As for the ancient magistracies of the Roman people, while they were strictly preserved, they were utterly disarmed. Consulships remain important only as leading to a subsequent proconsulship over a province. The prætors still sat in their courts of justice but really important cases came up to Cæsar on appeal. The tribunes were of no account beside their mighty colleague. Magistracies were bestowed as marks of imperial favour. Often there would be two or three successive consuls in a single year. Cæsar himself would sometimes deign to take a consulship when he wished to honour a colleague or a relative. Here again, however, the impotence of the magistracies was very largely due to the intellectual bankruptcy of the Roman nobility. They could not perform the simplest task such as the charge of the corn-supply without bungling and requiring the assistance of Cæsar. But on one occasion when a certain ædile organised a fire-brigade of his own and became very zealous in extinguishing fires, he received a hint that his zeal was unwelcome in the highest quarters. Thus the magistracies declined little by little into mere decorations, or became once more what they had been in the beginning, municipal officers for the city of Rome. But even there they were superseded by the organising activity of the princeps. He resuscitated the ancient office of city prefect and put him in charge of the new police and the new fire-brigade while two other new prefects commanded the prætorian guards. These two officers soon began to overshadow the old magistracies. ARMY AND TREASURY Dio Cassius rightly asserts that the real power of Augustus rested upon two things--the control of the army and of the finances. We have already seen that in the so-called abdications of Augustus there was no surrender of these and no suggestion of their surrender. In view of the present tendency among historians to attach real importance to the restoration of the Republic in 27 B.C. and again in 23 B.C. it is all the more important to remember that the twenty-three legions which with their auxiliaries and reserves formed the entire military force of the Roman Empire took their oath solely to Augustus and were with one exception stationed exclusively in his provinces, fought under his auspices and took their orders from no other but Cæsar and his legates. Beyond these he had a prætorian corps of 9000 men in permanent cantonments within striking distance of Rome, as well as a drilled bodyguard of slaves in his own house. In view of these facts it is absurd to limit our conception of the power of Cæsar to a survey of the constitutional offices which he held. It is only in the language of lawyers and pedants that his authority rested upon consular and tribunician powers. Everybody knew that a letter sealed with Cæsar’s sphinx was backed by the swords of 140,000 legionaries. The military situation of Augustus is therefore of the utmost importance.