In one of his
earliest poems, written perhaps after the Perusian war of 41 B.C.[583]
even the lively Horace was moved to voice the prevailing depression,
fancifully urging that the Italian people should migrate, like the
Phocaeans of old, to the far west, where, as Sertorius had been told
in Spain, lay the islands of the blest, where the earth, as in the
golden age, yields all her produce untilled:
Iuppiter ilia piae secrevit litora genti
Ut inquinavit aere tempus aureum;
Aere, dehinc ferro duravit saecula, quorum
Piis secunda vate me datur fuga.
It may be, as has recently been suggested, that the famous fourth
Eclogue of Virgil, "the Messianic Eclogue," was in some sense meant as
an answer to this poem of Horace. "There is no need," he seems to say
in that poem, written in the year 39, "to seek the better age in a
fabled island of the west. It is here and now with us. The period upon
which Italy is now entering more than fulfils in real life the dream
of a Golden Age. A marvellous child is even now coming into the world
who will see and inaugurate an era of peace and prosperity: darkness
and despair will after a while pass entirely away, and a regenerate
Italy,--regenerate in religion and morals as in fertility and
wealth,--will lead the world in a new era of happiness and good
government.
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