The tradition of a "Golden Age" is widespread over the world,
and it is not necessary to go at any length into the story of
the Garden of Eden and the other legends which in almost every
country illustrate this tradition. Without indulging in
sentiment on the subject we may hold it not unlikely that the
tradition is justified by the remembrance, among the people of
every race, of a pre-civilization period of comparative harmony
and happiness when two things, which to-day we perceive to be
the prolific causes of discord and misery, were absent or only
weakly developed--namely, property and self-consciousness. 1
During the first century B.C. there was a great spread of
Messianic Ideas over the Roman world, and Virgil's 4th Eclogue,
commonly called the Messianic Eclogue, reflects very clearly
this state of the public mind. The expected babe in the poem was
to be the son of Octavian (Augustus) the first Roman emperor,
and a messianic halo surrounded it in Virgil's verse.
Unfortunately it turned out to be a girl!