prophecy". Robert Lowth seems also to have held this opinion, noting, by way of Plato, that the poem contains references made "not by men in their sober senses, but [by] the God himself". In the mid-19th century, Oxford scholar John Keble claimed: Taceo si quid divinius ac sanctius (quod credo equidem) adhaeret istis auguriis ("I am silent about whether something more divine and sacredwhich is what I, in fact, believeclings to these prophecies"). Modern views By the turn of the 20th century, most scholars had abandoned the idea that the Fourth Eclogue was prophetic, although "there [were] still some to be found who", in the words of Comparetti, "[took] this ancient farce seriously." Robin Nisbet has argued that the supposed Christian nature of the poem is a by-product of Virgil's creative references to disparate religious texts; Nisbet proposes that Virgil probably appropriated some elements used in the poem from Jewish mythology by means of Eastern oracles. In doing so, he adapted these ideas to Western (which is to say, Roman) modes of thought. See also Interpretatio Christiana, the adaptation of non-Christian elements of culture or historical facts to the worldview of Christianity Notes References Bibliography Attribution External links Full Latin text of Eclogue 4, courtesy of the Perseus Project. Christianity in the Middle Ages Christianity and other religions Christianization Virgil