The
Ara Pacis, or Altar of Peace, is a Roman sacrificial
altar enclosed in a screen of Parian marble beautifully
carved in high relief with allegorical and ceremonial
scenes ornamented with elegant plant motifs. For
a thousand years not a trace of it had been seen,
yet today we have all of it once again.
In Augustus's own words, at the beginning of
the section of the Res Gestae in which he prides
himself on having restored peace to the Roman
commonwealth:
When I returned from Spain and Gaul, in the
consulship of Tiberius Nero and Publius Quintilius,
after successful operations in those provinces,
the Senate voted in honor of my return the consecration
of an altar to Pax Augusta in the Campus Martius,
and on this altar it ordered the magistrates
and priests and Vestal Virgins to make annual
sacrifice.
That was in 13 B.C. Augustus's three-year stay
in Gaul had been devoted to personally organizing
the province: it was to be his last provincial
residence. His return marked the essential completion
of his great consolidation of Roman authority
thruout the Empire.
The Ara Pacis was consecrated in 9 B.C. We even
know the exact date, preserved for us in Ovid's
Fasti, Book I, 709-722 : the 30th of January.
