Italian Fascists identified their ideology as being connected to the legacy of ancient Rome and particularly the Roman Empire: they idolized Julius Caesar and Augustus. Italian Fascism viewed the modern state of Italy as the heir of the Roman Empire and emphasized the need for renovation of Italian culture to "return to Roman values". Italian Fascists identified the Roman Empire as being an ideal organic and stable society in contrast to contemporary individualist liberal society that they saw as being chaotic in comparison. Julius Caesar was considered a role model by fascists because he led a revolution that overthrew an old order to establish a new order based on a dictatorship in which he wielded absolute power. Mussolini emphasized the need for dictatorship, activist leadership style and a leader cult like that of Julius Caesar that involved "the will to fix a unifying and balanced centre and a common will to action". Italian Fascists also idolized Augustus as the champion who built the Roman Empire. The fasces – a symbol of Roman authority – was the symbol of the Italian Fascists and was additionally adopted by many other national fascist movements formed in emulation of Italian Fascism. While a number of Nazis rejected Roman civilization because they saw it as incompatible with Aryan Germanic culture and they also believed that Aryan Germanic culture was outside Roman culture, Adolf Hitler personally admired ancient Rome. Hitler focused on ancient Rome during its rise to dominance and at the height of its power as a model to follow, and he deeply admired the Roman Empire for its ability to forge a strong and unified civilization. In private conversations, Hitler blamed the fall of the Roman Empire on the Roman adoption of Christianity because he claimed that Christianity authorized the racial intermixing that weakened Rome and led to its destruction.