If the essence of religion consisted in acts and not in belief, in works and not in faith, Augustus was a devoutly religious man.  Beyond that we cannot go, for our judgment is hampered not only by ignorance of the facts but by our inability to free ourselves from the modern standpoint in the interpretation of the few facts that we do know.  There can be no question of the emperor’s fitness for the task so far as priestly learning went, for he was from a very early age a member of three priesthoods:  a pontiff, an augur, and a guardian of the Sibylline books.  With characteristic modesty however he refrained from becoming Chief Pontiff until in B.C. 12 the death of Lepidus, the discarded member of the Second Triumvirate, left the position vacant.

One who understands the political reforms of Augustus will have no difficulty in understanding his reorganisation of religion, for they were both undertaken with the same general underlying principles and along similar lines.  In both cases innovations and novelties were strenuously avoided, except of course those of a merely administrative character.  In each case a successful effort was made to have it appear as if the old institutions of the republic were being reinstated, whereas as a matter of fact the form alone was old with its age artificially emphasised occasionally by an archaistic touch, while the content was quite new.  The real result in each case was the strengthening of the monarchy and the emphasising of the divine right of the Julian house.  In our study of Augustus’s restoration of religion we must not be content therefore with chronicling the old forms which were re-established, but we must examine in each case the new content which was put into them, even though the evidence of that content consists oftentimes of a mere tendency.  The fondness of Augustus for the archaic is nowhere more clearly exhibited than in one of his earliest religious acts:  the formal declaration of war against Antony and Cleopatra, in B.C. 32, by means of the Fetiales.  The Fetiales were a very ancient priestly college which acted, under the direction of the Senate, as the representatives of international law.  It was through them that all treaties and all declarations of war had been made, but it seems probable that this custom had fallen into desuetude after the Punic wars, and that accordingly the college had lapsed into insignificance, if it had not died out altogether.  But now as the first step in the rebuilding of the priesthoods Octavian restored the college to its old rank and gained also the additional advantage that the people were impressed with the moral righteousness of their cause against Antony and Cleopatra, and also with the fact that it was a foreign, i.e. an international war, and not a civil one, in which they were about to engage.  The effect of Octavian’s restoration was a lasting one, for from this time on this priesthood was held in high honour during the whole of the empire, and the emperors themselves were members of it.