Augustus: The Life and Times of the Founder of the Roman Empire

by Evelyn S. Shuckburgh

AUGUSTUS’S ACCOUNT OF HIS REIGN (FROM THE INSCRIPTION IN THE TEMPLE OF ROME AND AUGUSTUS AT ANGORA)

1. When I was nineteen I collected an army on my own account and at my own expense, by the help of which I restored the republic to liberty, which had been enslaved by the tyranny of a faction; for which services the Senate, in complimentary decrees, added my name to the roll of their House in the consulship of Gaius Pansa and Aulus Hirtius [B.C. 43], giving me at the same time consular precedence in voting; and gave me imperium. It ordered me as proprætor “to see along with the consuls that the republic suffered no damage.” Moreover, in the same year, both consuls having fallen, the people elected me consul and a triumvir for revising the constitution.

2. Those who killed my father I drove into exile, after a legal trial, in punishment of their crime, and afterwards when these same men rose in arms against the republic I conquered them twice in a pitched battle.

3. I had to undertake wars by land and sea, civil and foreign, all over the world, and when victorious I spared surviving citizens. Those foreign nations, who could safely be pardoned, I preferred to preserve rather than exterminate. About 500,000 Roman citizens took the military oath to me. Of these I settled out in colonies or sent back to their own towns, after their terms of service were over, considerably more than 300,000; and to them all I assigned lands purchased by myself or money in lieu of lands. I captured 600 ships, not counting those below the rating of triremes.

4. I twice celebrated an ovation, three times curule triumphs, and was twenty-one times greeted as imperator. Though the Senate afterwards voted me several triumphs I declined them. I frequently also deposited laurels in the Capitol after performing the vows which I had taken in each war. For successful operations performed by myself or by my legates under my auspices by land and sea, the Senate fifty-three times decreed a supplication to the immortal gods. The number of days during which, in accordance with a decree of the Senate, supplication was offered amounted to 890. In my triumphs there were led before my chariot nine kings or sons of kings. I had been consul thirteen times at the writing of this, and am in the course of the thirty-seventh year of my tribunician power [A.D. 13-14].

5. The Dictatorship offered me in my presence and absence by the Senate and people in the consulship of Marcus Marcellus and Lucius Arruntius [B.C. 22] I declined to accept. I did not refuse at a time of very great scarcity of corn the commissionership of corn supply, which I administered in such a way that within a few days I freed the whole people from fear and danger. The consulship—either yearly or for life—then offered to me I declined to accept.

6. In the consulship of M. Vinicius and Q. Lucretius [B.C. 19], of P. and Cn. Lentulus [B.C. 18], and of Paullus Fabius Maximus and Q. Tubero [B.C. 11], when the Senate and people of Rome unanimously agreed that I should be elected overseer of the laws and morals, with unlimited powers and without a colleague, I refused every office offered me which was contrary to the customs of our ancestors. But what the Senate at that time wished me to manage, I carried out in virtue of my tribunician power, and in this office I five times received at my own request a colleague from the Senate.

7. I was one of the triumvirate for the re-establishment of the constitution for ten consecutive years. I have been princeps senatus up to the day on which I write this for forty years. I am Pontifex Maximus, Augur, one of the fifteen commissioners for religion, one of the seven for sacred feasts, an Arval brother, a sodalis Titius, a fetial.

8. In my fifth consulship [B.C. 29] I increased the number of the patricians by order of people and Senate. I three times made up the roll of the Senate, and in my sixth consulship [B.C. 28] I took a census of the people with M. Agrippa as my colleague. I performed the lustrum after an interval of forty-one years; in which the number of Roman citizens entered on the census roll was 4,063,000. A second time with consular imperium I took the census by myself in the consulship of Gaius Censorinus and Gaius Asinius [B.C. 8], in which the number of Roman citizens entered on the roll was 4,223,000. I took a third census with consular imperium, my son Tiberius Cæsar acting as my colleague, in the consulship of Sextus Pompeius and Sextus Appuleius [A.D. 14], in which the number of Roman citizens entered on the census roll was 4,937,000. By new laws passed I recalled numerous customs of our ancestors that were falling into desuetude in our time, and myself set precedents in many particulars for the imitation of posterity.