to the visual identity of the Aedes Divi Iulii that Pliny described the building as "a temple dedicated to a comet" A coin issued in 36 BC (seven years before the dedication of the temple, presumably representing an early design) showed a tetrastyle temple with a start in its pediment and the inscription DIVO IUL on its tympanum. The final version of the temple included a statue of Caesar accompanied by a star: this may have been the statue first erected in 44 or a new one reflecting a similar iconographic program. The position of the temple on its high pedestal, looking down onto the forum and symbolically proclaiming the presence of the deified Julius, was a pointed reminder to the crowds in the forum of the connection between the new imperial order and Caesar's legacy. Architecture The plan of this temple is missing in the Imperial Forma Urbis. The remaining fragments for this area of the Roman Forum are on slabs V-11, VII-11, VI-6 and show plans of the Regia, the Temple of Castor and Pollux, the Fons and Lacus Iuturnae, the Basilica Iulia and the Basilica Aemilia. Vitruvius wrote that the temple was an example of a pycnostyle front porch, with six closely spaced columns on the front. However, the arrangement of the columns is uncertain, as it could be either prostyle or peripteral. The column order originally used for this temple is uncertain. Ancient coins with representations of the Temple of Divus Iulius suggest the columns were either Ionic or composite, but fragments of Corinthian pilastre capitals have been found on the site by archaeologists. Some scholars hypothesize that the temple had an Ionic pronaos combined with Corinthian pilasters on the cella walls, i.e., at the corners of the cella; other scholars consider the temple to have been entirely Corinthian and the coin evidence as bad representations of Corinthian columns. The distinction between Corinthian and composite columns is a Renaissance one and not an Ancient Roman one. In Ancient Rome Corinthian and composite were part of the same order. It seems that the composite style was common on civil buildings and Triumphal arch exteriors and less common on temple exteriors. Many temples and religious buildings of the Augustan Age were Corinthian, such as the Temple of Mars Ultor, the Maison Carrée in Nîmes, and others. The temple was destroyed by fire during the reign of Septimius Severus