It is equally unhistorical to assert, as does the foremost of living historians in Germany, Dr. Eduard Meyer, that this “Restoration” was a genuine abdication, and that Cæsar only continued to act as the senate’s executive officer. Sometimes he did act in that capacity, often he made a pretence of so acting. Especially when there was anything disagreeable to be done, he liked to get it authorised by a decree of the senate. But no intelligent Roman can have failed to perceive that there was no real equilibrium between Cæsar and Senate. Cæsar had not only the control of nearly all the legions; but at the very gate of Rome he had the only troops in Italy, the prætorian guard, at his beck and call. Roman generals had always had their life-guards. The law forbade the presence of an army at Rome, but Cæsar had shown his usual ingenuity in circumventing the spirit of the law, while respecting its letter. An army meant a legion, and a legion consisted of ten cohorts generally of three hundred men each. Very well, Cæsar would only have nine cohorts. But as each consisted of a thousand men, he found himself in command of a force equal to three legions in permanent quarters at the gates of Rome. If he thus had the men, he had the money too. The senatorial provinces were now, thanks to a long regime of senatorial governors, mostly the poor ones. Cæsar had the enormous treasury of Egypt in his pocket, Spain was rich in undeveloped mines, and Gaul had great possibilities as yet unexploited. Moreover, Augustus had inherited an immense patrimony from Julius, and the legacies of admiring friends also increased his wealth. Thus it came about that the senatorial treasury simply could not exist without help from the imperial purse. His private wealth, too, enabled him to keep the Roman mob happy with cheap or free corn, public shows, and handsome buildings, and to satisfy the troops with lavish bounties. There was no real equilibrium. On the other hand, Augustus was very careful not to wound republican sensibilities. He was himself of a distinctly historical and antiquarian turn of mind. He never performed a function or assumed an office without assuring himself that it was not new to the constitution. Thus when he was asked to undertake censorial duties he declined the “censorial authority,” which the senate conferred upon him, but carried out the duties by virtue of his power as consul, having assured himself that in the olden times consuls had performed the duties of the censor. He was also most punctilious in his use of forms. We shall see later something of the republican simplicity of his mode of life. He never failed, as his “divine father” Julius had done, to treat the senate with outward marks of respect. Call him a “crafty tyrant” if you will. It is much more just to call him a diplomatic reformer engaged in a necessary work of repair, working it with infinite patience, tact, and subtlety, by the most ingenious system of compromises known to history.