to the twenty delegates, asserted under the article 'Aπopaph before: and this implies that the former was not derived from the same authority as the latter, and perhaps that the facts in themselves were perfectly distinct events. We may observe also that as the census is ascribed to the sole pleasure of Augustus, and yet must have been enjoined by virtue of some censorian, as well as some imperial authority; the time when such a measure would be most likely to take its origin from him, would be when he was exercising the censorian authority alone, and not when he was exercising it with a colleague. Now this was the case with the middle census, U. C. 746; but not with either of the extreme ones, U. C. 726, or U. C. 767. Moreover, if a proper census had been held so recently as U. C. 746, it is not a probable supposition that a census of any kind would be again enjoined before the arrival of the next lustrum, which would be U. C. 750, or later. Accordingly, John Malala, the historian of Antioch, has a singular statement, which if true would both agree with the account of Suidas, and confirm the presumption in question, by establishing the fact of a census U. C. 749, or U. C. 750. In the thirty-ninth year of his reign, and in the tenth month of that year, Augustus, says he, issued an edict, commanding the whole empire anоyрapivaι. The thirty-ninth year of the reign of Augustus, according to Malala, began U. C. 749, and the tenth month of that year, according to the same authority, was the month of July, U.C. 750. I do not vouch for the truth of this assertion; but I will observe that, if any such edict as the edict alluded to, Luke ii. 1, did actually emanate from Augustus before the birth of Christ, and Christ was actually born in the spring of U. C. 750; it must have e Lib. ix. 226. l. I. been received in the provinces either early that same year, or in the latter half of the year before it. There is a circumstance mentioned by Josephus, in his account of the proceedings at the council of Berytus, and consequently belonging to this period of the year, U.C. 749, which, after these previous observations, will appear critical and significant. Among those who presided at the council, besides Saturninus the governor of Syria, and Volumnius the next in authority to him, he specifies the presence of οἱ περὶ Πεδάviov πрéoßeis; all of whom assumed the chief place according to the instructions of Augustus d. It is an obvious question, who were this Pedanius and his fellow ambassadors or legates, who are thus distinguished from the proper presiding officers of Syria, and yet were at this time on the spot as well as they, and invested with an authority equal to theirs? That there might be in the reign of Augustus a real character of that name, is indisputably proved by the following facts. There was one Gens Pedania at Rome, whose cognomen was Costa: another, or a branch of that, whose cognomen was Secundus; one of which family was Urbis Præfectus U.C. 814f. Pliny mentions a Lucius Pedanius who was sometime consul; and Josephus a Roman knight of that name, who distinguished himself at the siege of Jerusalemb. Now this Pedanius and his colleagues, whosoever they were, cannot be confounded with the legates of Saturninus. Those legates are mentioned in the next section by their proper name of πρεσβευταί not πρέ oßeis; and are spoken of as two in number. Zúμ↓nφοι δὲ αὐτῷ καὶ οἱ δύο πρεσβευταὶ γίνονται : had they been d Bell. Jud. i. xxvii. 2 lerius Max. iii. ii. 20. h Bell. Jud. vi. ii. 8. e Eckhel, v. 269. Tacitus, Historiæ, ii. 71. Cf. Va- more than two, or had the sense intended been that two of his legates concurred with Saturninus, and the third dissented from him, this sense would have required, σύμψηφοι δὲ αὐτῷ καὶ οἱ δύο τῶν πρεσβευτῶν, οι καὶ δύο τῶν πρεσβευτῶν, γίνονται. The truth is, the legates were three in number; but they were all the sons of Saturninus, as even the War itself in the same passage implies; and they were all attending upon their father in a common capacity, and present at the council along with him. Μετ' ἐκεῖνον οἱ Σατουρνίνου παῖδες, εἶποντο γὰρ αὐτῷ τρεῖς ὄντες πρεσβευταὶ, τὴν αὐτὴν γνώμην ἀπεφήναντο. If however Pedanius was neither the same with Saturninus, nor with one of his legates, nor yet with Volumnius, and notwithstanding was the equal of both the governors themselves, and present in Syria, at this time, as well as they; is it unreasonable to conclude that he was there on a special mission, and that this mission might possibly concern the census which preceded the Nativity? It is no objection to this supposition, that the Gens Pedania was plebeian; and that Pedanius was probably only of equestrian dignity. Such an one was more likely to be chosen, for the execution of a measure like this, than a person of patrician family or of senatorian rank. But it makes in favour of it, that whosoever he was, and for what purpose soever he had been sent, he was in Syria before the council was held at Berytus; and his mission concerned that country rather than Judæa. I do not think, as I before observed, that Syria had ever yet been subject to a proper Roman census, or was so perhaps until U. C. 760, when Quirinus or Quirinius, a man of plebeian extraction', but of consular dignity, was sent to carry the first measure of the kind into effect. i i. xxvii. 