There may have been an appeal from the delegates to the king, but tradition does not credit the king with any power of pardon. Whether the power of pardon resided anywhere depends on our interpretation of the trial of Horatius,[254] which was believed to furnish the archetype of the _provocatio_. From this story appears the belief, which is often stated by other authorities,[255] that the appeal to the people existed in the regal period, but one modified by the view that the citizens had no standing right of appeal against the king such as that secured against the Republican magistrate by the _lex Valeria_. The king, Tullus Hostilius, _allows_ the appeal.[256] The early dictatorship was similarly exempt from the necessity of permitting it, and on one occasion the precedent of Horatius was appealed to for the purpose of showing that, as the king had allowed, so the dictator should allow, the appeal.[257] But the dictatorship is a revival of the _military_ side of the monarchy with the military jurisdiction which the king exercises over Horatius. It is quite possible that before the close of the monarchy custom had established different spheres of criminal jurisdiction for the people and the king respectively;[258] in some the people might have had a right to be judges in the last resort, and it is the idea of calling away a case to another court that is suggested by the word _provocatio_, not the modern idea of pardon.[259] In other spheres the king could judge alone; the _provocatio_ here is an act of grace. If, however, we consider the extent of the military and religious jurisdiction of the king, the competence of the people must have been small;[260] and the _provocatio_ itself may be a growth of the later monarchical period, the result of custom, and of a custom based chiefly on the permit of the king.