And now, his double head crowned with laurel, Janus opens the new year with auspicious calendar; now Tiber sees united in Honorius Brutus’ consular robe and Romulus’ kingly sceptre. The Palatine hill rejoices after many generations again to look upon a consul; the rostra learn to know the curule chair famed of old among our forefathers, and royal lictors, a long unwonted sight, encircle with their golden fasces the Forum of Trajan; while Honorius, wreathing with Getic laurels the axes borne for the sixth time before him, places a conqueror’s foot upon the neck of subdued Danube. Let this year springing from its true source go forth among the nations more glorious than any—a year the consul inaugurated, not a stranger in a strange land, whose cradle the Senate-house guarded, that Roman citizens first beheld, that Victory, all wars o’ercome, auspiciously
[43] Mentioned, no doubt, as symbolical of the New Year.
hunc et privati titulis famulantibus anni
et, quos armipotens genitor retroque priores 655
diversis gessere locis, ceu numen adorent;
hunc et quinque tui vel quos habiturus in urbe
post alios, Auguste, colant. licet unus in omnes
consul eas, magno sextus tamen iste superbit
nomine: praeteritis melior, venientibus auctor. 660