His eyes may have been opened to the possibilities of the young Octavian.  It is possible that the two were together at school in Rome, studying rhetoric under Epidius, in the late fifties; and certainly Virgil had recently visited Rome and there interviewed the Triumvir Octavian; and had obtained from him an order for the restitution of his parental farm near Mantua, which had been given to one of the soldiers of Philippi after that battle.  Two or three of the Eclogues are given to the praises of Octavian; whom, even as early as that, Virgil seems to have recognised as the future or potential savior of Rome.  The points to put side by side are these:  Virgil, a Theosophist, expected the coming of an avatar, an Initiate who should save Rome;—­H.P.  Blavatsky speaks of Augustus as an Initiate;—­Augustus did save Rome.

When did he become an Initiate?  Was there, at some time, such a change in his life that it was as if a new Soul had come in to take charge of that impersonal unfailing personality?  There are tremendous mysteries connected with incarnation; the possibility of a sudden accession of entity, so to say,—­a new vast increment of being.  As Octavius and Octavian, the man seems like one without will or desires of his own, acting in blind obedience to impersonal forces that aimed at his supremacy in the Roman world.  As Augustus, he becomes another man altogether, almost fathomlessly wise and beneficient; a Master of Peace and Wisdom.  He gave Rome Peace, and taught her to love peace.  He put Peace for a legend on the coinage; and in the west Pax, in the east Irene, became favorite names to give you children.  He did what he could to clean Roman life; to give the people high ideals; to make the empire a place,—­and in this he succeeded,—­where decent egos could incarnate and hope to progress; which, generally speaking, they cannot in a chaos.  His fame as a benefactor of the human race spread marvelously:  in far-away India (where at that time the Secret Wisdom and its Masters were much more than a tradition), they knew of him, and struck coins in his honor; coins bearing the image and superscription of this Roman Caesar.

I said that he went to work like an Occultist:  like one with an understanding of the inner laws of life, and power to direct outward things in accordance with that knowledge.  Thus:—­the task that lay before him was to effect a complete revolution.  Rome could not go on under the old system any longer.  That system had utterly broken down; and unless an efficient executive could be evolved, there was nothing for it but that the world should go forward Kilkenny-catting itself into non-existence.  Now an efficient executive meant one-man rule; or a king, by whatsoever name he might be called.  But the tradition of centureis made a king impossible.  There were strongly formed astral molds; and whoever should attempt to break them would, like Caesar, ensure his own defeat.