The Deeds of the Divine Augustus
By Augustus
Written 14 A.C.E.
"A copy below of the [35] deeds of the divine Augustus, by which he subjected the whole wide earth to the rule of the Roman people, and of the money which he spent for the state and Roman people, inscribed on two bronze pillars, which are set up in Rome......
"8. When I was consul the fifth time [29 B.C.E.], I increased the number of patricians by order of the people and senate. I read the roll of the senate three times, and in my sixth consulate [28 B.C.E.] I made a census of the people with Marcus Agrippa as my colleague. I conducted a lustrum, after a forty-one year gap, in which lustrum were counted 4,063,000 heads of Roman citizens. Then again, with consular imperium I conducted a lustrum alone when Gaius Censorinus and Gaius Asinius were consuls [8 B.C.E.], in which lustrum were counted 4,233,000 heads of Roman citizens. And the third time, with consular imperium, I conducted a lustrum with my son Tiberius Caesar as colleague, when Sextus Pompeius and Sextus Appuleius were consuls (14 A.C.E.), in which lustrum were cunted 4,937,000 of the heads of Roman citizens. By new laws passed with my sponsorship, I restored many traditions of the ancestors, which were falling into disuse in our age, and myself I handed on precedents of many things to be imitated in later generations....."
Perhaps we could take up another collection to pay for a bus ride from the Vatican to those two bronze pillars right there in Rome. Those fathers need to get away from their Peter bones out into the city of Rome more often.
Didn't you tell me that you had located them in Jerusalem. I know there has been much speculation about them being in Rome (in fact them even being there while they were part of a live body).....but I swear I remember you telling me you had found them in the Holy Land......in a tomb marked "Shimon bar Yonah".