It is possible that Sylla’s and Cæsar’s ends frightened him; but perhaps also, the thing seemed to him to be too straightforward, and it pleased him as it were to play with it. But he was named consul every year, if he chose: they wanted to make him sole consul; but he refused it, and rather wished to have two consuls to help him: this again was opposed by the senate; “one besides him was already too much.” At the same time, the proconsular power out of Rome was given him over the whole of the empire, and he could always exercise it by deputy; so that he was enabled to give away the provinces at his pleasure. With the censorship, he got the privilege of excluding from the senate, or calling into it, any one whom he chose. By virtue of his office of tribune, he could annul the decrees of the senate, and interfere with every act of all the magistrates: moreover it gave him the _provocatio_ from all judicial decisions, which is the source of the modern appeal. He was tribune for life, and as such had the right of calling the senate together, of making motions, and of putting matters to the vote: this first began in the seventh century, and no one was now startled at it.[27] To Lepidus he left indeed the name of _pontifex maximus_; but after his death, he had that dignity also conferred upon himself, and thus he engrossed the whole authority of the spiritual law. Moreover, he had, by means of the tribunician and censorial powers, the supreme control over the _ærarium_; so that, by an artificial accumulation, all the powers of government, with the exception of the administrative ones of the præetors and consuls, were concentrated in his person.