It is hardly worth while to dwell upon the passage found in Macrobius. Amongst the jests of Augustus, is the following:” When he heard that among the children within two years of age, which Herod king of the Jews commanded to be slain in Syria, his own son had been killed, he said,’ It is better to be Herod's hog than his son.’”

Macrobius wrote about A.D. 400, when the Gospel of Matthew was generally known throughout the empire; and if he did write these words, from what other source is it likely that he could have borrowed them?

But the passage bears the strongest marks of forgery. Macrobius was in all probability a Heathen; and why should he go out of his way to give such a careful confirmation to one of Matthew's most questionable passages? No Heathen or Christian writer has stated that Herod killed a son under two years of age. Alexander, Aristobulus, and Antipater, whom he caused to be put to death, were all young men. The saying of Augustus would therefore be equally witty, and more true, without any allusion to the infants of Bethlehem.

As the transcribers of the empire became Christian, we can imagine the temptation they must have felt to render such an easy but essential service to their new faith, as the manufacturing of Heathen and Jewish testimonies. Macrobius was likely to receive the same treatment as Josephus.