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10The consul that year was Gaius Sentius; and when it became necessary for a colleague to be elected (for Augustus on this occasion, also, did not accept the position after it had been kept open for him), factious quarrelling again took place and murders occurred, so that the senators voted a guard for Sentius; 2and when he was unwilling to use it, they sent envoys to Augustus, each with two lictors. Now when the emperor learned of these things, realizing that there would be no end to the evil, he did not this time deal with the matter as he had before, but appointed one of the envoys themselves, Quintus Lucretius, to the consulship, though this man’s name had been posted in the list of the proscribed and he hastened to Rome himself. 3For this and the other things he had done while absent from the city many honours of all sorts were voted him, none of which he would accept, save the founding of an altar to Fortuna Redux (for this was the name they gave to her), and the provision that the day on which he arrived should be numbered among the holidays and be called Augustalia. 4Since even then the magistrates and the rest made preparations beforehand to go out to meet him, he entered the city by night; and on the following day he gave Tiberius the rank of an ex-praetor and allowed Drusus to stand for the various offices five years earlier than was the practice. 5And inasmuch as there was no similarity between the conduct of the people during his absence, when they quarrelled, and while he was present, when they were afraid, he accepted an election, on their invitation, to the position of supervisor of morals for five years, and took the authority of censor for the same period and that of consul for life, and in consequence had the right to use the twelve rods always and everywhere and to sit in the curule chair between the two men who were at the time consuls. 6After voting these measures they begged him to set everything to rights and to enact whatever laws he liked; and the laws which should be proposed by him they called “leges Augustae” from that very moment, and desired to take an oath that they would abide by them. He accepted all the other measures, believing them to be necessary, but did not require the oaths from them; 7for he well knew that, if any measure they decreed should represent their judgment, they would observe it even without taking an oath, but if it should not, they would pay no heed to it, even if they should offer ten thousand guarantees.
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