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'The Deeds of the Deified Augustus 'franslated by Charles F. Edson, and Carl Schuler INTRODUCTION THE YEAR before he died (A.D. 14) Augustus had com· posed or revised, sealed, and deposited for safekeeping four documents, which were opened and read before the Senate immediately after his death. The first of these documents was his will, the second made provisions for funeral arrangements, the third summarized his achieve· ments, and the fourth was an appraisal of the military and financial resources of the state. It is the summary of his achievements, the Res Gestae (Deeds) with which we are here concerned. The original has disappeared-al· though Suetonius (A.D. 70-160) appears to have had ac· cess to it-and so has the primary copy of it, the Monu· mentum Romanum, which Augustus had ordered in· scribed on bronze pillars next to his tomb. Fortunately, copies of the Res Gestae have been found elsewhere, for they seem to have been set up in every province. Most not· able of these copies and the most complete is that still in its original site at Ankara (ancient Ancyra, now the capital of Turkey). Its existence has been known to the modern world since 1555 and it has been published many times. It is inscribed in both Latin and Greek; the Latin seems to be a direct copy of the Monumentum Romanum, while the Greek is a translation of the Latin, intended especially for the inhabitants of a province to whom Greek was the mother tongue. The Greek version is in· A COpy SUBJOINED OF THE EXPLOITS OF THE DEIFIED AUGUSTUS BY WHICH HE SUBJECTED THE INHABITED WORLD TO THE IMPERIUM OF THE ROMAN PEOPLE, AND OF THE MONIES WHICH HE EXPENDED FOR THE REPUBLIC AND THE ROMAN PEOPLE. THE ORIGINAL IS INSCRIBED ON TWO BRONZE PILLARS WHICH ARE PLACED AT ROME. 1 At the age of nineteen years on my own responsibility and at my own expense I raised an army with which I liberated the Republic from domination by a faction. In acknowledgment of this the Senate, in the consulship of Gaius Pansa and Aulus Hirtius [43 B.C.], elected me into its valuable in that it fills in occasional gaps in the Latin. Fragments of a second copy, less well known, have been found at Apollonia in Pisidia, and when pieced together -much of the job of piecing has taken place since 1930help fill in the gaps in the Greek version of the Monumen· tum Ancyranum. A third copy, in Latin only, fragments of which were first found in 1914 in Antioch, supple. ments our knowledge of the Latin text of the Monumen· tum Ancyranum. Both the Monumentum Ancyranum and the Monumentum Antiochenum clearly stem from a common source, the original manuscript of Augustus or the Monumentum Romanum. Augustus (63 B.C.-A.D. 14) was not the first Roman general to leave a memoir of his achievements, but none of his predecessors in that genre had felt the need for such hypocrisy as he showed, nor had they had the skill for it; none "fabricated history with such calm au· dacity." • The style of the document is deceptively plain -Augustus' admiration of the Ciceronian style was not so great that he sought to imitate it; the Res Gestae is far more important for its omissions than for what it says, and the reader must never forget that Augustus was writing self·justification, not history. THE TEXT used is that of J. Gage (Paris, 1935l. order by honorific decree with the right to vole as one of consular rank, and granted me the im· perium. Together with the consuls I was ordered as propraetor to see to it that the Republic suf· fered no harm. Moreover, in the same year, when both consuls had fallen in war, the people made me consul and triumvir for the ordering of the Republic. 2 In the legally constituted courts I took venge· ance upon the murderers of my father 1 by driving them into exile, and afterwards, when • R. Syme The Roman Revolution, p. 522. DEEDS OF THE DEIFIED AUGUSTUS 303 they waged war upon the Republic, I twice defeated them in battle.2 3 Many times I waged wars, both civil and foreign, throughout the inhabited world, and as victor I spared all citizens who sought mercy. I preferred to preserve rather than to destroy those foreign nations wbich could safely be treated with clemency. About five hundred thousand Roman citizens...

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