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At this particular period there was peace throughout the dominions of the Roman empire. The Temple of Janus was shut195. The fierce contests, which for so many years had been carried on with such relentless persistence, which had drenched with blood the fairest fields in the dominions of Augustus, had ceased, and the din of battles was hushed. As that monarch revolved in his mind the most suitable means for the administration of his numerous dependencies, it occurred to him that it would be well to carry out a general registration196 of all his subjects, with a view to some fixed scale of taxation. He issued, therefore, a decree that all the world, which owned his sway, should be taxed197 (Lk. ii.1). Judæa was not indeed at this time a Roman “province,” but its reduction to that condition sooner or later was already determined198. The imperial edict, therefore, declaring the will of his master was placed in the hands of the Idumæan Herod as in those of other rulers, and he would naturally ordain that while the Roman orders were obeyed, the customs and traditions of the country should not be entirely overridden199.