The office of tribune bore a sacred character in the eyes of the Romans. The most glorious deeds of the nation as a whole in the palmy days of the republic were associated with the tribunate of the people; the plebs regarded it as the palladium of their liberties and legal status; from the days of Coriolanus down to the civil war between Cæsar and Pompey, the broils of political factions had raged around this magistracy of the people. Its solemn bestowal upon Augustus therefore supplied him with a religious consecration; by this alone a sacred and indissoluble bond was knit between the people and the supreme head of the state; the prince (princeps) was recognised as the protector of the people, and the magistracy of the popular community was transferred to its ruler. The rights of protection and intercession inherent in the tribunate were then expanded into an imperial prerogative of appeal and pardon and extended to the whole empire. In civil and criminal cases alike, an appeal to the emperor’s judgment-seat might be made from all tribunals and all parts of the empire, and thus the highest judicial authority in the whole sphere of government was committed into the hands of Augustus. The clemency and humanity for which he was famous caused these appeals to the imperial court to exceed all measure. Special courts of appeal had soon to be erected in the city and in the provinces, in the one case under the presidency of the prefect of the city, in the other under special consular authorities to whom the emperor delegated his judicial supremacy. By this means not only was an imperial court of appeal, such as Cæsar had attempted to introduce, established throughout the empire as the supreme tribunal, which gradually drew before itself all important suits after judgment had been pronounced in the prætorian or senatorial courts, but a far-reaching prerogative of mercy became a recognised attribute of the imperator’s power, a prerogative that could pour forth its cornucopia upon free and unfree, citizen and provincial. “Every temple, every shrine of the emperor in Italy or the provinces was a sheltering asylum, his statues and portraits became wonder-working images of deliverance, which paralysed the arm of justice or revenge.”