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 it is, that Nicolo de Conti, who was in Bengal and other parts of India in the fifteenth century, insists that Vicramaditya was the same with Augustus, and that his period was reckoned, from the birth of that Emperor, fifty-six years before Christ.” Now, it is evident that these fifty-six years before Christ bring us to the æra of the Buddha of Siam, for the beginning of the new æra, foretold by the Cumæan Sibyl, as declared by the Mantuan or Celtic poet, the Druid of Cisalpine Gaul, in his fourth eclogue. This, in some old manuscripts seen by Pierius, is entitled Interpretatio Novi Sæculi. This Eclogue was evidently a carmen Sæculare.

Virgil says,

Col. Wilford on this passage observes, that these are the very words of Vishnu to the earth, when complaining to it, and begging redress. Here is the Brahmin periodical regeneration clearly expressed. And here is an admission by Virgil, that the poem of Homer was a religious Mythos. All these prophecies, I apprehend, alluded to the renovation of the cycle of the Neros, then about to take place in its ninth revolution,

I quote these verses here merely to shew that some great personage was expected. The Ultima Cumæi venit jam carminis Ætas, of Virgil, I shall discuss in a future page, and shew that it is in accordance with my theory.

Several of the other most celebrated Roman authors have noticed the expectation of the arrival of some great personage in the first century, so that this could not be a mere solitary instance of Virgil’s base adulation in this interesting poem.

Tacitus says, “The generality had a strong persuasion that it was contained in the ancient writings of the priests, that the East should prevail: and that some one who should come out of Judea, should obtain the empire of the world: which ambiguities foretold Vespasian and Titus. But the common people, (of the Jews,) according to the usual influence of human wishes, appropriated to themselves, by their interpretation, this vast grandeur foretold