[26] ᵃ After his own victory over the Cantabri, that of Varro over the Salassi and that of M. Vinicius over the Germans, in 729. Cf. Florus, IV, 12, 53.
ᵇ After the restoration of the standards by the Parthians in 734. Cf. Borghesi II, 100 ff.
ᶜ After the victories of Tiberius in Germany in 746. Dio LV, 6.
ᵈ After the victories of Tiberius in Pannonia? Dio LVI, 17.
[27] A part of the ordinary ceremonial of the triumph. Cf. Mommsen, Röm. St. I, p. 61, 95, Marquardt, Staatsverwaltung, II, p. 582.
[28] For a thanksgiving after the expedition of Tiberius into Armenia cf. Dio LIV, 9. Cf. also Cic. Phil. XIV, 11, 29. For two other instances, cf. Mommsen, R. G., appendix, pp. 161-178.
[29] Not an incredible number. Thanksgivings were offered in Julius Cæsar’s time of fifteen, twenty, forty and fifty days. Cf. Drumann III, 609, No. 84. Fifty days were decreed for the victories of Hirtius, Pansa and Octavian in 711.
[30] The only names traceable are those of Alexander and Cleopatra, the children of Cleopatra and Alexander brother of Jamblichus, King of the Emesenes. Cf. Dio LI, 2, 21. Prop. 2, 1, 33, tells of “Kings with their necks surrounded with golden chains,” in the triumph of Aug. 14, 725.
[31] The emperors assumed the consulship only irregularly and for short periods. Their taking of the “tribunitial power” was not through a regular election to the tribuneship, as was the case with the consulship, for Augustus as a patrician was ineligible; but it was the assumption of a power equal to that of the tribunes. This made the emperors sacrosanct, gave them the initiative and the veto, and well subserved the fiction of their being the representatives and champions of the people. For discussions of this power cf. Merivale, Hist. of Rom. C. XXXI; Mommsen, Röm. St. II, p. 759, 771-777, 833-845.
Succeeding emperors, down to 268 A. D., dated their accession from the day of assuming the tribunitial power. The wording is peculiar in this sentence. May it not have been that Augustus expected his heir or executors to fill in the exact dates at the time of his death, as suggested in the introduction?