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I found Rome a city of clay and left it a city of marble. This was not mere vanity. The buildings of the Republic were inadequate to the dignity of an empire that governed forty million people across three continents. The Forum of Augustus, the Ara Pacis, the Pantheon rebuilt, the temples restored — these were not decoration. They were the physical statement that the Pax Romana was permanent, that Rome intended to last, that the centuries of civil war had ended. Architecture is policy made stone.