O.
OCTAVIUS AUGUSTUS — from whom, as Luke the Evangelist hands down in chapter 2, an edict went out that the whole world should be enrolled 1 — composed many little works of various kinds 2: among which are: the Replies to Brutus, concerning Cato; Exhortations to philosophy; Of his own life, or Of the deeds done by him in war up to the Cantabrian [campaign], thirteen books; Of an heroic poem, whose subject and title is SICILY; Of Epigrams, extemporaneous, one book; a TRAGEDY, whose title is AJAX — which, when he had begun [it] with great impetus, he afterward, the style not succeeding, abolished; and to friends asking what Ajax was doing, he answered that his Ajax had fallen upon the sponge [had been sponged out]. He also left a volume of familiar letters. But also of the books which pertained to the Roman religion he was so diligent an investigator and preserver, that of the prophetic books of the Greek and Latin kind — which were commonly circulated under no, or scarcely fit, authors — he burned more than two thousand, gathered from every side 3; only the books of the Sibyls being reserved from the fire, and out of these too a selection being made: and those which seemed spurious being burned, he laid up the remaining ones in two gilded cases under the base of the Palatine Apollo. Thus Suetonius, in [the life of] Augustus.
There is also celebrated, among Christian authors, an Inscription and title engraved by the same Augustus on the Capitoline altar 4; which he himself, first of all, erected to our Saviour Christ — although not knowing him. Of which thing Nicephorus makes mention, in the first book of the Ecclesiastical History, chapter seventeen, in these words: CAESAR AUGUSTUS — illustrious for very many affairs gloriously and happily done, and himself first proclaimed Monarch — [when] now of more advanced age, came to the oracle of Pythian Apollo; and, a sacrifice greatest of all (which is called a Hecatomb) having been offered to the demon, he inquired who was to administer the Roman empire after him. But when no answer was returned, he added a second sacrifice also, and asked again, why the oracle — accustomed to use many words — had now at last fallen silent. Then it, a little delay being interposed, answered in this manner:
Παῖς Ἑβραῖος κέλεταί με, θεὸς μακάρεσσιν ἀνάσσων, τὸν δὲ δόμον προλιπεῖν, καὶ αὖθις Ἄϊδος ἱκέσθαι· λοιπὸν ἄπιθι σιγῶν ἐκ βωμῶν ἡμετέρων.
A Hebrew boy — God himself, governing the gods — bids me yield [my] seat, and return, sorrowful, beneath Orcus. Depart, therefore, henceforth silent from our altars.
Such an answer having been received, Caesar returned to Rome, and there in the Capitol built a great altar with a Latin inscription of this kind: THE ALTAR OF THE FIRSTBORN OF GOD. Suidas relates this same [thing], under [the entry] Augustus.
THE BOOK OF OG, king of Bashan — of which Moses makes mention in the books of Numbers, chapter 11, and Deuteronomy, chapter 3 5 — is numbered by Gelasius, distinction 15, among the condemned scriptures.
ONIAS [so; the Spartan king was Areus, Onias being the Jewish high priest — the roles are here conflated], king of the Lacedaemonians, wrote two letters concerning friendship and alliance to be entered into with the Jews 6: one to Jonathan, high priest of the Jews (a copy of which is extant in the first [book] of Maccabees, chapter 11); the other to Simon, high priest of the Jews, which is had in 1 Maccabees 14.