Antony and Cleopatra: ‘The Time of Universal Peace’

Summary

With his victory at Actium still hanging in the balance, Shakespeare's Octavius speaks prophetically of a new era of peace:

The time of universal peace is near:

Prove this a prosperous day, the three-nook'd world

Shall bear the olive freely.

(iv, vi, 5-7)

That the 'universal peace' Octavius envisions nearly coincides with that proclaimed thirty years later at Christ's nativity (Luke, ii, 14) is, of course, beyond the capacity of Octavius to see; but a tradition of Christian historiography extending from the early Church Fathers through the Renaissance regards the proximity of these two events with a different awareness. Christian historians viewing the advent of the Pax Romana retrospectively could see in it an adumbration of the Pax Christiana, and they could see in the closeness with which one event followed the other the unfolding of a providential plan. Thus Eusebius, for instance, speaks of the twin triumphs of monarchy and monotheism as emanations from a common source:

Two great powers sprang up fully as out of one stream and they gave peace to all and brought all together to a state of friendship: the Roman empire, which from that time appeared as one kingdom, and the power of the Saviour of all, whose aid was at once extended to and established with everyone.