But Augustus honored peace no less than war. He thrice took the census of Rome, showing an increase of the inhabitants from four millions sixty-three thousand to nearly five millions. In the inscriptions, already referred to as existing in the ruins of the temple of Angora in Asia Minor, he tells us that in the year 13 B. C. the Senate ordered an altar to be built in the Campus Martius to the divinity Pax Augusta (Augustan Peace), upon which magistrates, priests, and vestal virgins might offer a yearly sacrifice. In after ages this altar became covered with rubbish and above the rubbish was accumulated in time a cemetery belonging to the adjoining church of San Lorenzo in Lucina. But this cemetery, it is said, was ten feet below the present level of the city. In the latter part of the thirteenth century, over it and over the altar of Peace beneath it Cardinal Evesham built a palace, which has since passed through various hands. In the early part of the sixteenth century five carved panels of remarkable beauty were brought to light from this ground. Other pieces were found, but were carried to various places,--even to Paris, Vienna, and England. It was not until about the beginning of the present century that it was proved that they belonged to the famous Augustan Altar of Peace. Excavations have since been made upon the original site, sixteen feet below the street level. Vaulted passages have been constructed, so that it is possible to pass along two sides of the altar’s foundation; and at the end of one of these passages, practically embedded in earth and rubbish, may be seen to-day a most beautifully carved panel showing a sacrificial procession. The altar stood upon a platform three and one-quarter feet high and measuring nineteen and a half by eleven and one-half feet. It was approached by steps on four sides. All this was placed in the midst of a sacred area thirty-eight feet by thirty-five feet, enclosed by marble walls elaborately carved in relief on both sides. Among the representations is a procession moving toward a sacrificial scene. The figures are characterized by great dignity and their drapery is arranged to produce a graceful effect. Augustus himself and many of the persons high in rank and power during his reign are grouped as if in conversation. It is evident that the whole structure was a most highly wrought and artistic composition, a fitting monument to him whose boast it was that he had secured unity and peace throughout his empire and had caused the gates of Janus, the god of war, to be closed for a long time. Professor James C. Egbert, of Columbia University, in his description of this altar in the “Records of the Past” for 1906, to which I am indebted, thus described two of the panels, which are now in the Uffizzi Gallery at Florence: