John Lightfoot on Luke 2:1

[From Caesar Augustus.] The New Testament mentions nothing of the Roman government, but as now reduced under a monarchical form. When that head, which had been mortally wounded in the expulsion of the Tarquins, was healed and restored again in the Caesars, "all the world wondered," saith St. John, Revelation 13:3; and well they might, to see monarchy, that had for so many hundred years been antiquated and quite dead, should now flourish again more vigorously and splendidly than ever.

But whence the epoch or beginning of this government should take its date is something difficult to determine. The foundations of it, as they were laid by Julius Caesar, so did they seem overturned and erased again in the death he met with in the senate-house. It was again restored, and indeed perfected by Augustus; but to what year of Augustus should we reckon it? I would lay it in his one-and-thirtieth, the very year wherein our Saviour was born. Of this year Dion Cassius, lib. lv, speaks thus:

"The third decennium [or term of ten years] having now run out, and a fourth beginning, he, being forced to it, undertook the government." Observe the force of the word forced to it: then was Augustus constrained or compelled to take the empire upon him. The senate, the people, and (as it should seem) the whole republic, with one consent, submitting themselves entirely to a monarchical form of government, did even constrain the emperor Augustus, (who for some time stiffly refused it,) to take the reins into his hands.

I am not ignorant that the computation of Augustus' reign might reasonably enough commence from his battle and victory at Actium; nor do the Gemarists count amiss, when they tell us that "the Roman empire took its beginning in the days of Cleopatra." And you may, if you please, call that a monarchical government, in opposition to the triumvirate, which at that battle breathed its last. But that, certainly, was the pure and absolute monarchy, which the senate and the commonwealth did agree and consent together to set up.

[Should be taxed.] The Vulgar and other Latin copies read, should be described; which, according to the letter, might be understood of the setting out the whole bounds of the empire, according to its various and distinct provinces. Only that Aethicus tells us, this had been done before; whose words, since they concern so great and noble a monument of antiquity, may not prove tedious to the reader to be transcribed in this place:

"Julius Caesar, the first inventor of the Bissextile account, a man singularly instructed in all divine and human affairs, in the time of his consulship, by a decree of the senate, procured, that the whole Roman jurisdiction should be measured out by men of greatest skill, and most seen in all the attainments of philosophy. So that Julius Caesar and M. Antony being consuls, the world began to be measured.

"That is, from the consulship of Caesar above mentioned to the consulship of Augustus the third time, and Crassus, the space of one-and-twenty years, five months, and eight days, all the East was surveyed by Zenodoxus.

"From the consulship likewise of Julius Caesar and M. Antony to the consulship of Saturninus and Cinna, the space of two-and-thirty years, one month, and ten days, the South was measured out by Polyclitus; so that in two-and-thirty years' time, the whole world was surveyed, and a report of it given in unto the senate."

Thus he: though something obscurely in the accounts of consuls, as also in his silence about the West; which things I must not stand to inquire into at this time. This only we may observe, that Julius Caesar was consul with Antony, AUC 710; and that the survey of the Roman empire, being two-and-thirty years in finishing, ended AUC 742; that is, twelve years before the nativity of our Saviour.

Let us in the meantime guess what course was taken in this survey: I. It is very probable they drew out some geographical tables, wherein all the countries were delineated, and laid down before them in one view. II. That these tables or maps were illustrated by commentaries, in which were set down the description of the countries, the names of places, the account of distances, and whatever might be necessary to a complete knowledge of the whole bounds of that empire. That some such thing was done by Augustus' own hand, so far as concerned Italy, seems hinted by a passage in Pliny; In which thing, we must tell beforehand, that we intend to follow Augustus, and the description he made of all Italy, dividing it unto eleven countries.

And now, after this survey of lands and regions, what could be wanting to the full knowledge of the empire, but a strict account of the people, their patrimony, and estates? and this was Augustus' care to do.

"He took upon him the government both of their manners and laws, and both perpetual: by which right, though without the title of censor, he laid a tax upon the people three times; the first and third with his colleague, the second alone." The first with his colleague, M. Agrippa; the third, with his colleague Tiberius; the second, by himself alone; and this was the tax our evangelist makes mention of in this place.