In his own provinces Cæsar was supreme in all things; he had the right of making peace, war, and alliance, without consulting the senate. Though he governed through legates or procurators, the Roman law had always granted a right of appeal from a lower magistrate to his superior. This was the source of Paul’s “appeal unto Cæsar” from the procurator of Judæa. In the senatorial provinces his imperium, which had been specially defined as “superior” (_maius_), gave him precedence when he was actually present. And we have many cases of his interference in senatorial provinces. Cæsar’s legates, such as Agrippa, Tiberius, and Gaius, constantly act as overlords in Asia, though a decree of the senate is required for this. We hear of Augustus founding colonies in Sicily. Moreover, the princeps had sole authority over the army, and for any military operations it would be necessary to borrow troops of him. The foundations of this great empire were not hastily or carelessly laid. Although of feeble constitution and by nature a man of peace, Augustus spent the first half of his long reign more abroad than at home, in fighting rebels and organising or reforming with unwearied energy. To this part of his work we are unable to devote sufficient attention through lack of material. The ancient historians prefer to record small victories over barbarian tribes, or the petty gossip of the Roman streets, while they have little to say about the tireless administration which in one generation transformed the Roman world from a horrible chaos into that scene of peace and prosperity shown to us in the pages of Strabo and Pliny. So while our eyes are fixed upon the sins and follies of Roman emperors and courtiers, until we get an impression of rotten tyranny conducted according to the caprice of monsters and fools, all the time the greater part of Europe was advancing in peace to a state of general culture and civilisation such as it had never known before, and such as it never knew again until the nineteenth century. A casual glance over the inscriptions of a provincial town probably gives us a truer impression than all the rhetoric of the historians. In Pompeii, for example, a small and unimportant suburb of Naples which scarcely comes into the view of history, we see a busy and useful municipal life carried on in absolute security. There were the ten councillors (_decuriones_), who corresponded to the Roman senate, and there were two local consuls bearing the title of “duumviri.” In most cases a small municipality would have its “patronus” also, a local squire, perhaps, who in some measure corresponded to the princeps, and who would represent the interests of the town at Rome, or with the Roman prætor. His main business, however, was to equip his town with baths, temples, and colonnades, or to provide it with public banquets. For the rich freedmen, in whose hands was much of the trade of the place, Augustus