9. The Senate decreed that vows should be offered for my health by consuls and priests every fifth year. In fulfilment of these vows the four chief colleges of priests or the consuls often gave games in my lifetime. Also individually and by townships the people at large always offered sacrifices at all the temples for my health.
10. By a decree of the Senate my name was included in the ritual of the Salii; and it was ordained by a law that my person should be sacred and that I should have the tribunician power for the term of my natural life. I refused to become Pontifex Maximus in succession to my colleague during his life, though the people offered me that sacred office formerly held by my father. Some years later I accepted that sacred office on the death of the man who had availed himself of the civil disturbance to secure it; such a multitude flocking to my election from all parts of Italy as is never recorded to have come to Rome before, in the consulship of P. Sulpicius and C. Valgius [6 March, B.C. 12].
11. The Senate consecrated an altar to Fortuna Redux, near the temple of Honour and Virtue, by the Porta Capena, for my return, on which it ordered the Vestal Virgins to offer a yearly sacrifice on the day on which in the consulship of Q. Lucretius and M. Vinicius [B.C. 19] I returned to the city from Syria, and gave that day the name Augustalia from my cognomen [15 Dec.].
12. By a decree of the Senate at the same time part of the prætors and tribunes of the plebs, along with the consul Q. Lucretius and leading nobles, were despatched into Campania to meet me—an honour that up to this time has been decreed to no one else. When I returned to Rome from Spain and Gaul after successful operations in those provinces, in the consulship of Tiberius Nero and Publius Quintilius [B.C. 13], the Senate voted that an altar to Pax Augusta should be consecrated for my return on the Campus Martius, upon which it ordered the magistrates and priests and Vestal Virgins to offer an annual sacrifice [30 Jan.].
13. Whereas the Ianus Quirinus, which our ancestors ordered to be closed when peace throughout the whole dominions of the Roman people by land and sea had been obtained by victories, is recorded to have been only twice shut before my birth since the foundation of the city, the Senate three times voted its closure during my principate.
14. My sons Gaius and Lucius Cæsar, whom fortune snatched from me in their early manhood, in compliment to me, the Senate and Roman people designated consuls in their fifteenth year with a proviso that they should enter on that office after an interval of five years. From the day of their assuming the toga virilis the Senate decreed that they should take part in public business. Moreover, the Roman equites in a body gave each of them the title of Princeps Iuventutis, and presented them with silver shields and spears.
15. To the Roman plebs I paid 300 sesterces per head in virtue of my father’s will; and in my own name I gave 400 apiece in my fifth consulship [B.C. 29] from the sale of spoils of war; and a second time in my tenth consulship [B.C. 24] out of my own private property I paid a bounty of 400 sesterces per man, and in my eleventh consulship [B.C. 23] I measured out twelve distributions of corn, having purchased the grain from my own resources. In the twelfth year of my tribunician power [B.C. 11], I for the third time gave a bounty of 400 sesterces a head. These largesses of mine affected never less than 50,200 persons. In the eighteenth year of my tribunician power and my twelfth consulship [B.C. 5] I gave 320,000 of the urban plebs sixty denarii a head. In the colonies of my soldiers, in my fifth consulship [B.C. 29] I gave from the sale of spoils of war 1,000 sesterces a head; and among such settlers the number who received that triumphal largess amounted to about 120,000 men. In my thirteenth consulship [B.C. 2] I gave 60 denarii apiece to the plebeians then in receipt of public corn; they amounted to somewhat more than 200,000 persons.
16. The money for the lands, which in my fourth consulship [B.C. 30], and afterwards in the consulship of M. Crassus and Cn. Lentulus the augur [B.C. 14], I assigned to the soldiers, I paid to the municipal towns. The amount was about 600,000,000 sesterces, which I paid for lands in Italy, and about 260,000,000 which I disbursed for lands in the provinces.
I was the first and only one within the memory of my own generation to do this of all who settled colonies in Italy and the provinces. And afterwards in the consulship of Tib. Nero and Cn. Piso [B.C. 7], and again in the consulship of C. Antistius and D. Lælius [B.C. 6], and of C. Calvisius and L. Pasienus [B.C. 4], and of L. Lentulus and M. Messalla [B.C. 3], and of L. Caninius and Q. Fabricius [B.C. 2], to the soldiers, whom after their terms of service I sent back to their own towns, I paid good service allowances in ready money; on which I expended 400,000,000 sesterces as an act of grace.
17. I four times subsidised the ærarium from my own money, the sums which I thus paid over to the commissioners of the treasury amounting to 150,000,000 sesterces. And in the consulship of M. Lepidus and L. Arruntius [A.D. 6], to the military treasury, which was established on my initiative for the payment of their good service allowance, to the soldiers who had served twenty years or more, I contributed from my own patrimony 170,000,000 sesterces.[322]