some say that the government of Carthage forbid the set- tlement upon pain of death, from the fear that it would increase in power so as to deprive the mother country of her possessions there." If Aristotle had uttered this as a prediction, that such a thing would take place in regard to some future nation, no one, perhaps, would have called him a false prophet, for the American revolution would have been its fulfilment. This philosopher lived about 384 years B.C. Seneca lived about the commencement of the vulgar era. He wrote tragedies, and in one of them occurs this passage:—
——————"Venient annis
Sæeculia seris, quibus oceanus
Vincula rerum laxet, et ingens
Pateat tellus, Typhisque novos
Detegat orbes; nee sit terris
Ultima Thule.'[1]
This is nearer prophecy, and may be rendered, in English, thus: "The time will come when the ocean will loosen the chains of nature, and we shall behold a vast country. A new Typhis shall discover new worlds; Thule shall no longer be considered the last country of the known world."
St. Gregory, who flourished in the 7th century, in an epistle to St. .Clement, an African bishop, said that, beyond the ocean there was another world.
- ↑ Medea. Act. 3—v. 375.
