ber of tumuli which date from his age, on the Via Salaria,
the Via Labicana, and the Via Appia.

His tomb was entered from the south, the entrance being flanked by
monuments of great interest, such as the obelisks now in the Piazza
del Quirinale and the Piazza di S. Maria Maggiore; the copies of the
decrees of the Senate in honor of the personages buried within; and,
above all, the _Res gestae divi Augusti_, a sort of political will,
autobiography, and apology, the importance of which surpasses that of
any other document relating to the history of the Roman Empire.

This was written by Augustus towards the end of his life. He ordered
his executors to have it engraved on bronze pillars on each side of
the entrance to his mausoleum. That his will was duly executed by
Livia, Tiberius, Drusus, and Germanicus, his heirs and trustees, is
proved by the frequent allusions to the document made by Suetonius and
Velleius, and also by the copies which have come down to us, not from
Rome or Italy, but from the remote provinces of Galatia and Pisidia.

It was customary in ancient times to raise temples in honor of the
rulers of the empire, and to ornament them with their images and
eulogies. These were called _Augustea_ or _aedes Augusti et Romae_ in
the western provinces, [Greek: sebasteia] in eastern or Greek-speaking
countries,[95] Ancyra (Angora), the capital of Galatia, and Apollonia,
the capital of Pisidia, were the foremost among the Asiatic cities to
pay this honor to the founder of the empire.

The Ancyran temple owes its preservation to the Christians, who made
use of it as a church from the fourth to the fifteenth centuries, and
also to the Turks, who have turned it into a mosque associated with
the Hadji Beiram. The temple and its invaluable epigraphic treasures
became known towards the middle of the sixteenth century. In 1555 an
embassy was sent by the emperor Ferdinand II. to Suleiman, the khalif,
who was then residing at Amasia.[96] It so happened that the head of
the mission, Ogier Ghislain Busbecq, and his assistant, Antony Wrantz,
bishop of Agram, were fond of archaeological investigation. They were
struck by the importance of the Augusteum at Ancyra; and with the
help of their secretaries, they made a tolerably good copy of its
inscriptions. Since 1555 the place has been visited many times,
notably by Edmond Guillaume, in 1861, and by Humann, in 1882.[97]
There are two copies of the will of Augustus engraved on