Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Res Gestae Divi Augusti is a monumental inscription composed by the first Roman emperor, Augustus, giving a first-person account of his life and accomplishments. It is described as a literary form unique to the ancient world. The text spans the period from 44 BC, when Julius Caesar was killed, to AD 14, the year of Augustus' death.
The Res Gestae Divi Augusti was completed just one month before Augustus died on the 19th of August AD 14. He left it alongside his will, with instructions for the Senate to engrave and display it. The original was cut into a pair of bronze pillars and placed before Augustus' mausoleum in Rome.
The most complete surviving copy of the Res Gestae Divi Augusti is the Monumentum Ancyranum, preserved on a temple to Augustus in Ancyra, now Ankara in Turkey. It contains the text in both Latin and Greek. Additional fragments were found at Apollonia in Greek and at Antioch in Pisidia in Latin.
Augustus claimed to have spent 600 million silver denarii, equivalent to 24 million gold aurei, from his own personal funds on public projects during his reign. He also deposited 170 million sesterces of his own money into the aerarium militare, Rome's military treasury. The text notes that this total exceeded what anyone else in the empire could have afforded.
Augustus never named his enemies directly in the Res Gestae Divi Augusti. Caesar's murderers Brutus and Cassius are called only "those who killed my father." Mark Antony appears as "he with whom I fought the war," and Sextus Pompey is referred to simply as a "pirate."
In 1937, for the two thousandth anniversary of the birth of Augustus, Mussolini staged a formal celebration using the Res Gestae Divi Augusti to add legitimacy to his political program. The Fascist movement had co-opted the text since the 1920s to help justify conquest and inspire loyalty. When Hitler visited, he adored the work.