On the famous monument of Ancyra, which preserves for us the Emperor's official autobiography, he enumerates the temples he built--temples in honour of Apollo, of Julius, of Quirinus, of Juppiter Feretrius, of Jove the Thunderer, of Minerva, of the Queen Juno, of Juppiter Liberalis, of the Lares, of the Penates, of Youth, of the Great Mother, and the shrine known as the Lupercal; he tells how he dedicated vast sums from his spoils, how he restored to the temples of Asia the ornaments of which they had been robbed, and how he {6} became Pontifex Maximus, after patiently waiting for Lepidus to vacate the office by a natural death. His biographer Suetonius tells of his care for the Sibylline books, of his increasing the numbers, dignities and allowances of the priests, and his especial regard for the Vestal Virgins, of his restoration of ancient ceremonies, of his celebration of festivals and holy days, and of his discrimination among foreign religions, his regard for the Athenian mysteries and his contempt for Egyptian Apis.[9] His private feelings and instincts had a tinge of superstition. He used a sealskin as a protection against thunder; he carefully studied his dreams, was "much moved by portents," and "observed days."[10] [Sidenote: Rome's debt to the gods] The most lasting monument (_aere perennius_) of the restoration of religion by Augustus consists of the odes which Horace wrote to forward the plans of the Emperor. They were very different men, but it is not unreasonable to hold that Horace felt no less than Augustus that there was something wrong with the state. His personal attitude to religion was his own affair, and to it we shall have to return, but in grave and dignified odes, which he gave to the world, he lent himself to the cause of reformation. He deplored the reckless luxury of the day with much appearance of earnestness, and, though in his published collections, these poems of lament are interleaved with others whose burden is _sparge rosas_, he was serious in some degree; for his own taste, at least when he came within sight of middle life, was all for moderation. He spoke gravely of the effect upon the race of its disregard of all the virtues necessary for the continuance of a society. Like other poets of the day, he found Utopias in distant ages and remote lands. His idealized picture of the blessedness of savage life is not unlike Rousseau's, and in both cases the inspiration was the same--discontent with an environment complicated, extravagant and corrupt. Better with nomad Scythians roam, Whose travelling cart is all their home, Or where the ruder Getae spread From steppes unmeasured raise their bread. {7} There with a single year content The tiller shifts his tenement; Another, when that labour ends, To the self-same condition bends.