he magistrates instead of the Comitia and limited himself to claiming
a binding right of proposal for a proportion of the praetors
and of the lower magistrates; and that he moreover had himself
empowered by special decree of the people for the creation of patricians,
which was not at all allowable according to use and wont.

Other Magistracies and Attributions

For other magistracies in the proper sense there remained alongside
of this dictatorship no room; Caesar did not take up the censorship
as such,(11) but he doubtless exercised censorial rights--
particularly the important right of nominating senators--after
a comprehensive fashion.

He held the consulship frequently alongside of the dictatorship,
once even without colleague; but he by no means attached it permanently
to his person, and he gave no effect to the calls addressed to him
to undertake it for five or even for ten years in succession.

Caesar had no need to have the superintendence of worship
now committed to him, since he was already -pontifex maximus-.(12)
as a matter of course the membership of the college of augurs
was conferred on him, and generally an abundance of old and new
honorary rights, such as the title of a "father of the fatherland,"
the designation of the month of his birth by the name which it
still bears of Julius, and other manifestations of the incipient
courtly tone which ultimately ran into utter deification.
Two only of the arrangements deserve to be singled out:
namely that Caesar was placed on the same footing with the tribunes
of the people as regards their special personal inviolability,
and that the appellation of Imperator was permanently attached
to his person and borne by him as a title alongside of
his other official designations.

Men of judgment will not require any proof, either that Caesar
intended to engraft on the commonwealth his supreme power,
and this not merely for a few years or even as a personal office
for an indefinite period somewhat like Sulla's regency,
but as an essential and permanent organ; or that he selected
for the new institution an appropriate and simple designation;
for, if it is a political blunder to create names without substantial
meaning, it is scarcely a less error to set up the substance
of plenary power without a name. Only it is not easy to determine
what definitive formal shape Caesar had in view; partly because
in this period of transition the ephemeral and the permanent buildin