Apart from its influence on law, the chief pontificate was valuable for its powers of patronage. Few distinctions were more earnestly sought by young nobles than admission to the religious colleges, and the door to them lay chiefly through the Princeps. His influence might be exercised by his right of nomination or by his commendation to the electing body.[1641] § 2. _Titles, Insignia, and Honours of the Princeps_ In dealing with the titles of the Princeps, it is as well to begin with those which were not in the list of official titles, for, impressed on the ruler, as they were, by current usage, they were often the most significant. The word _Princeps_, although it described no office or peculiar authority, was yet a semi-official designation; even as employed in the later Republic it had signified a political pre-eminence over other citizens,[1642] and now it denoted not so much the “chief citizen” as the “head” or “chief man” in the state, the director of the Republic, to whom all looked for guidance, who was responsible for its failures and credited with its successes, even when these were the result of the actions of other magistrates.[1643] It was above all a title which tended to emphasise the continuance of the life of the Republican government under the new _régime_, and suggested a mental contrast, at once to the Emperor’s position as the commander of his legions, expressed in the title _imperator_, and to that absolute headship which, as exercised in family life at Rome, was known as _dominium_.[1644] The name, indeed, of _dominus_ inspired such a horror in the mind of Augustus that he disliked this mode of address (a familiar one from the members of a family to its head) to be employed even by his sons and grandsons,[1645] and Tiberius insisted that he was _dominus_ only to his slaves.[1646] But the language of courtly life, perhaps at times of real affection, forced the title into use, and the younger Pliny employs it constantly in his correspondence with Trajan. It is not, however, until the time of Severus that it appears on the public addresses of corporations, and Aurelian is the first emperor who is _dominus_ on his coins.[1647] It is probable that these niceties of western nomenclature were always lost on the oriental mind. To it the Principate is a monarchy, and Caesar, when he is not a god, is either αὐτοκράτωρ or βασιλεύς.