and probably compiled by the deified emperor himself. It may be described as an emblazonment or heraldic proclamation of the achievements of the mortal who became the personal centre of the world's life at the very time when, by a perfectly explicable parallelism, a new faith preached in the fields and through the towns of Palestine was about to direct the bewildered thoughts or flaming hopes of men to a very different form of despotic individuality.

To the immediate inspection of this remarkable document we are now invited by the distinguished German historian, Theodore Mommsen. But before we proceed under his guidance to examine the inscription itself, we will first give some account of its discovery and attempted

restoration.

Rather more than three centuries ago Ferdinand II., Emperor of Germany, determined to send an embassy to the court of the Sultan of Turkey, Soliman Vindobona Amasia. The names of the Imperial representatives were Antonius Wrantzius or Verantius, Bishop of Agria, and Augerius Gislenius Busbequius, a native of Holland. Their official visit at Constantinople completed, the travellers passed from Europe into Asia, and in due time arrived at Ancyra. Thus Busbequius and his companions were the first European scholars who saw, recognised, and transcribed the Latin text of the celebrated record of Augustus. More than a century afterwards Daniel Cosson, a countryman of Busbequius, settled at Smyrna, where he was afterwards murdered by pirates, and though he never visited Ancyra himself, succeeded in procuring a copy of the inscription. This copy, while superior to that of his predecessor, was yet far from perfect. In 1701 Joseph Pitton de Tournefort, in obedience to the orders of the King of France, Louis XIV., repaired to the East. The copy which he brought back with him from Ancyra is said to have been almost a fac-simile. Unhappily it was not edited by himself, nor at the time of his return, but by Chishull, twenty-seven years after his return. About four years later than Tournefort, Paulus Lucas spent twenty days in the month of September in transcribing the Latin text on the wall of Ancyra. Lucas, convinced of its accuracy, challenges comparison with the original. Mommsen pronounces it the most complete and by far the most useful of all the older copies. Let us now glance at those which have been made in a more recent time.

Passing over the ineffectual attempts of Rostan and Kinneir in the early part of the present century, Texier's transcripts, consulted by Egger, and Barth's partial copy, submitted to Mommsen, we find Mordtmann, a native of Hamburg, in October, 1859, sharing the antiquarian enthusiasm of previous explorers, and, like them, betaking himself to Angora. A portion of the Greek translation still remained concealed. Anxious to bring it to light, our traveller requested permission to carry out the preliminary operations necessary for the

purpose, but the proprietors, insisting on the hopelessness of the undertaking, gave an unqualified refusal. In the copy of the Latin text which Mordtmann made he boldly introduced the conjectural amendments of Augustus Zumpt, persuading himself that he saw in the marble, characters that existed only in the imagination of the ingenious Berlin editor; thus recalling the alchemist in Mr. Lewes's illustration, who put into his crucible the gold which he afterwards discovered there.

With the year 1861 we reach the conclusion of the critical history of the Monumentum Ancyranum. In that year Georges Perrot and Edmond Guillaume, commissioned by the French Augustus, Napoleon III., set off for their journey in Galatia and Bithynia. Among other places they visited Ancyra. The tabular representations which they brought back with them are commended by Mommsen for their close resemblance to the original tables, both in shape and size. In the "splendid itinerary" published in 1862 these representations have been made accessible to the archæological student. Perrot's tables of the Greek text are given at the end of Mommsen's recent publication. In this final copy the numerous lacunæ are denoted by corresponding interspaces, and such appears to be the accuracy attained by the transcribers as to preclude the expectation of future improvement. Hitherto we have been speaking of the Latin version. Let us now turn to the Greek equivalent. The existence of the Greek translation was announced to the learned world by Tournefort. The first rough transcript of it was make by Pococke, who observing a portion of it outside the eastern wall, conjectured that the remaining portion might be on the west side. The letters, he says, appeared to have been gilt on a ground of vermillion. Parts of the wall on which they were impressed were concealed by houses built directly against it. By removing a contiguous mud wall, Hamilton in 1836, and more recently Perrot, succeeded in deciphering eighteen out of the entire number of columns in which the Greek translation was arranged. The first eight have been copied by Perrot, and by Perrot only; the last six by Hamilton, and, with trifling exceptions, by Hamilton only; the ninth still remains covered up. The four immediately following the ninth, fragments of which Hamilton was the first to transcribe, are now satisfactorily exhibited by Perrot. Thus of the nineteen columns of the Greek version one only is wanting; while all the Latin, six in number, have their place in Mommsen's new and admirable collaboration.

