The success of Augustus owed much to the character of Roman theorizing about the state. The Romans did not produce ambitious blueprints (1)_____ the construction of ideal states, such as (2)_____ to the Greeks. With very few exceptions, Roman theorists ignored, or rejected (3)_____ valueless, intellectual exercises like Plato's Republic, in (4)_____ the relationship of the individual to the state was (5)_____ out painstakingly without reference to (6)_____ states or individuals. The closest the Roman came to the Greek model was Cicero's De Re Publica, and even here Cicero had Rome clearly in (7)_____. Roman thought about the state was concrete, even when it (8)_____ religious and moral concepts. The first ruler of Rome, Romulus, was (9)_____ to have received authority from the gods, specifically from Jupiter, the 'guarantor' of Rome. All constitutional (10)_____ was a method of conferring and administering the (11)_____. Very clearly it was believed that only the assembly of the (12)_____, the family heads who formed the original senate, (13)_____ the religious character necessary to exercise authority, because its original function was to (14)_____ the gods. Being practical as well as exclusive, the senators moved (15)_____ to divide the authority, holding that their consuls, or chief officials, would possess it on (16)_____ months, and later extending its possession to lower officials. (17)_____ the important achievement was to create the idea of continuing (18)_____ authority embodied only temporarily in certain upper-class individuals and conferred only (19)_____ the mass of the people concurred. The system grew with enormous (20)_____, as new offices and assemblies were created and almost none discarded.