Patronage and its many forms allowed for a minimal form of administration bound by personal relations between parties and thus in the late Republic patronage served as a model for ruling.[1][23] Conquerors or governors abroad established personal ties as patron to whole communities, ties which then might be perpetuated as a family obligation.[24] Thus the Marcelli were patrons of the Sicilians, because Claudius Marcellus had conquered Syracuse and Sicily.[25] Extending rights or citizenship to municipalities or provincial families was one way to add to the number of one's clients for political purposes, as Pompeius Strabo did among the Transpadanes.[26] This form of patronage in turn contributed to the new role created by Augustus as sole ruler after the collapse of the Republic, when he cultivated an image as the patron of the Empire as a whole.