Virgi