Next to the immortal gods, Augustus most honored the memory of those leaders who created the mighty empire of the Roman people from small beginnings. Accordingly he restored the public works of each man, retaining their original inscriptions. Furthermore, in the colonnades of his forum he dedicated statues to all of them in triumphal garb, declaring in an edict that he contrived this so that the citizens might have the example of these eminent men as a standard to which he during his own life as well as subsequent rulers must conform.