It is an unfulfilled prophecy; yet it is not without interest and value for men to-day. First of all it is of interest as a revelation of the ideas and the hopes that filled men’s minds in Virgil’s time. “The anticipation of a new era was widely spread and vividly felt over the world; and this anticipation—the state of men’s minds at and subsequent to the time when this poem was written—probably contributed to the acceptance of the great political and spiritual changes which awaited the world.”[162] But it is of still greater interest as a revelation of what Virgil himself thought, Virgil, who was perhaps the purest and most interesting personality in the Græco-Roman world then. Men generally were looking for a regeneration of the world; we have here Virgil’s own thoughts on the great subject. He shared with others the idea that the world was on the verge of the dawning of a new day, a day of renewed justice and peace; but he had an idea of his own, that of a great personality, a man of high moral character, specially endowed by the gods for his great task as leader and ruler of the new time. Scarcely less prominent is his idea of the nobler race of men that shall spring up in the new era. It is no picture merely of good government such as Augustus gave the world that we have here; but a prophecy of the moral regeneration of mankind under the influence of a divinely prepared leader. Footnote 158: Froude, _Cæsar_, 12-19. Footnote 159: For the whole picture _see_ Mommsen, especially the very last page of his history. Footnote 160: Virgil, _Eclogues_, IV, 4-25. Footnote 161: Sellar, _Virgil_, 146; Simcox, _Latin Literature_, Vol. I, 257. Footnote 162: Sellar, _Virgil_, 145. _Cf._ Boissier, _La Religion Romaine_. CHAPTER V. JESUS OF NAZARETH.