There were many causes which rendered the tragedy of the early Empire inevitable. Probably the most potent was the undefined position of the prince and the dreams of republican power and freedom which for ages were cherished by the Senate. Carefully disguised under ancient forms, the principate of Augustus was really omnipotent, through the possession of the proconsular imperium in the provinces, and the tribunician prerogative at home.(240) In the last resort there was no legal means of challenging the man who controlled the legions, nominated the magistrates, and manipulated a vast treasury at his pleasure. The fiction of Augustus, that he had restored the Republic to the hands of the Senate and people, is unlikely to have deceived his own astute intellect.(241) The hand which, of its grace could restore the _simulacra libertatis_, might as easily withdraw them. The Comitia lost even the shadow of constitutional power in the following reign.(242) Henceforth the people is the army.(243) The holders of the great republican magistracies are mere creatures of the prince and obedient ministers of his power. The Senate alone retained some vestiges of its old power, and still larger pretensions and antiquarian claims. In theory, during a vacancy in the principate, the Senate was the ultimate seat of authority, and the new emperor received his prerogatives by a decree of the Senate. In the work of legislation, its decisions divided the field with the edicts of the prince,(244) and it claimed a parallel judicial power. But all this was really illusory. The working of such a system manifestly depends on the character and ideas of the man who for the time wields the material force of the Empire. And “the share of the Senate in the government was in fact determined by the amount of administrative activity which each emperor saw fit to allow it to exercise.”(245)