Caesar did not explain to the public what shape he intended ultimately to give to the new system. It could hardly have been the "perpetual dictatorship," which was decreed him by the senate after his victory at Munda (4S). The dictatorship was associated with those very Sullan traditions from which Caesar was most anxious to sever himself, and the name had no value in the empire at large. It was rumoured that he intended to follow Alexander's example and at least in the eastern provinces adopt the title of king with the theocratic associations which the title bore in the East. Roman proconsuls who had served in Asia and had seen the ease with which kings ruled when not hampered by constitutions and privileged to utter decrees that were considered sacred, would well have comprehended the advantages of such divine absolutism. Caesar might readily remain in the East for some years after his Parthian campaign, and while busy reorganiz ing the provinces there he would inure his court and the senators in his train to accept the new rex. When the time was ripe he might proclaim the title at Rome, and then, being recognized as more than human and above legal restrictions, he could carry whatever reforms he desired by decree. That these rumours deserve some credit we may believe, not only because Caesar before his death accepted several "divine" honours from the senate, but also be cause Mark Antony, who knew Caesar's plans, pursued such a course after Caesar's death. It is not unlikely that Caesar in tended some day to accept for himself the position of an absolute monarch like Alexander or Ptolemy Philadelphus'. But he was well aware that it would require many years of training to prepare the senate for the announcement.
The old constitution was not formally abrogated. The senate met and deliberated; the assembly passed laws and elected magis trates; there were still consuls, praetors, aediles, quaestors and tribunes ; and Caesar himself, like his successors, professed to hold his authority by the will of the people. But senate, assembly and magistrates were all alike subordinated to the paramount authority of the dictator; and this subordination was, in appearance at least, more direct and complete under the rule of Caesar than under that of Augustus. For months together Rome was left without any regular magistrates, and was governed like a subject town by Caesar's prefects. At another time a tribune was seen exercising authority outside the city bounds and invested with the imperium of a praetor. At the elections, candidates appeared before the people backed by a written recommendation from the dictator, which was equivalent to a command. Finally, the senate itself was transformed out of all likeness to its former self by the raising of its numbers to 900, and by the admission of old soldiers, sons of freedmen and even "semi-barbarous Gauls." But, though Caesar's high-handed conduct in this respect was not imitated by his immediate successors, yet the main lines of their policy were laid down by him. These were: (r) the municipaliza tion of the old republican constitution, and (2) its subordination to the paramount authority of the master of the legions and the provinces. In the first case he only carried farther a change
already in progress. Of late years the senate had been rapidly losing its hold over the empire at large. Even the ordinary pro consuls were virtually independent potentates, ruling their prov inces as they chose, and disposing absolutely of legions which recognized no authority but theirs. The consuls and praetors of each year had since 81 been stationed in Rome, and immersed in purely municipal business; and, lastly, since the enfranchise ment of Italy, the cornitia, though still recognized as the ultimate source of all authority, had become little more than assemblies of the city populace, and their claim to represent the true Roman people was indignantly questioned, even by republicans like Meyer, Kleine Schriften (2nd ed. i. 449).
Cicero. The concentration in Caesar's hands of all authority outside Rome completely and finally severed all real connection between the old institutions of the republic of Rome and the Government of the Roman empire. But the institutions of the republic not merely became, what they had originally been, the local institutions of the city of Rome ; they were also subordi nated even within these narrow limits to the paramount authority of the man who held in his hands the army and the provinces Autocratic abroad, at home he was the chief magistrate of the commonwealth; and this position was marked, in his case as in that of those who followed him, by a combination in his person of various powers, and by a general right of precedence which left no limits to his authority but such as he chose to impose upon himself. During the greater part of his reign he was consul as well as dictator. In 48, after his victory at Pharsalia, he was given the tribunicia potestas for life, and after his second success at Thapsus the praefectura morum for three years. As chief magistrate he convenes and presides in the senate, nominates candidates, conducts elections, carries laws in the assembly and administers justice in court. Finally, as a reminder that the chief magistrate of Rome was also the autocratic ruler of the empire, he wore even in Rome the laurel wreath and triumphal dress, and carried the sceptre of the victorious imperator.
Nor are we without some clue as to the policy which Caesar had sketched out for himself in the administration of the empire, the government of which he had centralized in his own hands. The much needed work of rectifying the frontiers he was forced, by his premature death, to leave to other hands, but within the frontiers he anticipated Augustus in lightening the financial burdens of the provincials, and in establishing a stricter control over the provincial governors, while he went beyond him in his desire to consolidate the empire by extending the Roman franchise and admitting provincials to a share in the Govern ment. He completed the Romanization of Italy by his enfran chisement of the Transpadane Gauls, and by establishing through out the peninsula a uniform system of municipal government, which under his successors was gradually extended to the provinces.