According to an ancient legend, the Emperor Augustus Cæsar repaired to the sibyl Tiburtina to inquire whether he should consent to allow himself to be worshipped with Divine honours, which the Senate had decreed to him. The sibyl, after some days of meditation, took the Emperor apart, and showed him an altar; and above the altar, in the opening heavens, and in a glory of light, he beheld a beautiful Virgin, holding an Infant in her arms; and at the same time a voice was heard saying, "This is the altar of the Son of the Living God." Whereupon Augustus caused an altar to be erected on the Capitoline Hill, with this inscription--"_Ara primogeniti Dei_"; and on the same spot in later times was built the church called the _Ara-Coeli_, well known, with its flight of one hundred and twenty-four marble steps, to all who have visited Rome. This particular prophecy of the Tibertine sibyl to Augustus rests on some very antique traditions, Pagan as well as Christian. It is supposed to have suggested the "Pollio" of Virgil, which suggested the "Messiah" of Pope. It is mentioned by writers of the third and fourth centuries, and our own divines have not wholly rejected it; for Bishop Taylor mentions the sibyl's prophecy among "the great and glorious accidents" happening about the birth of Jesus. LEGEND ABOUT SIMEON'S GREAT AGE. It is related that when Ptolemy Philadelphus, about two hundred and sixty years before Christ, resolved to have the Hebrew Scriptures translated into Greek, for the purpose of placing them in his far-famed library, he despatched messengers to Eleazar, the high priest of the Jews, requiring him to send scribes and interpreters learned in the Jewish law to his court at Alexandria. Thereupon Eleazar selected six of the most learned rabbis from each of the twelve tribes of Israel, seventy-two persons in all, and sent them to Egypt, in obedience to the commands of King Ptolemy; and among these was Simeon, a priest and a man full of learning. And it fell to the lot of Simeon to translate the Book of the Prophet Isaiah. And when he came to that verse where it is written, "Behold, a Virgin shall conceive and bear a Son," he began to misdoubt in his own mind how this could be possible; and after long meditation, fearing to give scandal and offence to the Greeks, he rendered the Hebrew word _Virgin_ by a Greek word which signifies merely a _young woman_. But when he had written it down, behold, an angel effaced it, and substituted the right word. Thereupon he wrote it again and again; and the same thing happened three times; and he remained astonished and confounded. And while he wondered what this could mean, a ray of Divine light penetrated his soul. It was revealed to him that the miracle which in his human wisdom he had presumed to doubt was not only possible, but that he, Simeon, "should not see death till he had seen the Lord's Christ."