n were withheld from him, and that the axe was taken away
from his attendants. We have to add that, instead of the purple
robe which the king had worn, the consul was distinguished from the
ordinary burgess simply by the purple border of his toga, and that,
while the king perhaps regularly appeared in public in his chariot,
the consul was bound to accommodate himself to the general rule and
like every other burgess to go within the city on foot.

The Dictator

These limitations, however, of the plenary power and of the insignia
of the magistracy applied in the main only to the ordinary presidency
of the community. In extraordinary cases, alongside of, and in a
certain sense instead of, the two presidents chosen by the community
there emerged a single one, the master of the army (-magister populi-)
usually designated as the -dictator-. In the choice of dictator the
community exercised no influence at all, but it proceeded solely
from the free resolve of one of the consuls for the time being, whose
action neither his colleague nor any other authority could hinder.
There was no appeal from his sentence any more than from that of the
king, unless he chose to allow it. As soon as he was nominated, all
the other magistrates were by right subject to his authority. On the
other hand the duration of the dictator's office was limited in two
ways: first, as the official colleague of those consuls, one of whom
had nominated him, he might not remain in office beyond their legal
term; and secondly, a period of six months was fixed as the absolute
maximum for the duration of his office. It was a further arrangement
peculiar to the dictatorship, that the "master of the army" was bound
to nominate for himself immediately a "master of horse" (-magister
equitum-), who acted along with him as a dependent assistant somewhat
as did the quaestor along with the consul, and with him retired from
office--an arrangement undoubtedly connected with the fact that
the dictator, presumably as being the leader of the infantry, was
constitutionally prohibited from mounting on horseback. In the light
of these regulations the dictatorship is doubtless to be conceived as
an institution which arose at the same time with the consulship, and
which was designed, especially in the event of war, to obviate for a
time the disadvantages of divided power and to revive temporarily the
regal authority; for in war more particularly the equality of rights
in t