The history of Rome. Book V

6. When this was written - in the year 1857 - no one could foresee how soon the mightiest struggle and most glorious victory as yet recorded in human annals would save the United States from this fearful trial, and secure the future existence of an absolute self-governing freedom not to be permanently kept in check by any local Caesarism.

7. V. IX. Preparation for Attacks on Caesar.

8. On the 26th January 710 Caesar is still called dictator IIII (triumphal table); on the 18th February of this year he was already dictator perpetuus (Cicero, Philip, ii. 34, 87). Comp. Staatsrecht, ii. 3 716.

9. IV. X. Executions.

10. The formulation of that dictatorship appears to have expressly brought into prominence among other things the 'improvement of moral'; but Caesar did not hold on his own part an office of this sort (Staatsrecht, ii. 3 705).

11. Caesar bears the designation of imperator always without any number indicative of iteration, and always in the first place after his name (Staatsrecht, ii. 3 767, note 1).

12. V. V. Rehabilitation of Saturninus and Marius.

13. During the republican period the name Imperator, which denotes the victorious general, was laid aside with the end of the campaign; as a permanent title it first appears in the case of Caesar.

14. That in Caesar's lifetime the imperium as well as the supreme pontificate was rendered by a formal legislative act hereditary for his agnate descendants - of his own body or through the medium of adoption - was asserted by Caesar the Younger as his legal title to rule. As our traditional accounts stand, the existence of such a law or resolution of the senate must be decidedly called in question; but doubtless it remains possible that Caesar intended the issue of such a decree. (Comp, Staatsrecht, ii. 3 787, 1106.)

15. The widely-spread opinion, which sees in the imperial office of Imperator nothing but the dignity of general of the empire tenable for life, is not warranted either by the signification of the word or by the view taken by the old authorities. Imperium is the power of command, Imperator is the possessor of that power; in these words as in the corresponding Greek terms kratos, autokrator - so little is there implied a specific military reference, that it is on the contrary the very characteristic of the Roman official power, where it appears purely and completely, to embrace in it war and process - that is, the military and the civil power of command - as one inseparable whole. Dio says quite correctly (liii. 17; comp, xliii. 44; lii. 41) that the name Imperator was assumed by the emperors 'to indicate their full power instead of the title of king and dictator (pros deilosin teis autotelous sphon exousias, anti teis basileos tou te diktatoros epikleiseos); for these other older titles disappeared in name, but in reality the title of Imperator gives the same prerogatives (to de dei ergon auton tei tou autokratoros proseigoria bebaiountai), for instance the right of levying soldiers, imposing taxes, declaring war and concluding peace, exercising the supreme authority over burgess and non-burgess in and out of the city and punishing any one at any place capitally or otherwise, and in general of assuming the prerogatives connected in the earliest times with the supreme imperium'. It could not well be said in plainer terms, that Imperator is nothing at all but a synonym for rex, just as imperare coincides with regere.

16. When Augustus in constituting the principate resumed the Caesarian imperium, this was done with the restriction that it should be limited as to space and in a certain sense also as to time; the proconsular power of the emperors, which was nothing but just this imperium, was not to come into application as regards Rome and Italy (Staatsrecht, ii. 8 854). On this element rests the essential distinction between the Caesarian imperium and the Augustan principate, just as on the other hand the real equality of the two institutions rests on the imperfection with which even in principle and still more in practice that limit was realized.

17. II. I. Collegiate Arrangements.

18. On this question there may be difference of opinion, whereas the hypothesis that it was Caesar's intention to rule the Romans as Imperator, the non-Romans as Rex, must be simply dismissed. It is based solely on the story that in the sitting of the senate in which Caesar was assassinated a Sibylline utterance was brought forward by one of the priests in charge of the oracles, Lucius Cotta, to the effect that the Parthians could only be vanquished by a 'king' and in consequence of this the resolution was adopted to commit to Caesar regal power over the Roman provinces. This story was certainly in circulation immediately after Caesar's death. But not only does it nowhere find any sort of even indirect confirmation, but it is even expressly pronounced false by the contemporary Cicero (De Div. ii. 54, 119) and reported by the later historians, especially by Suetonius (79) and Dio (xliv. 15) merely as a rumour which they are far from wishing to guarantee; and it is under such circumstances no better accredited by the fact of Plutarch (Caes. 60, 64; Brut. 10) and Appian (B. C. ii. 110) repeating it after their wont, the former by way of anecdote, the latter by way of causal explanation. But the story is not merely unattested; it is also intrinsically impossible. Even leaving out of account that Caesar had too much intellect and too much political tact to decide important questions of state after the oligarchic fashion by a stroke of the oracle-machinery, he could never think of thus formally and legally splitting up the state which he wished to reduce to a level.

19. II. III. Union of the Plebeians.

20. II. I. The New Community.

21. IV. X. Abolition of the Censorial Supervision of the Senate.