The exertions of ingenious and enterprising travellers have been ably supported by the labours of the sedentary scholar. M. E. Egger, about two-and-twenty years ago, and MM. J. Franz and Augustus W. Zumpt not long after employed their learned leisure in the correction and elucidation of the text. Meritorious, however, as their edition

may be, it is necessarily surpassed by that of their eminent countryman. Availing himself of the researches of his predecessors, and with the unique advantage of having the Greek section first. copied by Perrot before him, Mommsen brings an acute critical faculty and copious historical erudition to the execution of his editorial task. The result is that, though still vitiated and defective, we have in the new presentment a proximately faithful transcript of the ancient record in the temple of Augustus. This transcript we owe to the united exertions of three distinguished scholars in France, England, and Germany-Perrot, Hamilton, and Mommsen.

Let us now advert to the circumstances under which the original record was compiled. The third census held in the reign of Augustus had been brought to a close, and the fifty-eighth year of his accession to sovereign power was half over, when, with a presentiment of his approaching end, he determined to particularise in an elaborate and authoritative register the public enterprises which had thrown a lustre on his long career. Intending this register to be preserved in the Imperial archives, Augustus provided by will that it should also be engraved on brazen tablets and placed in front of the mausoleum which he had constructed between the Flaminian way and the bank of the Tiber. Such at least is the account given by Suetonius. And if the Monumentum Ancyranum attests that the inscription was copied from the brazen pillars at Rome, the attestation in reality corroborates the historian's account, for the difference between tablets and pillars is not an essential difference. Equally unimportant seems Zumpt's objection that the mausoleum was made, not of brass, but of stone, for the mausoleum might very well be composed of one material and the pillar-formed tablets of another. From these tablets then, the citizens of Ancyra, followed or perhaps preceded by those of Apollonia, obtained permission from the Emperor Tiberius or the Senate to make the transcript, afterwards engraved in marble in the walls of the pronaos and cella of the temple of Augustus. The erection of such a sacred edifice was by no means an uncommon practice in the cities of Asia Minor. In Pergamum, Bithynia, Nicomedia, temples had already been dedicated to the personal symbol of unity, the divine Augustus, and to the imposing abstract entity, the personified capital of the world, the city-goddess Rome.

The character of the record preserved in the marble of Ancyra corresponds with the position of the Imperial protector, whose image was associated, in the popular religious sentiment, with that of the faithful traditional dog and of the Lares, the Romans' household deities; for like these emblems of vigilant supervision, Augustus had kept a long and careful watch over the domestic security of the reposing citizens. This miniature autobiography-this epitomised history-displays the colossal grandeur of the dead man, who, in Shelley's fine language,

"hangs his mute thoughts on the mute walls around," and speaks to us with silent but impressive eloquence from the many-centuried temple that once bore his name.

Drawn up in the summer of A.U. 767, just before Augustus accompanied Tiberius, then on his way to Illyricum, to the Apulian coast, the record recapitulates the transactions of nearly threescore years. Augustus, who was born on the 23rd September, A.U. 691, had numbered nearly seventy-six revolutions of the sun. Reckoning from his adhesion to the triumvirate, his power had lasted almost fifty-six years. Forty-five years, all but thirteen days, had passed since the great death-grapple in the waters of Ambracia, when the eastern world struck its flag to the genius of the west, and the voluptuous woman of Egypt, followed by her soldier lover, "hoisted the purple sails on her gilded deck," and fled before the ascendant fortune of the avenger of Cæsar. For it is with his public appearance, as the vindicator of the liberty of the commonwealth, as the agent of retribution on the murderers of his adoptive father, that Augustus enters on the imposing recital of his memorable acts. “On attaining the nineteenth year of my age," begins the imperial annalist, "on my own responsibility, and at my own expense, I raised an army, liberated my country from an oppressive and factious rule, banished, in strict conformity with legal procedure, the men that had slain my father, and when they waged war on the Republic, twice defeated them in open field."

