The death of Her Majesty raises the question of a commemoration of her extraordinary years of service.

Augustus ruled the Roman empire from 27 bc to ad 14 and was the longest serving of the roughly 70 emperors of the western empire (which ended technically in ad 476). He may have cracked a joke on his deathbed, asking those around him to applaud if he had played his part well in the comedy of life, but he was in deadly earnest about documenting in the first person a selective record of his own achievements (res gestae) for posting across the empire...