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.
The imperial cult in the provinces was thus the expression of the absolute authority of Rome and Augustus over the subjects of Rome, but for that very reason Augustus could not admit its development on Italian soil; for to do so would be to deny his claim to be a Roman magistrate, deriving his authority from the Roman people, among whom he was the chief citizen, and would stamp his government as monarchical and autocratic. Therefore, although the poet Horace, voicing the public sentiment, in 27 B. C. acclaimed him as the new Mercury, and both municipalities and individuals in southern Italy spontaneously established his worship, this movement received no official encouragement and never became important. However, from the year 12 B. C. onwards, there were established religious colleges of _Augustales_, or priestly officers called _Sevìri Augustales_, in many Italian municipalities for the celebration of the cult of Augustus either alone or in conjunction with some other divinity such as Mercury or Hercules. As these Augustales were almost exclusively drawn from the class of freedmen who were no longer admitted to full Roman citizenship, Augustus avoided receiving worship from the latter, while assuring himself of the loyalty of the _liberti_ and gratifying their pride by encouraging a municipal office to which they were eligible.
*The leges Juliae and the lex Papia Poppaea.* However, Augustus was not content to trust solely to the moral effects of religious exercises and resorted to legislative action to check the degenerate tendencies of his age. The Julian laws of 19 and 18 B. C. aimed at the restoration of the soundness of family life, the encouragement of marriage, and the discouragement of childlessness, by placing disabilities upon unmarried and childless persons. These measures provoked great opposition, but Augustus was in earnest and supplemented his earlier laws by the _lex Papia Poppaea_ of 9 A. D. which gave precedence to fathers over less fortunate persons among the candidates for public office. A commentary on the effectiveness of his earlier laws was the fact that both the consuls who sponsored this later one were themselves unmarried. To prevent the Italian element among the citizens from being swamped by a continuous influx of liberated slaves, Augustus placed restrictions upon the right of manumission and refused freedmen the public rights of Roman citizens, although granting these to their sons. By example as well as by precept he sought to hold in check the luxurious tendencies of the age, and in his own household to furnish a model of ancient Roman simplicity.