Augustus Caesar

I found Rome a city of bricks and left it a city of marble.

If I have played my part well, clap your hands, and dismiss me with applause from the stage.

Faster, you slugs!

May I be privileged to build firm and lasting foundations for the Government of Rome.

I came to see a king, not a row of corpses.

It will be enough if I can make people say after I'm dead that I played my part well.

A man must not promise what he ought not, lest he be called on to perform what he cannot.

That's the way to treat a woman—when she's dead!

I don't care for dried figs.

You cheer my heart, building as though Rome will be eternal.

I have restored the Republic.

May I be privileged to build the foundations of the state safe and sound, and lay the groundwork for the future as I wish, and so gain the reward of my endeavor: to be called the author of the best possible constitution, and to carry with me, when I die, the hope that the foundations which I have laid for the state will remain unshaken.

I would rather be a first man in a small country than a second man in Rome.

I preferred to be the author of a new example than to imitate an old one.

I received all men's acclamations when I brought the civil wars to an end.

Upon my return from Spain and Gaul, in the consulship of Tiberius Nero and Publius Quintilius, after having successfully settled the affairs in those provinces, the Senate decreed that an altar of Augustan Peace should be consecrated in the Campus Martius.

On my sixth and seventh consulships, after I had extinguished the civil wars, having by universal consent acquired control of all affairs, I transferred the republic from my power to the discretion of the Senate and people of Rome.

I was unwilling to accept any magistracy offered to me which was contrary to the customs of our ancestors.

The gods have granted me the boon of putting an end to the civil wars.

I restored to the Senate and People of Rome their ancient laws.