appointed the prætor urbanus, as he often did subsequently. The pledges
deposited with the public treasury before the battle of Actium he
released, save any that involved house property, and burned the old
acknowledgments of those who owed the State anything. Egyptian rites
he did not admit within the pomerium, but paid great attention to
the temples of Egyptian deities. Such as had been built by private
individuals he ordered their children and descendants, if any survived,
to repair, and the rest he restored himself. He did not, however,
appropriate the credit for their building but allowed it to rest with
those who had originally constructed them. And since very many unlawful
and unjust ordinances had been passed during the internecine strifes and
in the wars, and particularly in the dual reign of Antony and Lepidus, he
abolished them all by one promulgation, setting his sixth consulship as
the limit of their existence. As he obtained approbation and praise for
this act he desired to exhibit another instance of magnanimity, that by
such a policy he might be honored the more and that his supremacy might
be voluntarily confirmed by the people, which would enable him to
avoid the appearance of having forced them against their will. As a
consequence, after apprising those senators with whom he was most
intimate of his designs, he entered the senatorial body in his seventh
consulship and read the following document.

[B.C. 27 (_a. u._ 727)]

[-3-] "I am sure that I shall seem to some of you, Conscript Fathers, to
have made an incredible choice. For what each one of my hearers would not
wish to do himself, he does not like to believe when another states it as
accomplished. This is chiefly because every one is jealous of every one
who surpasses him and is more or less inclined to distrust anything said
that is higher than his own standard.[1] Moreover I know this, that those