[61] That this annual sacrifice was instituted July 4, 741, appears from C. I. L., I, 395. _Feriae ex. s. c. quod eo die ara Pacis Augustae in campo Martio constituta est Nerone et Varo cos._ Cf. Fasti of Præneste, Jan. 30, C. I. L., I, 313, for day of the actual dedication; also Ovid, _Fasti_ I, 709; Dio, LIV, 25. This altar was probably on the Flaminian Way by which Augustus returned from Gaul. [62] The exact conditions necessary for the closing of the temple, viz., “peace won by victories” were first made known in 1882 by this perfected text of the _Res Gestæ_. [63] Cf. Livy, I, 19; Varro, V, 165. The temple of Janus (or as the Romans called it, Janus, without the word temple,) (cf. Latin text and Livy, l. c., and Horace, Carm, IV, 15, 9,) had been closed first under Numa and again after the first Punic War. [64] Augustus first closed it in 725, after Actium. Cf. Livy, l. c.; Dio, LI, 20; Vell., II, 38; Victor, _De Viris Ill._, LXXIX, 6; Plut. _De Fort. Rom._, 9; Oros., VI, 20, 8. C. I. L. I, p. 384, supplies the day, January 11. In 728 it was opened again, on account of the war with the Cantabri. Cf. Dio, LIII, 26, Plutarch, l. c. A second time it was closed in 729, cf. Dio, l. c.; Oros., VI, 21, 1. The time of its next opening cannot be determined; but in all probability it was reopened that very year, on account of the Arabian campaign. Dio, LIV, 36, records that in 744 the Senate decreed that it should be closed, but that a Dacian rebellion interfered. But Dio must be mistaken, for Drusus was then in the midst of his German campaign. But after the campaigns of Drusus and Tiberius in Germany, closed in 746, up to 753, when Gaius Cæsar started for Armenia, the temple might well have been closed. Parts of Dio are lost here, which may have mentioned such closing. The birth of Jesus Christ, 749, falls in this period of peace. Cf. Milton’s _Nativity Hymn_. When it was opened for the third time cannot be said. Tacitus says it was opened when Augustus was an old man. But it can hardly have remained shut after the opening of the Armenian war in 753. Augustus was then sixty-two years old. That age may possibly suit the expression of Tacitus. Horace _Ep._, II, 1, 255, and _Carm._, IV, 15, 9, mentions the closing of the temple. Suetonius, _Aug._ 22, says: “Janus Quirinus, which had been shut twice only, from the era of the building of the city to his own time, he closed thrice in a much shorter period, having established universal peace both by sea and land.” This is almost a literal transcript of the _Res Gestæ_.