With all the state worshipping Apollo, the god of the emperor’s own family, on the Palatine, celebrating the divinity of his ancestor the god Julius in the Roman Forum, and acknowledging Mars as the avenger of all those who did the emperor harm, in the emperor’s own new Forum, it might have seemed to a less far-seeing man that religion had been sufficiently pressed into the service of the royal family.  But so it did not seem to Augustus.  These cults were all three of them essentially new, and new cults may, to be sure, easily become prominent; they usually do, but the test comes with time whether there is external pressure sufficiently continuous to give permanency to this prominence.  As a matter of fact not one of these three cults continued later to hold the rank in importance which it had under Augustus.  On the other hand if one went low enough and looked sufficiently deep down certain elements in the religious life of the community could be found which continued almost unchanged from century to century.  These were the simple elements which were involved in family worship, the sacrifices at the hearth of Vesta, and those to the Genius of the master of the house.  Here simple beliefs and elementary cult acts had continued virtually unchanged from the very earliest period down to the present.  These cults did not need any formal restoration on the part of the emperor, for they had not experienced the decline which the other cults had suffered, but by just so much more they would afford a firm foundation for his empire and his own rule if he could in some way succeed in connecting them with himself.  In the case of Vesta this was comparatively easy.  The Pontifex Maximus was the guardian of the Vestal virgins, and thus on March 6, B.C. 12, when Augustus became Pontifex Maximus, it was quite natural that there should be a festival to Vesta and that the day should continue as a public holiday.  The Pontifex Maximus however was supposed to live in the Regia down in the Forum, where Julius Caesar as Pontifex Maximus had actually lived.  This Augustus did not desire to do, hence he gracefully gave up the Regia to the Vestal virgins and made his official residence in his own house on the Palatine, fulfilling the religious requirements by consecrating a part of that house.  On a portion of the section thus consecrated a temple of Vesta was built and dedicated April 28, B.C. 12.  This was strictly speaking his own “Vesta,” the hearth of his own house, but the prominence of the temple of Vesta there had an effect similar to the prominence of the temple of Apollo on the Palatine, and the whole state began thus to worship at the hearth of the emperor, and in time the emperor was worshipped at each individual hearth.