In the East Augustus contrived to do without war, trusting, and rightly trusting, to the enormous prestige he had won by overcoming Antony and Cleopatra, and annexing the ancient kingdom of Egypt. His fame spread to India, and probably even to China, with the caravans of merchants who then as now passed along fixed routes from Syria and Egypt to the Far East. We Britons know what _prestige_ can do among Orientals; it is a word that has often been in disfavour, but it means that there are ways of avoiding war without withdrawing just claims to influence. Augustus contrived on the strength of his prestige to keep an honourable peace with the Parthians and Armenians who bordered on the Empire along the line of the Euphrates, and his successors would have kept it too had they always followed out his policy. Tiberius, his faithful pupil and successor, did follow out that policy, and showed consummate skill in handling it. The mention of Tiberius, who succeeded to the position of Augustus at the end of his long life, suggests a few words about a weak point in the new system, which was to give some trouble in the future. How was the succession to be effected? Augustus had not made a new constitution; he had only engrafted his own position of authority on the old republican constitution. So at least he wished his position to be understood, and so he was careful to describe it in the record of his deeds which he left behind him, engraved on the walls of the great tomb which he built for himself and his family. In dignity and consequence he wished to be considered the first citizen; and this he expressed by the word _Princeps_, _i.e._ the first man in the State: by the name Augustus, which suggested to a Roman ear something in the nature of religious sanctity: by the honorary title _pater patriæ_ (father of his country), and in other ways. The real power in his hands had its basis and guarantee in the army, of which his _imperium_ made him (as we should say) commander-in-chief; but the army was on the frontiers doing duty for the Empire, all but invisible to the Roman and Italian. Thus his _imperium_, though it might be legally used in Italy, was primarily a military power indispensable for the guardian of the frontiers. To the Italians it might well seem that the Free State was still maintained, and that no new permanent power had been established; though Greeks and foreigners might be, and indeed were, more discerning as to what had really happened.