Note: Translator Pauline Bancroft Flach died in 1966, less than 70 years ago. Therefore, this work is protected by copyright, restricting your legal rights to reproduce it. However, you are welcome to view it on screen, as you do now. Read more about copyright.
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And out of the sky the two doves flew circling
down, and lighted on the emperor’s shoulders.
When this miracle took place Augustus rose up
with proud joy, but his friends and his slaves fell on
their knees. “Hail, Caesar!” they cried. “Your
genius has answered you! You are the god who
shall be worshipped on the heights of the Capitol.”
And the tribute which the men in their transport
offered the emperor was so loud that the old sibyl
heard it. It waked her from her visions. She rose
from her place on the edge of the cliff, and came
forward toward the people. It seemed as if a dark
cloud had risen up from the abyss and sunk down
over the mountain. She was terrifying in her old
age. Coarse hair hung in thin tufts about her head,
her joints were thickened, and her dark skin, hard
as bark, covered her body with wrinkle upon
wrinkle.
Mighty and awe-inspiring, she advanced towards
the emperor. With one hand she seized his wrist,
with the other she pointed towards the distant east.
“Look,” she commanded, and the emperor raised
his eyes and saw. The heavens opened before his
eyes and he looked away to the far east. And he
saw a miserable stable by a steep cliff, and in the
open door some kneeling shepherds. Within the
stable he saw a young mother on her knees before a
little child, who lay on a bundle of straw on the
floor.
And the sibyl’s big, bony fingers pointed towards
that poor child.
“Hail, Caesar!” said the sibyl, with a scornful
laugh. “There is the god who shall be worshipped
on the heights of the Capitol.”
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