In the year 725 from the founding of the City, in the consulship of the emperor Caesar Augustus himself, for the fifth time, and Lucius Apuleius, Caesar, returning victorious from the East, entered the City with a triple triumph on the eighth day before the Ides of January; and then for the first time he himself closed the gates of Janus, all the civil wars having been laid to rest and brought to an end.1
1 Anno ab urbe condita DCCXXV ipso imperatore Caesare Augusto quinquies et L. Apuleio consulibus Caesar uictor ab oriente rediens, VIII idus Ianuarias urbem triplici triumpho ingressus est ac tunc primum ipse Iani portas sopitis finitisque omnibus bellis ciuilibus clausit.
1Augustus’s fifth consulship was in 29 BC, and his colleague was Sextus, not Lucius, Appuleius. The triple triumph was in fact held on 13–15 August 29 BC and the name Augustus was conferred on 16 January 27 BC; Orosius sets both on 6 January, the feast of the Epiphany.
On this day he was first saluted as Augustus — a name which, left inviolate by all before him and never yet dared by other rulers down to the present, declares that the summit of rule over so vast a world had been lawfully assumed; and from that same day the sum of affairs and of powers began to rest, and remained, in the hands of one man — what the Greeks call monarchy.
2 hoc die primum Augustus consalutatus est; quod nomen, cunctis antea [ inuiolatum ] et usque ad nunc ceteris inausum dominis, tantum orbis licite usurpatum apicem declarat imperii, atque ex eodem die summa rerum ac potestatum penes unum esse coepit et mansit, quod Graeci monarchiam uocant.
Moreover, that this was the very same day — that is, the eighth day before the Ides of January — on which we observe the Epiphany, that is, the appearing or manifestation of the Lord’s sacrament, no one among believers, nor even among those who speak against the faith, is unaware.
3 Porro autem hunc esse eundem diem, hoc est VIII idus Ianuarias, quo nos Epiphania, hoc est apparitionem siue manifestationem Dominici sacramenti, obseruamus, nemo credentium siue etiam fidei contradicentium nescit.
Of the sacrament of this most faithful observance of ours neither reason nor place now requires me to speak more fully, so that we may seem both to have reserved it for those who inquire and not to have thrust it upon those who are indifferent. But it was right to record this faithfully, so that the empire of Caesar may be proved in every respect to have been prepared for the grace of the Christ who was to come.
4 de quo nostrae istius fidelissimae obseruationis sacramento uberius nunc dicere nec ratio nec locus flagitat, ut et quaerentibus reseruasse et neglegentibus non ingessisse uideamur. hoc autem fideliter commemorasse ideo par fuit, ut per omnia uenturi Christi gratia praeparatum Caesaris imperium conprobetur.
For when first, after his uncle Gaius Caesar had been killed, he was entering the City on his return from Apollonia, at about the third hour, suddenly, in a clear, pure and cloudless sky, a circle in the likeness of a rainbow surrounded the disc of the sun, as though pointing him out as the one and mightiest man in this world, and alone most glorious on earth, in whose time he would come who alone had made, and ruled, the sun itself and the whole world.
5 Nam cum primum, C. Caesare auunculo suo interfecto, ex Apollonia rediens urbem ingrederetur, hora circiter tertia repente liquido ac puro sereno circulus ad speciem caelestis arcus orbem solis ambiit, quasi eum unum ac potissimum in hoc mundo solumque clarissimum in orbe monstraret, cuius tempore uenturus esset, qui ipsum solem solus mundumque totum et fecisset et regeret.
