monarchy of Caesar; if those
old kings of Rome with all their plenitude of power had yet
been rulers of a free community and themselves the protectors
of the commons against the nobility, Caesar too had not come
to destroy liberty but to fulfil it, and primarily to break
the intolerable yoke of the aristocracy. Nor need it surprise us
that Caesar, anything but a political antiquary, went back
five hundred years to find the model for his new state; for,
seeing that the highest office of the Roman commonwealth had remained
at all times a kingship restricted by a number of special laws,
the idea of the regal office itself had by no means become obsolete.
At very various periods and from very different sides--
in the decemviral power, in the Sullan regency, and in Caesar's
own dictatorship--there had been during the republic a practical
recurrence to it; indeed by a certain logical necessity,
whenever an exceptional power seemed requisite there emerged,
in contradistinction to the usual limited -imperium-,
the unlimited -imperium- which was simply nothing else
than the regal power.

Lastly, outward considerations also recommended this recurrence
to the former kingly position. Mankind have infinite difficulty
in reaching new creations, and therefore cherish the once developed forms
as sacred heirlooms. Accordingly Caesar very judiciously
connected himself with Servius Tullius, in the same way
as subsequently Charlemagne connected himself with Caesar,
and Napoleon attempted at least to connect himself with Charlemagne.
He did so, not in a circuitous way and secretly, but, as well as
his successors, in the most open manner possible; it was indeed
the very object of this connection to find a clear, national,
and popular form of expression for the new state. From ancient times
there stood on the Capitol the statues of those seven kings,
whom the conventional history of Rome was wont to bring on the stage;
Caesar ordered his own to be erected beside them as the eighth.
He appeared publicly in the costume of the old kings of Alba.
In his new law as to political crimes the principal variation
from that of Sulla was, that there was placed alongside
of the collective community, and on a level with it, the Imperator
as the living and personal expression of the people. In the formula
used for political oaths there was added to the Jovis and the Penates
of the Roman people the Genius of the Imperator. The outward badge
of mona