Briefly describing the signal victories by sea and land that raised him to his proud pre-eminence, Augustus next records the extension of his clemency to all the surviving citizens of Rome as well as to all foreign subjects whom policy permitted him to spare. Had the illustrious chronicler, when he preferred this claim to the admiration of mankind, forgotten the child of Cleopatra, the lineal descendant of the divine Julius, the boy Cæsarion? Had he forgotten Ovinius, the keeper of the Egyptian queen's tapestries? Had he forgotten Cassius Parmensis, the sole survivor of the great Dictator's murderers? Had he forgotten Canidius, whose irresolution in death seemingly so discredited his arrogant profession? Had he forgotten these and others, too, it may be? or shall we repudiate stories which impeach the veracity of the autobiographer, and affirm with Velleius that Octavius put none of his adversaries to death? To call in question the correctness of Mommsen's emendation (superstitibus) is a third alternative. But the Record itself forbids its adoption, for further on we find the clemency of Augustus unequivocally asserted. In the fourth year, after the sea-fight at Actium, it proclaims that the victor was presented with the Crown of Oak, the customary prize awarded for the preservation of the lives of Roman citizens. A fourth alternative is to suppose with Mommsen that Augustus here tells the world not what

he had actually done, but what he wanted the world to believe that he had done.

Tracing, in fancy, the characters on the walls of Ancyra, let us be momentary spectators of the capture of the six hundred ships, of the gathering of half a million of Romans round the banner of the exultant Triumvir, the treble triumph of Dalmatia, Actium, Alexandria, and the two ovations on the conclusion of the peace with Marcus Antonius and on the prosperous termination of the Sicilian war. Let us glance next at the ceremony, often repeated by Augustus, when, declining the higher military honours, he deposited in the Capitol the laurel that some fresh victory had won him. Let the nine kings, or children of kings, walk slowly before the conqueror's car. Let the prayers of the Commonwealth rise, at the Senate's order, in gratitude to the Immortals that had so gloriously prospered the achievements of the emperor and his vicegerents by sea and land, till the celestial ear grows weary of the importunate devotion of nine hundred days. Or, recalling ever new services, enumerate the endless distinctions that rewarded them. Thirteen times had Augustus worn the Consular laurel and the white and purple robe; thirty-seven years had he exercised the prerogatives of the tribune's office when he began to chronicle his illustrious acts. Consular function and privilege were conferred on him for life, and he enjoyed them more than thirty years. The dictatorship twice offered was twice declined. Saluted Imperator by the admiring soldiers, whose trumpets rang beneath the walls of Mutina, and invested with the highest military pre-eminence, not only on this but on twenty other occasions, Augustus, in the third year after the battle of Actium, attained the highest civil pre-eminence, as Prince of the Senate, and held that valuable priority for forty years. In the second year following his crowning victory, the Chief of the State, accepting the power while declining the title of Censor, interposed to reform and purify the Senate; and about eleven years after, when Prefect of Manners, an office perhaps not exactly identical with the censorship, he again revised that august assembly. In his fifth consulship he proceeded, in constitutional form, to conserve, invigorate, and augment the impoverished and decimated patriciate. In his sixth consulship, associating with him his sagacious and popular son-in-law, Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, Augustus solemnised a public act which the agents of Government had omitted for forty-two years. He held a census of the Roman citizens, including those of the provinces. Twenty years later, A.U. 746, he repeated the census; a fact registered only in the marble writing of Ancyra. In the third and final census of Augustus, undertaken only a few months before his death, Perrot's recent researches now enable us to correct previous numerical inaccuracies, and to report the number of Roman citizens in the year 767 of the Foundation as 4,937,000.