In the expression of these views the Roman thinkers were attempting to reconstruct the monarchy from a knowledge of their own magistracy; for they rightly believed that this magistracy was a very slight modification of the original kingship. The elective principle of the Republic was not regarded as a novelty in the theory of the magistracy, and there were two reasons for this view. The first was that there was a real continuity, for the elective process was always subsidiary to another, that of nomination by the magistrate who guided the elections. The latter became an almost formal process in the Republic, but the question was not asked whether at one time it may not have been the material element. Secondly, there was really an elective element in the monarchy, which survived as a form into the Republic, a form which the hypothesis of monarchical election adopted by Roman antiquarians could not explain. It is strange that, in seeking for their theory of regal appointment, they should not have appealed to the clearest survival of the monarchy, the dictatorship, on which so much of the rest of their reconstruction of the monarchical power was based. In the two definite survivals of the Roman monarchy election was not recognised; the dictator was nominated by the consul, not by his predecessor, for it was only an occasional office; and the _rex sacrorum_ was nominated by the _pontifex maximus_,[176] no longer by the preceding _rex_; for this office simply continued the priestly functions of the king, the religious headship being vested in the _pontifex_. This oldest principle of appointment survived in Republican Rome as an integral part of the elective process, to reappear again in the Principate, in cases where election had become a mere form, as the living principle.[177] It is, in fact, the one principle that has a continuous history; election is the Republican interlude.