it could be applied in the senatorial provinces which they governed; and thus it really extended over the whole empire. As a consequence of his exclusive military command, it devolved upon the Emperor exclusively to pay the troops, to appoint officers, to release soldiers from service. The soldiers took the military oath of obedience to him. He alone possessed the right of levying troops, and anyone who levied troops without an imperial command, committed an act of treason. He granted all military honors except triumphs and the triumphal ornaments. Moreover, while an ordinary proconsul lost his Imperium on leaving his district, the Emperor lived in Rome without surrendering the Imperium, although Rome and Italy were excepted from its operation. The Emperor possessed also supreme command at sea, and had the praetorian guards, formed of Italian volunteers, at his disposal, as a stationary garrison at Rome. In connection with the proconsular power is the sovereign right which the Emperor possessed of making war and peace; but this was probably conferred upon Augustus by a special enactment, and was afterwards one of the prerogatives defined by the Lex de imperio.
The rights which the Princeps derived from the tribunician power, as such, were as follows: (1) He had the right to preside on the bench of the tribunes of the people. (2) He had the right of intercession,—which he often practiced against decrees of the Senate. (3) He possessed the tribunician coercitio. His person was inviolable; and not only an injury, but any indignity in act or speech offered to him was punishable. (4) He had also the right to interfere for the prevention of abuses, and to protect the oppressed. (5) It is possible that his power to initiate legislation may partly come under this head.
Besides these powers springing from the tribunician potestas, the Princeps possessed, as we have seen, other prerogatives defined by the Lex de imperio.
Though the sovereign people was now represented by the Princeps, it had still some political duties to perform itself. The popular assemblies still met, elected magistrates, and made laws. The following points are to be observed.
(1) Augustus formally deprived the people of the judicial powers which had belonged to it.
(2) The comitia tributa continued to be a legislative assembly, and the right of making laws was never formally taken away from it. But by indirect means, as will presently be explained, legislation almost entirely passed into the hands of the Emperor; and after the reign of Tiberius laws were not made by the comitia. For a long time, however, the form of conferring the tribunician power in an assembly of the people, was maintained. The assembly for this purpose was called comitia tribuniciae potestatis.
(3) The election of magistrates was the most important function of the popular assemblies under Augustus. Constitutionally, the consuls and praetors were elected in the comitia of the centuries, while the tribunes, aediles and quaestors were chosen in the comitia of the tribes. But after the foundation of the Empire the distinction between the comitia centuriata and the comitia tributa seems to have disappeared; and it is only safe to speak generally of “an assembly of the people”.
The chief function of the comitia curiata had been to pass leges de imperio; and there was room for it to exercise its powers on the five or six occasions on which the proconsular imperium was conferred on Augustus. But it is not clear whether on these occasions an assembly of the people was consulted at all; much less whether, if so, the assembly took the special form of a curiate assembly.
But whatever may have been the theory, and however tenderly republican forms were preserved by Augustus, the people practically lost all its political power. And this was quite right. In ancient times, before the introduction of representative government, popular assemblies worked very well for governing a town and a small surrounding territory, but were quite unsuitable for directing or deciding the policy of a great empire. Moreover, with extended franchise, it was impossible that all those who were entitled to vote in the assemblies could avail themselves of the privilege; and, as a matter of fact, the comitia in the later republic were chiefly attended by the worst and least responsible voters, and were often the scenes of riot and bloodshed.
SECT. II. — THE PRINCEPS AND SENATE.
The government of the Empire was divided between the Emperor and the senate, and the position of the senate was a very important one. Augustus made some changes in its constitution. The number of the senate had been raised by Julius Caesar to nine hundred; Augustus reduced it again to six hundred. He also fixed the property qualification for senates at 1,000,000 sesterces. Those who had held the office of quaestor had, as under the Republic, the right of admission to the order, and the age was definitely fixed at twenty-five. The senatorial classes were still determined by official rank (consulars, praetorians, &c.). Thus the constitution of the senate formally depended on the people, as the people elected the magistrates. The influence of the Emperor, however, was exerted in two ways.
(1) The Emperor was able to influence the election of magistrates in the popular assembly, and (2) he could assume the powers of censor, and perform alectio senatus. Augustus purified the senate on several occasions. The censor, or he who possessed the censorial power, under the Principate—always (after 22 B.C.), though not necessarily, the Princeps himself with, or without a colleague—could not only place by adlectio a non-senator in the senate; but could assign him a place in a rank higher than the lowest. In fact, adlection among the quaestorians (the lowest class) was uncommon; adlection either into the tribunician or into the praetorian class was the rule. Adletion into, the highest rank of all, the consulates, was practiced by Caesar the Dictator, but not by Caesar the first Princeps or any of his successors up to the third century. When it became usual, as it did before the death of Augustus, to elect half-yearly instead of annual consuls, the influence which the Emperor could exert at the elections, gave him much of the power which Caesar the Dictator exerted by adlectio inter consulares. A list of the senate was made up every year.
The Emperor also exerted a great influence on the constitution of the senate in another way. Admission to the senate in the ordinary course depended on the quaestorship; and the quaestorship depended on the vigintivirate. The rule was that only those who belonged to the senatorial rank could be candidates for thevigintivirate. Here adlection could not come in; but the Emperor assumed the right of admitting as candidates for the vigintivirate persons outside the senatorial class, by bestowing upon them the latus clavus. Thus a young knight, not born of a senatorial family, might, by the Emperor's favor, enter on a senatorial career and become a member of the senate. The poet Ovid, who by birth belonged to the equestrian order, is a well-known example. The Emperor seems to have also had the power of granting a dispensation which allowed persons who had not been vigintiviri to become quaestors. It should be observed that in the senatorial career (cursus honorum) military service (generally for a year in one legion) was necessary. The usual steps were (1) vigintivirate, (2) military tribunate, (3) quaestorship, (4) aedileship or tribunate, (5) praetorship, (6) consulate. Hence the vigintiviral offices are called by Ovid “the first offices of tender age”.
The Princeps was himself not only a senator, but the "Prince of the senate"; his name stood first on the list of senators, and he possessed the right of voting first. He did not, however, adopt princeps senatus as one of his titles, as it was his policy rather to distinguish himself from than to identify himself with the senate.Special clauses of the lex de imperio conferred upon him further rights in regard to the transactions of that body. He had the rights of summoning the senate—a right which he might have claimed by virtue of the tribunician power itself,—and of introducing bills (relatio) either orally or, in case of his absence, by writing, the proposal being couched in the form of an oratio (or litterae) A.D.. senatum.His tribunician power gave him the right, as we have already seen, of cancellingsenates consulta. The reports of the transactions in the curia were always laid before Augustus when he was not present himself, and he appointed a special officer, as his representative, to see that the reports were drawn up in full and nothing important omitted. This officer was curator actorum (or ab actis) Senatus.
Augustus introduced the practice of forming senatorial committees to consult beforehand, in conjunction with himself, on measures which were to come before the senate. They consisted of one magistrate from each college and fifteen senators chosen by lot every six months, and formed a sort of "cabinet council". In the last year of his life, when, owing to his weakness and advanced age, he could