“Here is Caesar and all Iulus’ posterity that shall arise under the mighty cope of heaven. Here is he, he of whose promise once and again thou hearest, Caesar Augustus, a god’s son, who shall again establish the Age of Gold in Latium over the fields that once were Saturn’s realm, and carry his empire afar to Garamant and India, to the land that lies beyond our stars, beyond the sun’s yearlong ways, where Atlas the sky-bearer wheels on his shoulder the glittering star-spangled pole...”

The Aeneid, Book VI

After [Julius] Caesar’s death, Octavian, later called Caesar Augustus, grandnephew of Caesar, came to power. He had become Caesar’s son by adoption. The great Roman poet Virgil was a friend of Augustus and he wrote the Aeneid with the object of showing that Augustus was a divinely appointed leader and that Rome’s mission was to bring peace and civilization to the world.…After 12 B.C. he became the head of the state religion, taking the title Pontifex Maximus and urging everyone to worship the “spirit of Rome and the genius of the Emperor.” …and later still, the emperors ruled as gods.

Francis Schaeffer