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4 the miracles of antichrist
She sat there as if she had gone up on the hill in
order to see better something which was taking place
far away.
At that moment the emperor and all his
attendants noticed how extremely dark it was. No one
could see a hand-breadth before him. And how still,
how silent! Not even the dull murmur of the
Tiber could be heard. The air was stifling. Cold
sweat broke out on their foreheads, and their hands
were stiff and numb. They believed that something
terrible must be imminent.
No one, however, would show that he was afraid,
but all said to the emperor that these were good
prognostics. All nature held its breath to welcome
a new god.
They exhorted Augustus to hasten with the
sacrifice, and said that the old sibyl had probably issued
from her cavern to greet his genius.
But the truth was, that the old sibyl was so
wholly absorbed by a vision, that she did not even know
that Augustus had come up on Capitolium. In
spirit she was carried away to a distant land, where
it seemed to her she was wandering over a great
plain. In the darkness her feet continually stumbled
against something, which she took to be knolls.
She stooped to feel with her hand. No, it was not
knolls, but sheep. She wandered between large
sleeping flocks of sheep.
Now she noticed the shepherds’ fire. It burned
in the middle of the field, and she turned her steps
towards it. The shepherds were asleep by the fire,
and beside them lay their long, pointed staves, used
in defending the flocks against wild animals. But
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