By this time the principate had taken its permanent form. Its powers vary considerably with the varying force of the individual emperors, and it tends by mere prescription as well as by the development of an administrative hierarchy of officials to grow more absolute as the years advance. But constitutionally very little change was made in the course of the next three centuries. It always remained a compromise, and something of illegitimacy always clung to it. From time to time the senate actually remembered that it was a governing council. It had always to be reckoned with. As for the comitia of the Populus Romanus, they continued to exist both for legislation and elections as long as Augustus was alive. But in reality the princeps had taken the place of the people in the government of Rome. Tiberius, the next successor of Augustus, suppressed the comitia as unnecessary, and though once or twice in later times an antiquarian emperor might get a plebiscite passed for the sake of old times, the Populus Romanus was extinct. It perished without a groan. The personality of a monarch had been thrust almost surreptitiously into the frame of a republican constitution. Skilfully as it had been done, the illegitimacy of the proceedings entailed certain awkward consequences. There could be no open talk of a succession. Thus when Augustus recovered from his grave illness in 23 B.C. he offered to read his will to the senate to prove that he had nominated no successor. On the contrary, he had formally handed to Piso, the other consul, a written statement of the disposition of the forces and the moneys in the treasury. That was true enough, but he had handed his signet ring, the ring by virtue of which Mæcenas had governed Rome for ten years, to Agrippa, the man who would certainly have taken his place if he had died at that time. In reality there is little doubt that in his own mind Augustus had planned to make young Marcellus, the brilliant child of his beloved sister Octavia, his heir and successor. That this ultimate intention was plain to Agrippa when Cæsar recovered is shown by Agrippa’s sulky retirement into private life. Although Augustus could not directly or legally nominate a successor, he could train a young prince for the succession, and in his own lifetime raise him to such a point of honour that he would naturally step into the vacant place. The newly born Empire had the great good fortune that Augustus, in spite of his feeble health, lived to a ripe age and held the principate for forty-one years. But it had the misfortune to be governed by a sterile race. Not for a hundred years until Titus, did a son succeed his father. Augustus had nephews, stepchildren, and grandchildren, but he had only one child by his three wives, and she was the immoral Julia. All his life long he was vexed with tiresome dynastic problems, and each youth whom he selected for his successor seemed to be destined to a premature death. At the last he was driven