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Rh That a prediction which for many generations had fed the hopes and soothed the sorrows of the children of Israel should find its fulfilment in the person of an obscure Gentile, was certainly not intended by prophet or seer. But the faith of believers in it was singularly confirmed by two events that happened to Vespasian in Egypt. It is not by any means easy to discover what were the religious feelings of Tacitus; at times he appears to have been a fatalist, at times an orthodox believer in the religion of the State; in the following narrative he has evidently no doubt as to the truth of the cure, if not of the miracle wrought by the emperor.

"In the months during which Vespasian was waiting at Alexandria for the periodical return of the summer gales and settled weather at sea, many wonders occurred which seemed to point him out as the object of the favor of heaven and the partiality of the gods. One of the common people of Alexandria, whom all men there knew to be blind, threw himself at the emperor's knees, and implored him with groans to heal his infirmity. He begged Vespasian that he would deign to moisten his cheeks and eyeballs with his spittle. Another with a diseased hand prayed that the limb might feel the print of a Cæsar's foot. At first Vespasian ridiculed and repulsed them. They persisted, and he, though on the one hand he feared the scandal of a fruitless attempt, yet, on the other, was induced by the entreaties of the men and by the language of his flatterers to hope for success. At last he ordered that the opinion of physicians should be taken, as to whether such blindness and infirmity were within the reach of human skill. They discussed the