Except at Rome, we have seen that the bulk of these troops is held in the frontier garrisons, with all their corps kept on edge in full battle efficiency. Let a frontier be in real peril, however, and there is no means of reënforcing the local legions save by calling off other legions from posts at great distance. Governmental policy has not merely disarmed the provincials, it has systematically discouraged maintaining the military virtues.[173] If the frontiers are forced and the legions fail, the civilian population of the Empire (possibly some 80 to 100 millions) will be nigh helpless before a Parthian raid or Germanic invader; they can only call on the gods and the distant Emperor for aid.[174] However, as yet, the legions have not failed. The Roman armies, never large, but unsurpassed in quality and composed of highly expert soldiers steeped in martial tradition, and organized, and commanded with scientific skill, lie as a solid barrier around the Mediterranean world, and in Hadrian’s day they are holding back possible invaders by the mere terror of their name. When one looks, marveling, upon the huge, luxurious, sophisticated capital, let it not be forgotten that Rome is imperial Rome because far away on the frontiers thirty brigades of iron-handed men night and day keep watch and ward. CHAPTER XVII THE SENATE: A SESSION AND A DEBATE =283. Apparent Authority and Importance of the Senate.=--Powerful is the army and powerful its Emperor, yet there is a body to which they both pay lip-service, and which still enjoys a prestige and moral authority that stamps itself upon the imagination of every man in the Roman Empire--the “venerable Senate.” Theoretically the Senate shares the government with the Emperor, controls the state when there is a vacancy in the palace, selects the new ruler and bestows on him the “proconsular” and “tribunician power,”--the legal bases of his authority. It must be consulted by him in every important act, and when he dies it decides whether he is to be deified as a god, or suffer the awful “damnation of memory” (_damnatio memoriæ_) branding him for all time as a tyrant. It can also declare him suspended or deposed from office, set a price on his head and order the armies to refuse him obedience. Its formal decrees (_senatus consulta_) constitute, now that the old public assemblies have been abandoned, the most binding kind of law.