*The Lares and the Genius Augusti.* Among the divinities whose cult was thus quickened into life were the Lares, the guardian deities of the crossways, whose worship was especially practiced by the common folk. Between the years 12 and 7 B. C. each of the two hundred and sixty-five _vici_ into which the city of Rome was then divided was provided with a shrine dedicated to the Lares and the Genius of Augustus, that is, the divine spirit which watched over his fortunes. This worship was conducted by a committee of masters, annually elected by the inhabitants of these quarters. In this way the city plebs while not worshipping the princeps himself, were yet encouraged to look upon him as their protector and guardian. *The imperial cult.* A new religion which was to be symbolic of the unity of the empire and the loyalty of the provincials was the cult of Rome and Augustus, commonly known as the imperial cult. The worship of the goddess Roma, the personification of the Roman state, had sprung up voluntarily in the cities of Greece and Asia after 197 B. C. when the power of Rome began to supplant the authority of the Hellenistic monarchs for whom deification by their subjects was the theoretical basis of their autocratic power. This voluntary worship had also been accorded to individual Romans, as Flamininus, Sulla, Caesar and Mark Antony. As early as 29 B. C. the cities of Pergamon in Asia and Nicomedia in Bithynia erected temples dedicated to Roma and Augustus, and established quinquennial religious festivals called _Romaia Sebasta_. Other cities followed their example and before the death of Augustus each province in the Orient had at least one altar dedicated to Roma and the princeps. From the East the imperial cult was officially transplanted to the West. In the year 12 B. C. an altar of Rome and Augustus was established at the junction of the rivers Rhone and Sâone, opposite the town of Lugdunum (modern Lyons), the administrative center of Transalpine Gaul apart from the Narbonese province. Here the peoples of Gaul were to unite in the outward manifestation of their loyalty to Roman rule. A similar altar was erected at what is now Cologne in the land of the Ubii between 9 B. C. and 9 A. D. Both in the East and in the West the maintenance of the imperial cult was imposed upon provincial councils, composed of representatives of the municipal or tribal units in which each province was divided.