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When I returned to Rome from
Gaul and from Spain, in the consulship of
Tiberius Nero and Publius Quintilio, having
brought to a satisfactory finish my works in
these provinces, the Senate decreed that there
should be consecrated in the Field of Mars an
altar to the Augustan Peace and ordered that
the officials, priests and vestal virgins
should celebrate a sacrifice at it every
year.It is with these words that
Augustus, in his spiritual testimony, the Res
Gestae, tells us of the Senate's decision to
construct an altar to Peace, following the
conclusion of his labours North of the Alps
from 16 to 13 B.C., subjecting the Reti and the
Vindelici, establishing definitive control over
the Alpine passes, and visiting Spain, finally
at peace, founding new colonies and imposing
new tributes. The ceremonial dedication of the
Altar of Peace, took place on the 30th January
in the year 9 B.C. It seems, according to the
evidence provided by the historian Cassius
Dione (LIV, 25.3), that at first the Senate had
planned to build an altar within their own
building, the Curia, but the idea was not
followed through and the northernmost part of
the Field of Mars, which had recently been
urbanised, was chosen instead. The altar
dedicated to peace came, therefore, and not by
chance, to be built in the middle of a vast
plain, on which, traditionally, the manoeuvres
of the infantry and the cavalry took place,
and, in more recent times, the gymnastic
exercises of the Roman youth.
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