ndered 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 8