Translations and reprints from the original sources of European history v. 5, no. 1

Monumentum Ancyranum: The Deeds of Augustus

Suetonius in his Life of Augustus tells us that that Emperor had placed in charge of the Vestal virgins his will and three other sealed documents; and the four papers were produced and read in the senate immediately after his death. One of these additional documents gave directions as to his funeral; another gave a concise account of the state of the empire; the third contained a list of his achievements which he desired should be inscribed on brazen tablets and placed before his mausoleum. These tablets perished in the decline of Rome. Centuries passed; men had ceased to ask about them, and there was no idea that they would ever be brought to light. Nor were the original tablets ever found. But in 1555 Buysbecche, a Dutch scholar, was sent on an embassy from the Emperor Ferdinand II. to the Sultan Soliman at Amasia in Asia Minor; and a letter of his, published among others at Frankfort in 1595, tells the story of the discovery of a copy of this epitaph of Augustus. He writes: On our nineteenth day from Constantinople we reached Ancyra. Here we found a most beautiful inscription, and a copy of those tablets on which Augustus had placed the story of his achievements. From this situation of the copy comes the common title, Monumentum Ancyranum. Buysbecche made some attempt to copy the Latin inscription, but his work was very hasty and incomplete. What he had discovered was of extreme importance, and his report stimulated such interest that European scholars never rested till as complete a copy as possible was finally made in our own time. The temple on whose walls the inscription was found was one dedicated to Augustus and Rome, as was a common custom during the lifetime of that Emperor. It was a hexastyle of white marble, with joints of such exquisite workmanship that even in this century it was difficult to trace some of them. This temple had served as a Christian church till the6 fifteenth century, and from that time has been part of a Turkish mosque, some sections of its enclosure being used as a cemetery. The great inscription was cut on the two side walls of the pronaos, or vestibule. It was in six pages, three on the left as one entered, and three on the right. Each page contained from forty-two to fifty-four lines, and each line an average of sixty letters. The pages cover six courses of the masonry in height, about 2.70 metres, and the length of the inscription on each wall is about 4 metres. On one of the outer walls of the temple was a Greek translation of the Latin. This measures 1.38 metres in height by 21 metres in length. Several Turkish houses had been built against the wall containing this Greek version, and this made the reading of it, and still more the copying, an extremely difficult task. The priceless value of the Greek version lies in the fact that it supplements in many cases the breaks in the Latin. For it is needless to say that an inscription so old and so exposed has suffered much from time and violence. Various travelers have described the temple and its treasure: Tournefort in his Voyage du Levant, Lyons, 1717; Kinneir, Journey Through Asia Minor, 1818; Texier, Description de lAsie mineure, Paris, 1839; William Hamilton, Researches in Asia Minor, London, 1842; and most completely, Guillaume, Perrot and Delbet, in their Exploration archologique de la Galatie, etc., in 1861, Paris, 1872. Numerous attempts were made at transcribing the inscription, and a number of editions were published. Buysbecches fragments found several editors in the century of their discovery. About a hundred years after him Daniel Cosson, a merchant from Leyden, who had lived many years at Smyrna, dying there in 1689, caused an attempt to be made to secure a copy, and with somewhat better results. His copy was edited at Leyden in 1695. In 1701 Joseph Pitton de Tournefort, under direction of Louis XIV, visited Ancyra, and attempted to secure a facsimile of the text. In 1705 Paul Lucas, also sent by Louis XIV, spent twenty days in copying the Latin, and his work was the last of its kind till the present century. While these early copies are far from being as perfect as more recent ones, they have this value: that in a number of cases they show parts of the inscription which progressive disintegration has now rendered illegible. The Greek text, owing to the buildings reared against it, was much harder to transcribe. In 1745 Richard Pococke published a few fragments, and in 1832 Hamilton copied pages 10, 11, 12 and 13 of the nineteen into which the Greek is divided. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 66595
Author: Augustus, Emperor of Rome
Release Date: Oct 22, 2021
Format: eBook
Language: English

Contributors

Editor: Fairley, William, 1857-1918