Secondly, each province was now for the first time given a kind of corporate existence, and became something more than the military command of a Roman magistrate. A council of the province met once a year at its chief town, and transacted a certain amount of business. True, this did not give the province any measure of real self-government, but it had some useful results, and it is not impossible that Augustus may have intended that more should eventually follow. This meeting of a provincial council brought each province into direct touch with the home government, and in particular enabled it to make complaint of its governor if he had been unpopular and oppressive. And one most interesting feature of these councils was that they had a worship of their own, meant, no doubt, to dim the lustre of local and tribal worships, and to keep the idea of Rome and her rulers constantly before the minds of the provincials. For the divine objects of worship were Augustus himself or his Genius, in combination with the new goddess Roma. The most famous example of this worship is found at Lugdunum, now Lyons, where there was an altar dedicated to Rome and Augustus, at the junction of Rhone and Saone, which served as a religious centre for the three provinces into which Augustus now divided the great area of the Gallic conquests of Julius. Though his object was undoubtedly peace, Augustus could not, of course, entirely escape war on his frontiers. He could not have finally settled the frontier on the line of the Danube, which was far the most valuable military work of his time, without wars which were both long and dangerous. It was absolutely necessary to cover Italy on the northeast, where the passes over the Alps are low and comparatively easy, and also to shield the Greek peninsula from attack by the wild tribes to the north of it. I have already alluded to the great work of Tiberius (the stepson of Augustus) in this quarter, which marks him as the third of the great generals who saved the civilisation of the Mediterranean for us. At one time Augustus thought of advancing the frontier from the Rhine to the Elbe, and so of connecting Elbe and Danube in one continuous line of defence. But this plan made it necessary to enclose all Germany west of the Elbe in the Roman Empire, and it was soon found that the Germans were not to be made into Roman provincials without a prolonged struggle for which Augustus had neither money nor inclination. So the frontier came back to the Rhine, and the Rhine and the sea marked the Roman frontier on north and west, until Claudius, the third successor of Augustus, added our island, or rather the southern part of it, to the Empire, in A.D. 43.