eality he was master of the
situation. If he was ever deposed, or if a new commander was ever
appointed, it was by the army. If he proved a tyrant, there was no
other means of getting rid of him than by the army, unless it were by
assassination. At such times the Senate might make a show of naming
the successor, and the army might make a show of agreeing with the
Senate, but such expressions, as Tacitus repeats, were "empty and
meaningless words." The madman Caligula had been assassinated. When,
four years after our date, Nero was compelled to flee from his palace
and was persuaded into committing suicide, it was because the soldiers
had declared against him and had elected another.

The vast powers of the emperor had come into the hands of one man
simply because the republic had been found incompetent to handle its
empire, whether from a military or a financial point of view. It
managed neither so consistently nor so honestly as did the individual.

The emperor, then, by a constitutional fiction, was an officer of the
commonwealth, commanding its forces, not only with the freedom of
action which Rome had always allowed to its experts in dealing with
the enemy, but with that freedom greatly enlarged, and with a tenure
of the office perpetually renewed.

But to him that hath shall be given--especially if he is in a position
to insist on the gift. The emperor's military authority, his position
as governor of provinces, could not alone rightfully qualify him to
control Rome itself, with its laws, its magistrates, its domestic and
provincial policy. Theoretically the Roman emperor never did control
these matters.

In practice he did with them very much as he chose. If he seriously
wished a certain course to be followed, a certain law to be passed or
abolished, even a certain man to be elected to an office, it was
promptly done. But how could he thus perpetually interfere and yet
appear to remain a constitutional officer? Not through the mere
obsequiousness of every one concerned, including the Senate. That
would be too transparent, clumsy, and invidious. It was necessary that
he should possess some adequate appearance of real authority, and he
was therefore ingeniously invested with that authority. It was thus.
There were under the commonwealth certain annual officers of wide and
rather indefinite powers called "tribunes of the commons." These
persons could veto any measure which they declared to be in opposition
to th