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The Senate dedicated the Ara Pacis — Altar of Peace — in 9 BC to commemorate my return from campaigns in Spain and Gaul. Peace was the theme; peace was the product I was selling.

I ended the civil wars that had torn Rome apart for a century. Julius Caesar had centralised power but had not found a form for it. I invented the Principate — not a monarchy, which Romans hated, but a 'first citizenship,' a collection of traditional offices held simultaneously by one man. I was not king. I was the first citizen who happened to control the armies, the treasury, the provinces, and the loyalty of the people simultaneously.

The altar's marble frieze shows the procession of my family, the senators, the priests. It is a record of the settlement: Rome at peace, governed by consensus, protected by the armies I had stationed on the frontiers. What I built lasted four hundred years. I am satisfied with this.