The act of repetition is an example of pietas strengthening the bond between a builder and his predecessors. From Augustus onward, each emperor acknowledged the former ruler, while at the same time aggrandizing himself. This was a sophisticated message addressed to an audience trained to receive it. Indeed, in Chapter 1 I argued that the architect of the Templum Pacis turned for inspiration to the nearby Forum of Augustus and to its Temple of Mars Ultor (note that Vespasian's building was the first monumental complex erected after Augustus’ in that area and, until the construction of the Forum Transitorium, the former faced the southeast side of the latter). This Augustan influence can be seen, for example, in the dimensions of the columns of the actual Temple of Peace, the shafts of which were found in fragments from the 2000–2002 excavation (see Fig. 38; in July 2013, the top of another colossal shaft was brought to light below the level of the Via Alessandrina), and in the fragmentary shafts of the southwest portico, which were discovered a few years earlier.

If the fragments of the huge, smooth shafts of pink granite of the axial hall belong to the Corinthian columns of the Severan restoration, were the original Vespasianic columns the same colored marble? I argue that pink granite replaced the original white and giallo antico marble; as discussed later, this change is suggested, in particular, by the colossal columns of the axial hall. Note that the few fragments of Corinthian capitals from this hall are of Proconnesian marble, which was used in Rome from the end of the Hadrianic age onward; therefore, as in the case of pink granite, which was not used in the Flavian age (as far as we know, the first pink granite shaft erected in Rome belonged to the Column of Antoninus Pius in the Campus Martius and was quarried in AD 105– 106) but which was widespread in Severan archi- tecture (see the basilica at Lepcis Magna), those fragments cannot be dated to the Vespasianic phase and confirm the replacement of the original capitals after the fire of AD 192.