And so, in the year 752 from the founding of the City, Caesar Augustus, having settled all nations in a single peace, from east to west, from north to south, and through the whole circle of the Ocean, then himself closed the gates of Janus for the third time.1
1 Itaque anno ab urbe condita DCCLII Caesar Augustus ab oriente in occidentem, a septentrione in meridiem ac per totum Oceani circulum cunctis gentibus una pace conpositis, Iani portas tertio ipse tunc clausit.
1Augustus records that Janus was closed three times in his principate (Res Gestae 13), but the date of the third closing is unknown. Orosius places it in 752, the year to which he assigns the birth of Christ (2 BC on the usual reckoning).
From that time, for nearly twelve years, they stayed barred in the most tranquil peace, so that rust itself set its seal upon them; nor did they ever open until, in the extreme old age of Augustus, they were struck by the sedition of the Athenians and the commotion of the Dacians.
2 quas ex eo per duodecim fere annos quietissimo semper obseratas otio ipsa etiam robigo signauit, nec prius umquam nisi sub extrema senectute Augusti pulsatae Atheniensium seditione et Dacorum commotione patuerunt.
With the gates of Janus closed, therefore, striving to nourish and enlarge by peace the commonwealth he had won by war, he established very many laws, through which the human race might conduct itself with a free reverence for discipline.
3 clausis igitur Iani portis rempublicam, quam bello quaesiuerat, pace enutrire atque amplificare studens leges plurimas statuit, per quas humanum genus libera reuerentia disciplinae morem gereret.
Being a man, he declined the title of lord. For when, as he was watching the games, the words “O just and good lord!” had been spoken in a mime, and all, as if it had been said of him, had applauded exultantly, he at once checked the unseemly flattery with his hand and his look, and on the following day rebuked it with a most severe edict; and thereafter he did not allow himself to be called lord even by his children or grandchildren, whether in earnest or in jest.
4 domini appellationem ut homo declinauit. nam cum eodem spectante ludos pronuntiatum esset in mimo dominum aequum et bonum uniuersique, quasi de ipso dictum esset, exultantes adprobauissent, et statim quidem manu uultuque indecoras adulationes repressit et insequenti die grauissimo corripuit edicto dominumque se posthac appellari ne a liberis quidem aut nepotibus suis uel serio uel ioco passus est.
So it was at that time — that is, in that year in which Caesar, by the ordinance of God, established the firmest and truest peace — that Christ was born, whose coming that peace served; at whose birth, as men listened, angels sang exultantly: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men of good will.” And at that same time this man, to whom the sum of all things had passed, did not allow himself to be called lord of men — nay, did not dare it — at the very time when the true Lord of the whole human race was born among men.
5 Igitur eo tempore, id est eo anno quo firmissimam uerissimamque pacem ordinatione Dei Caesar conposuit, natus est Christus, cuius aduentui pax ista famulata est, in cuius ortu audientibus hominibus exultantes angeli cecinerunt Gloria in excelsis Deo, et in terra pax hominibus bonae uoluntatis. eodemque tempore hic, ad quem rerum omnium summa concesserat, dominum se hominum appellari non passus est, immo non ausus, quo uerus dominus totius generis humani inter homines natus est.
In that same year too, this same Caesar, whom God had predestined for these great mysteries, then for the first time ordered a census to be taken of each province everywhere and all men to be enrolled, at the time when God, too, deigned to be seen as man and to be man. Then, therefore, Christ was born, and was entered in the Roman census as soon as he was born.2
6 eodem quoque anno tunc primum idem Caesar, quem his tantis mysteriis praedestinauerat Deus, censum agi singularum ubique prouinciarum et censeri omnes homines iussit, quando et Deus homo uideri et esse dignatus est. tunc igitur natus est Christus, Romano censui statim adscriptus ut natus est.
2Orosius follows Luke 2:1–2. No census of the whole empire under Augustus is attested elsewhere; the census of Judaea under Quirinius took place in AD 6.
This is that first and most glorious registration, which, by the enrolment of all men one by one, marked out Caesar as prince of all and the Romans as lords of the world; a registration in which he who made all men willed himself also to be found a man and to be enrolled among men: a thing never at all granted in this manner, since the founding of the world and the beginning of the human race, not even to the Babylonian or the Macedonian kingdom, to say nothing of any lesser one.
7 haec est prima illa clarissimaque professio, quae Caesarem omnium principem Romanosque rerum dominos singillatim cunctorum hominum edita adscriptione signauit, in qua se et ipse, qui cunctos homines fecit, inueniri hominem adscribique inter homines uoluit: quod penitus numquam ab orbe condito atque ab exordio generis humani in hunc modum ne Babylonio quidem uel Macedonico, ut non dicam minori cuiquam regno concessum fuit.
Nor is there any doubt — it lies open to the knowledge, faith and scrutiny of all — that our Lord Jesus Christ, by his own will, brought to this summit of affairs this city, increased and defended by him, to which above all he willed to belong when he came, so that he must surely be called a Roman citizen by the declaration of the Roman census.
8 nec dubium, quin omnium cognitioni fidei inspectionique pateat, quia Dominus noster Iesus Christus hanc urbem nutu suo auctam defensamque in hunc rerum apicem prouexerit, cuius potissime uoluit esse cum uenit, dicendus utique ciuis Romanus census professione Romani.
Wherefore, since we have reached that point in time at which the Lord Christ first illumined this world by his coming and gave to Caesar a most tranquil reign, let me also close this sixth little book at this point,
9 Quamobrem quia ad id temporis peruentum est, quo et Dominus Christus hunc mundum primum aduentu suo inlustrauit regnumque Caesari tranquillissimum dedit, hunc quoque sextum libellum hoc fine concluserim:
so that I may embrace in a seventh book — if, with the Lord’s help, I prove equal to it — the Christian times as they bud forth, growing all the more amid the hands of those who would hold them back, and, still in the course of their advance, gnawed by the persecution of the very people to whom we are compelled to make this reply;
10 ut germinantia tempora Christiana magisque inter reprimentum manus crescentia et quae adhuc in prouectu posita horum ipsorum, quibus haec respondere cogimur, insectatione mordentur, septimo libello, si tamen adiuuante Domino suffecero, conprehendam,
so that, since from the beginning I have not been silent that men both sin and are punished for their sins, I may now also set forth what persecutions of the Christians have been carried out and what vengeances have followed — apart from the fact that all men are generally prone to sin and are therefore chastised one by one.
11 ut, quoniam ab initio et peccare homines et puniri propter peccata non tacui, nunc quoque, quae persecutiones Christianorum actae sint et quae ultiones secutae sint, absque eo quod omnes ad peccandum generaliter proni sunt atque ideo singillatim corripiuntur, expediam.