18 OWLS 



When Herod Agrippa entered the Theatre at 

 Caesarsea clad, as the Jewish historian Josephus 

 puts it, in a robe of silver tissue, on which the sun 

 shone down with all his radiance, it was an owl 

 which suddenly perched upon a rope above his head 

 and warned him of his coming end the end which 

 had befallen the Syrian conqueror, Antiochus 

 Epiphanes, the Roman Sulla, and his own ancestor 

 Herod the Great, and which was to befall, in later 

 times, that most unlovable of kings, Philip II. 

 of Spain the most terrible of all deaths, that of 

 being devoured alive by worms, " the tyrant's 

 death." 



And in a region still more remote, the plains of 

 the Euphrates and the Tigris, when the Roman 

 army was about to give battle at Carrhae, an owl 

 appeared within its ranks, and warned them of what 

 was to prove one of the greatest blows ever inflicted 

 upon Roman imperial pride, the death and mutilation 

 of Crassus, richest of mortal men, the annihilation 

 of the Roman army by a horde of Parthians, and 

 above all, the loss of the Roman eagles, which were 

 to remain in the hands of the barbarians, till, in 

 the world-peace which accompanied the reign of 

 Augustus, they voluntarily restored them to their 

 proper owners. 



