onwards the consulship too was subject to the _commendatio_.[1628] The Princeps, according to the enactment which confers powers on Vespasian, was dispensed from certain laws (_legibus solutus_).[1629] There is no implication here of an exemption from the operation of the ordinary civil and criminal law. The Princeps is not above the laws, nor are the courts of the community his courts; and, if he was exempt from prosecution during his year of office, this was the normal privilege of the Republican magistrate. What is meant is the dispensation from certain principles of the constitution or enactments, which the Principate as a magistracy necessarily violated or which were found inconvenient to the Princeps. Such were the _leges annales_, or the rule forbidding the holding of the _imperium_ within the walls. In choosing an heir the Emperor was also exempted from following the precise formalities of adrogation;[1630] he could manumit without the _vindicta_[1631] and was not subject to the disabilities of the Julian and Papian law.[1632] (v.) The separation of religious from political duties, which had been a characteristic of the Republic, was continued theoretically under the Principate. The Emperor was in no sense a high priest, and ritual was still a function of the sacerdotal colleges. But he was a member of the great religious guilds which dealt with augury and with the _jus divinum_,[1633] and the law gives him the power to carry out the orders of such societies if he thinks it to be in the interest of the state.[1634] We have not, however, merely the phenomenon of the civil assisting the religious arm, for the Prince, as _pontifex maximus_, represents both in his own person. The chief pontificate was specially conferred on him with the other imperial powers; he may originally have been invested, like the pontifex of the Republic, by the assembly of the seventeen tribes,[1635] but later the creation seems to have been wholly the work of the Senate, although a formal announcement of the result (_renuntiatio_) was still made before the assembly.[1636] When the Principate came to admit the principle of colleagueship, only one of the Augusti was made chief pontiff,[1637] and the association of the highest religious and civil power continued until the stole was rejected by the piety of Gratian.[1638] It is obvious that the attempt to keep the rôles of pontiff and Princeps apart, even if made, could never have been successful. Where crime was also sin the pontiff could now utter authoritative law and exercise coercion; the lay and the religious character are strangely mixed in the methods adopted by Domitian for the punishment of incest,[1639] and when the _jussio principis_ speaks on a question of burial law,[1640] it must have been difficult to tell whether it was the Prince or the pontiff who was giving his decision.