Narrative and Miscellaneous Papers — Volume 2De Quincey, Thomas
Philosophy
Narrative and Miscellaneous Papers — Volume 2
De Quincey, Thomas
English essays
when you come to your glory, do not forget me that foreshadowed it in
your humiliation."' The story adds, that Agrippa affected to laugh when
the German concluded; after which it goes on to say, that in a few
weeks, being delivered by the death of Tiberius; being released from
prison by the very prince on whose account he had incurred the risk;
being raised to a tetrarchy, and afterwards to the kingdom of all
Judea; coming into all the prosperity which had been promised to him by
the German; and not losing any part of his interest at Rome through the
assassination of his patron Caligula--he began to look back
respectfully to the words of the German, and forwards with anxiety to
the second coming of the bird. Seven years of sunshine had now slipped
away as silently as a dream. A great festival, shows and vows, was on
the point of being celebrated in honor of Claudius Cæsar, at Strato's
Tower, otherwise called Cæsarea, the Roman metropolis of Palestine.
Duty and policy alike required that the king of the land should go down
and unite in this mode of religious homage to the emperor. He did so;
and on the second morning of the festival, by way of doing more
conspicuous honor to the great solemnity, he assumed a very sumptuous
attire of silver armor, burnished so highly as to throw back a dazzling
glare from the sun's morning beams upon the upturned eyes of the vast
multitude around him. Immediately from the sycophantish part of the
crowd, of whom a vast majority were Pagans, ascended a cry of
glorification as to some manifestation of Deity. Agrippa, gratified by
this success of his new apparel, and by this flattery, not unusual in
the case of kings, had not the firmness (though a Jew, and conscious of
the wickedness, greater in himself than in the heathen crowd,) to
reject the blasphemous homage. Voices of adoration continued to ascend;
when suddenly, looking upward to the vast awnings prepared for
screening the audience from the noonday heats, the king perceived the
same ominous bird which he had seen at Rome in the day of his
affliction, seated quietly, and looking down upon himself. In that same
moment an icy pang shot through his intestines. He was removed into the
palace; and at the end of five days, completely worn out by pain,
Agrippa expired in the 54th year of his age, and the seventh of his
sovereign power.
Whether the bird, here described as an owl, was really such, may be
doubted, considering the narrow nomenclature of the Romans for all
zoological purposes, and the total indifference of the Roman mind to
all distinctions in natural history which are not upon the very largest
scale. We should much suspect that the bird was a magpie. Meantime,
speaking of ornithoscopy in relation to Jews, we remember another story
in that subdivision of the subject which it may be worth while
repeating; not merely on its own account, as wearing a fine oriental
air, but also for the correction which it suggests to a very common
error.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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