n
that peace was prevailing over land and sea, he had been able to close
it three times in the course of fifty years. His liberalities are
equally surprising. Sometimes they took the form of free distributions
of corn, oil, or wine; sometimes of an allowance of money. He asserts
that he spent in gifts the sum of six hundred and twenty millions of
sestertii, nearly twenty-six millions of dollars. Adding to this sum
the cost of purchasing lands for his veterans in Italy (six hundred
millions) and in the provinces (two hundred and sixty millions), of
giving pecuniary rewards to his veterans (four hundred millions), of
helping the public treasury (one hundred and fifty millions), and the
army funds (one hundred and seventy millions), besides other grants
and bounties, the amount of which is not known, we reach a total
expenditure for the benefit of his people of ninety-one million
dollars.

I need not speak of the material renovation of the city, which he
found of brick and left of marble. Roads, streets, aqueducts, bridges,
quays, places of amusement, places of worship, parks, gardens, public
offices, were built, opened, repaired, and decorated with incredible
profusion. Suetonius says that, on one occasion alone, he offered to
Jupiter Capitolinus sixteen thousand pounds of gold and fifty
millions' worth of jewels. In the year 28 B. C. not less than
eighty-two temples were rebuilt in Rome itself.

Were we not in the presence of official statistics and of state
documents, we should hardly feel inclined to believe these enormous
statements. We must remember, too, that the work of Augustus was
seconded and imitated with equal magnitude by his wealthy friends and
advisers, Marcius Philippus, Lucius Cornificius, Asinius Pollio,
Munatius Plaucus, Cornelius Balbus, Statilius Taurus, and above all by
Marcus Agrippa, to whom we owe the aqueducts of the Virgo and Julia,
the Pantheon, the Thermae, the artificial lake (_stagnum_), the Portico
of the Argonauts, the Temple of Neptune, the Portico of Vipsania
Palta, the Diribitorium, the Septa, the Campus Agrippae, a bridge on
the Tiber, and hundreds of other costly structures. During the twelve
months of his aedileship, in 19 B. C., he rebuilt the network of the
city sewers, adding many miles of new channels, erected eight hundred
and five fountains, and one hundred and thirty water reservoirs. These
edifices were ornamented with three hundred bronze and marble statues,
and four hund