Now, at enormous expense, Augustus worked to expiate his offense. “The assurance of every citizen’s property rights” was to be an enduring slogan of the new regime, and one that did much to underpin its widespread popularity. To the Romans, security of tenure was a moral as much as a social or economic good. Those who benefited from its return saw it as hailing nothing less than a new golden age: “cultivation restored to the fields, respect to what is sacred, freedom from anxiety to mankind.”
