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54 on the slope of the Capitol next the Forum. These are among the few remains of Roman republican architecture; but in the last decades of the Republic simplicity gradually disappeared, and men were eager to display a princely pomp in public and private buildings; witness the first stone theatre erected by Pompey as early as 55 Then all that went before was eclipsed by the vast works undertaken by Cæsar, the Theatre, Amphitheatre, Circus, Basilica Iulia, Forum Cæsăris with its Temple to Venus Genetrix. These were finished by Augustus, under whom Roman architecture seems to have reached its culminating point. Augustus, aided by his son-in-law Agrippa, a man who understood building, not only completed his uncle's plans, but added many magnificent structures—the Forum Augusti with its Temple to Mars Ultor, the Theatre of Marcellus with its Portico of Octavia, the Mausoleum, and others. Augustus could fairly boast that "having found Rome a city of brick, he left it a city of marble." The grandest monument of that age, and one of the loftiest creations of Roman art in general, is the Panthēon (q.v.) built by Agrippa, adjacent to, but not connected with, his Thermæ, the first of the many works of that kind in Rome. A still more splendid aspect was imparted