3. k Ant. xvi. xi. 3. 1 Tacitus, Annales, iii. 48. For any other purpose, which partook of the nature of a proper census, but did not go to the same extent as that, if commissioners must be sent into the provinces expressly, it is more probable that such persons as Pedanius would be sent, than not; especially into those provinces which were governed by magistrates of superior rank and authority, at the time. The jurisdiction of Pedanius in Syria would consequently not supersede, but merely coincide and cooperate with that of its regular governor, Saturninus. The objection, which might be urged from the silence of contemporary historians, as I before observed, is neutralized, if not obviated, by the fact of an hiatus in Dio, just where the account of a census like this, if noticed at all, ought to have come in. The fact of this hiatus is unquestionable. The mission of Caius Cæsar into the East follows in the course of the history, as it now stands, upon U. C. 748, or U. C. 749m; and the mention both of his burial and of that of his brother Lucius follows directly after", at a time which coincides with U. C. 757, the first year of Augustus' fourth decennium. The same coincidence is confirmed by the Pisan Cenotaph, which places the death of Lucius Cæsar in the twenty-fifth of Augustus' tribunitian power, answering to U. C. 755°, and the death of Caius in the twenty-sixth, answering to U. C. 757. Caius was still at Rome, U. C. 751, when Augustus decided on the will of Herod P; if not, according to Suetonius, when Augustus entered on his thirteenth consulate. Orosius seems to place his mission in U. C. 752, but even this allusion to it may be understood of U.C. 753. There is extant a letter to him m lv. 9. 11. ii. 4. n Ibid. 12. 4 Augustus, 26. o liii. 32. r vii. 3. p Ant. Jud. xvii. ix. 5. Bell. ii. from Augustus, written while he was still alive and absent, which that emperor wrote on his birthday, when he had completed his sixty-third year; and consequently in the month of September, U. C. 754. Nor was Caius Cæsar, and perhaps not even Lucius, yet dead, when Tiberius returned from Rhodes, in the year U. C. 755t. The Pisan Cenotaph also shews that Caius discharged his consulate in the East; and therefore was there in U. C. 754*. The true year of his mission was, consequently, neither earlier than U. C. 752, nor later than U. C. 753 and Velleius Paterculus, who places it a little after Augustus' thirteenth consulate, and the banishment of Julia, both in U. C. 752, implies the same thing". There is, consequently, an omission in Dio, extending from the year U. C. 748, to the year U. C. 756, or U. C. 757 †, within which the account of a ge *The expedition in question was just preparing when Ovid wrote his Ars Amandi: i. 177. Ecce parat Cæsar domito,quod defuit, orbi | Addere: nunc, Oriens ultime, noster eris. | Parthe, dabis pœnas: Crassi, gaudete sepulti, | Signaque barbaricas non bene passa manus: | Ultor adest: primisque ducem profitetur in armis: | Bellaque non puero tractat agenda puer. | Parcite natales, timidi, numerare Deorum: | Cæsaribus virtus contigit ante diem. Ibid. 191: Auspiciis animisque patris puer arma movebis: | Et vinces animis auspiciisque patris. | Tale rudimentum tanto sub nomine debes; Nunc juvenum princeps, deinde future senum. | Cum tibi sint fratres; fratres ulciscere læsos: Cumque pater tibi sit: jura tuere patris. Induit arma tibi genitor patriæque tuusque: | Hostis ab invito regna parente rapit. Cf. seqq....228. Also De Remedio Amoris, 155. The whole strain of these allusions demonstrates that the expedition in question was that of Caius, U. C. 752 or 753, not of Tiberius, U.C. 734. Caius Cæsar was but nineteen years of age, U. C. 753, whereas Tiberius was forty-one. The time of the Ars Amandi, and of the Remedium Amoris, is thus determined likewise. Dio, lv. 10. speaks of a largess of 60 denarii or drachmæ apiece to the people, as though it followed upon, or took place in, U. C. 748, which the Ancyran monument proves to have been really distributed U. C. 752. It appears also from cap. 10 s Aulus Gellius, xv. 7. t Velleius Pat. ii. 103. Suetonius, Tiberius, 13, 14, 5. Dio, lv. 9. 11. u ii. 100, 101. |