itself, a much smaller circular building. Caesareum A caesareum was a temple devoted to the Imperial cult. Caesarea were located throughout the Roman Empire, and often funded by the imperial government, tending to replace state spending on new temples to other gods, and becoming the main or only large temple in new Roman towns in the provinces. This was the case at Évora, Vienne and Nîmes, which were all expanded by the Romans as coloniae from Celtic oppida soon after their conquest. Imperial temples paid for by the government usually used conventional Roman styles all over the empire, regardless of the local styles seen in smaller temples. In newly planned Roman cities the temple was normally centrally placed at one end of the forum, often facing the basilica at the other. In the city of Rome, a caesareum was located within the religious precinct of the Arval Brothers. In 1570, it was documented as still containing nine statues of Roman emperors in architectural niches. has been claimed to have been almost , much larger than other Roman temples for centuries after, although its size is heavily disputed by specialists. Whatever its size, its influence on other early Roman temples was significant and long-lasting. The same may have been true for the later rebuildings, though here the influence is harder to trace. For the first temple Etruscan specialists were brought in for various aspects of the building, including making and painting the extensive terracotta elements of the entablature or upper parts, such as antefixes. But for the second building they were summoned from Greece. Rebuildings after destruction by fire were completed in 69 BC, 75 AD, and in the 80s AD, under Domitian – the third building only lasted five years before burning down again. After a major sacking by Vandals in 455, and comprehensive removal of stone in the Renaissance, only foundations can now be seen, in the basement of the Capitoline Museums. The sculptor Flaminio Vacca (d 1605) claimed that the life-size Medici lion he carved to match a Roman survival, now in Florence, was made from a single capital from the temple. Substantial survivals Most of the best survivals had been converted to churches (and sometimes later mosques), which some remain. Often the porticos were walled in between the columns, and the original cella front and side walls largely removed to create a large single space in the