Then, the second time, when in Sicily he had taken over the legions from Sextus Pompey and Lepidus, had restored thirty thousand slaves to their masters, had distributed forty-four legions under his sole command for the protection of the world, and, entering the City in an ovation, had decreed that all former debts owed to the Roman people be remitted, their written records too being destroyed: in those very days, as I have related above, a most abundant spring of oil flowed for a whole day from a public lodging-house. By what sign could it be more plainly declared than by this that in the days of Caesar, reigning over the whole world, the birth of Christ was to come? For “Christ,” in the language of the nation in which and from which he was born, means “anointed.”2
6 Deinde cum secundo, in Sicilia receptis a Pompeio et Lepido legionibus, XXX milia seruorum dominis restituisset et quadraginta et quattuor legiones solus imperio suo ad tutamen orbis terrarum distribuisset ouansque urbem ingressus omnia superiora populi Romani debita donanda, litterarum etiam monumentis abolitis, censuisset: in diebus ipsis fons olei largissimus, sicut superius expressi, de taberna meritoria per totum diem fluxit. quo signo quid euidentius quam in diebus Caesaris toto orbe regnantis futura Christi natiuitas declarata est? Christus enim lingua gentis eius, in qua et ex qua natus est, unctus interpretatur.
2Christus is the Greek Christos, “anointed”, rendering the Hebrew Messiah; Orosius’s sign rests on the link between oil (oleum) and anointing.
And so, when at the very time at which perpetual tribunician power was decreed to Caesar a spring of oil flowed at Rome for a whole day, these most evident signs in heaven and wonders on earth proclaimed, to those who did not hear the voices of the prophets: that under the principate of Caesar and the Roman Empire, for a whole day — that is, for the whole time of the Roman Empire — Christ, and from him Christians, that is, the Anointed and from him the anointed, would come forth abundantly and unceasingly from the lodging-house, that is, from the hospitable and bountiful Church; that all slaves who yet acknowledged their master would be restored by Caesar, while the rest, who were found without a master, would be handed over to death and punishment; and that under Caesar the debts of sins would be remitted in that city in which the oil had flowed of its own accord.
7 itaque cum eo tempore, quo Caesari perpetua tribunicia potestas decreta est, Romae fons olei per totum diem fluxit: sub principatu Caesaris Romanoque imperio per totum diem, hoc est per omne Romani tempus imperii, Christum et ex eo Christianos, id est unctum atque ex eo unctos, de meritoria taberna, hoc est de hospita largaque Ecclesia, affluenter atque incessabiliter processuros restituendosque per Caesarem omnes seruos, qui tamen cognoscerent dominum suum, ceterosque, qui sine domino inuenirentur, morti supplicioque dedendos, remittendaque sub Caesare debita peccatorum in ea urbe, in qua spontaneum fluxisset oleum, euidentissima his, qui prophetarum uoces non audiebant, signa in caelo et in terra prodigia prodiderunt.
And the third time, when he entered the City in triumph as consul for the fifth time — on that very day, namely, which we have named above — when he himself both closed Janus for the first time after two hundred years and took up that most glorious name of Augustus: what can be more faithfully and truly believed or known — peace, name and day all concurring in so great a manifestation — than that this man, by a hidden order of events, had been predestined to the service of preparing the way for Christ; this man who, on the very day on which Christ was a little later to be made manifest to the world, both held forth the sign of peace and took up the name of power?
8 Tertio autem, cum urbem triumphans quintum consul ingressus est, eo scilicet die, quem supra nominauimus, cum et Ianum post ducentos annos primum ipse clausit et clarissimum illud Augusti nomen adsumpsit, quid fidelius ac uerius credi aut cognosci potest, concurrentibus ad tantam manifestationem pace nomine die, quam hunc occulto quidem gestorum ordine ad obsequium praeparationis eius praedestinatum fuisse, qui eo die, quo ille manifestandus mundo post paululum erat, et pacis signum praetulit et potestatis nomen adsumpsit?
But what was done at his fourth return — when, the Cantabrian war ended and all nations pacified, Caesar sought the City again — in witness of the faith we are setting forth, will be better related in its proper order.
9 Quid autem in quarto reditu, cum finito Cantabrico bello pacatisque omnibus gentibus Caesar urbem repetiit, ad contestationem fidei, quam expromimus, actum sit, ipso melius ordine proferetur.