[51] In 746. The result, 4,233,000, shows a gain of 170,000.
[52] In 767. Just before the death of Augustus. Result, 4,937,000; gain since 746, 704,000.
[53] Suetonius, Aug. 34, relates his endeavors to compel matrimony. In Chap. 89, Suetonius writes: “In reading Greek or Latin authors he paid particular attention to precepts and examples which might be useful in public or private life. These he used to extract verbatim, and give to his domestics, or send to the commanders of the armies, the governors of the provinces, or the magistrates of the city, when any of them seemed to stand in need of admonition. He likewise read whole books to the senate, and frequently made them known to the people by his edicts; such as the orations of Quintus Metellus ‘For the Encouragement of Marriage,’ and those of Rutilius ‘On the Style of Building;’ to show the people that he was not the first who had promoted those objects, but that the ancients likewise had thought them worthy of their attention.” Cf. Livy, Ep. LIX; Gell., I, 6.
[54] These games were first held in 726, and every fourth year thereafter. The expression “every fifth year” counts the year of the games as the fifth of the old series and also the first of the new. The consuls, or rather the consul Agrippa, Augustus not holding games in his own honor, celebrated the games of 726, the pontifices those of 730, the augurs those of 734, the quindecemvirs those of 738, and the septemvirs those of 742. Cf. c. 7, N. 6. These games are mentioned by Dio, LIII, 1, 2; LIV, 19; Pliny, Hist. Nat. VII, 48, 158; Suet. Aug. 44. They came to a close with the life of Augustus. We do not hear of them in connection with any subsequent emperor. Vows for his good health had a special fitness, for according to Suetonius, Aug. LXXXI, he was almost an invalid. “During his whole course of life he suffered at times dangerous fits of sickness. He was subject to fits of sickness at stated times every year, for about his birthday he was commonly indisposed. In the beginning of spring he was attacked with an inflammation of the midriff; and when the wind was southerly, with a cold in his head. By all these complaints his constitution was so shattered that he could not readily bear heat or cold.”
[55] Cf. Suet. Aug. 59 and 98; Hor. Carm. IV, 5, 33; Dio, LI, 19.
[56] Dio writes of the year 725, LI, 20: “When letters were brought about Parthian affairs it was decreed that he should be named in the hymns exactly as were the gods.” Tiridates, a Parthian pretender, sought the aid of Augustus. Cf. Chap. 32, and Dio, LI, 18. Augustus balanced Tiridates against Phraates, the legitimate monarch, who sent an embassy, and gave his son to Rome as a hostage.
[57] In 718, when Lepidus had been overthrown, the tribunitial power had been given to Octavian, as formerly to Julius, for life. Inviolability of person was one of the privileges of the tribunate. Cf. Oros. VI, 18, 34; Dio, XLIX, 15; LI, 18; LIII, 32. These two later statements relating to the years 724 and 731, Mommsen thinks have to do, the former with the extension of the tribunitial power beyond the city, and the latter to the making it annual, as well as perpetual, so that the years of the principate could be reckoned by it. Cf. Chap. 4, note [31]. Cf. also App. B. C. V, 132, and for a discussion of the tribunitial power as an expression of the principate, cf. Mommsen, Röm. St. II, 833, ff.
Wölfflin, cf. textual note, suggests, to fill the gap confessedly left by Mommsen’s emendation, a reading which would be translated “that my person should be sacrosanct.”
[58] Augustus here characteristically avoids the name of Lepidus. The latter “in the confusion and tumult had seized the supreme pontificate,” cf. Livy, Ep. CXVII, “by craft,” cf. Velleius II, 63; “Antony transferred the election of the pontifex maximus from the people to the priests again, and through them initiated Lepidus, almost entirely neglecting the customs of the fathers.” Cf. Dio, XLIV, 53. Lepidus dying in 741, cf. Dio, LIV, 27, Augustus entered upon the office Mar. 6, 742. Cf. C. I. L., I. p. 387. It was unlawful to deprive a living man of this office, cf. App., B. C., V, 131.
[59] October 12, 735. In C. I. L. I. p. 404, is found an inscription of that date: Feriae ex senatus consulto, quod eo die imp. Cæsar Augustus ex transmarinis provincis urbem intravit araq(ue) Fortunae reduci constituta. There are also gold and silver coins (Eckhel VI, 100; Cohen, Aug. nos. 102-108) with the inscription, Fortunae reduci, Cæsari Augusto senatus populusque Romanus, Dio, LIV, 10, tells that Augustus after having arranged matters in Sicily, Greece, Asia and Syria, returned to Rome, and that many honors were decreed to him, but that he would accept none of them, “but that an altar should be consecrated to Fortune the Restorer, that the day should be accounted a feast day, and that it should be called the Augustalia.”