And now the work of reconstruction began in earnest. Acting merely as one of the two consuls and in obedience to a law passed through the senate and comitia, Augustus restored the depleted ranks of the patrician order. It is true that the patricians had no political privileges but they still had great significance in the domain of religion and their restoration as the first official act of the new regime marked a deliberate desire to conciliate the aristocracy and enlist its services in support of order. Then a census of the Roman citizens was taken for the first time in forty years. The number found was 4,063,000 heads, which was to be increased by 170,000 in the next twenty years. The census and purification of the people was accompanied by a revision of the senate-roll. Here Augustus already showed his intention to break away from the policy of Julius. Whereas Julius had aroused the most bitter resentment by introducing provincials and common soldiers into the ranks of the senate, and Antony also had secured the appointment of all sorts of disreputable friends of his own, Augustus with infinite caution and tact reduced, strengthened, and purified the roll. Then since the numbers had been reduced and it was necessary to secure a respectable quorum for the transaction of business, the senate was induced to pass a standing order that its members must not go abroad even to the provinces without permission of its president. As Cæsar was the president it meant a concentration of all the possible leaders of opposition at Rome and under his eyes. During this same year, 28 B.C., the other side of Augustan rule came into prominence, the splendid liberality which turned Rome from a decaying and ruinous city of brick into a city of marble and made this epoch to stand out next to that of Pericles as an age of brilliant culture. No fewer than eighty-two temples were built or restored in that year. Among the rest a magnificent marble temple to Apollo with a public library annexed to it was erected on the Palatine. Libraries were new and significant things at Rome. The first had been built by Vergil’s patron Asinius Pollio only nine years earlier. The time was now ripe for the all-important settlement of the constitution which historians have agreed to call the establishment of the Empire. It is important to narrate the actual proceedings, at this point, somewhat more minutely than the scope of this work generally allows. The establishment of the Empire was such a delicate and equivocal act that it has been open to various interpretations ever since. Probably in the clever brain of Augustus it was intended to be equivocal from the first, so that republican aristocrats at Rome might still believe themselves to be free, while the populace had a prince to whom they might look for their patron, and the provincials, particularly those of the orient, might have a splendid monarch for their instincts of adulation.