Note 64 — Below is a copy of the deeds of the divine Augustus, by which he subjected the whole world to the dominion of the Roman people, and of the amounts which he expended upon the commonwealth and the Roman people, as engraved upon two brazen columns which are set up at Rome.1

Augustus first closed it in 725, after Actium. Cf. Livy, l. c.; Dio, LI, 20; Vell., II, 38; Victor, De Viris Ill., LXXIX, 6; Plut. De Fort. Rom., 9; Oros., VI, 20, 8. C. I. L. I, p. 384, supplies the day, January 11. In 728 it was opened again, on account of the war with the Cantabri. Cf. Dio, LIII, 26, Plutarch, l. c. A second time it was closed in 729, cf. Dio, l. c.; Oros., VI, 21, 1. The time of its next opening cannot be determined; but in all probability it was reopened that very year, on account of the Arabian campaign. Dio, LIV, 36, records that in 744 the Senate decreed that it should be closed, but that a Dacian rebellion interfered. But Dio must be mistaken, for Drusus was then in the midst of his German campaign. But after the campaigns of Drusus and Tiberius in Germany, closed in 746, up to 753, when Gaius Cæsar started for Armenia, the temple might well have been closed. Parts of Dio are lost here, which may have mentioned such closing. The birth of Jesus Christ, 749, falls in this period of peace. Cf. Milton’s Nativity Hymn. When it was opened for the third time cannot be said. Tacitus says it was opened when Augustus was an old man. But it can hardly have remained shut after the opening of the Armenian war in 753. Augustus was then sixty-two years old. That age may possibly suit the expression of Tacitus. Horace Ep., II, 1, 255, and Carm., IV, 15, 9, mentions the closing of the temple. Suetonius, Aug. 22, says: “Janus Quirinus, which had been shut twice only, from the era of the building of the city to his own time, he closed thrice in a much shorter period, having established universal peace both by sea and land.” This is almost a literal transcript of the Res Gestæ.