Besides this, like every magistrate of former times, he could announce his will to the people by edicts and acts; and that these expressions received great consideration in view of his position and personal authority need scarcely be said, especially from the time when senators and officials were sworn on every New Year’s Day, not only to the laws themselves, but also to the _Acta Cæsaris_. It does not follow from this in any way that the princeps was superior to the laws; we must be careful not to import the views of the Greek of a later period into the judicial views of a regent like Augustus. Practically, of course, he found for the most part a means of carrying out his will in a given case: but the emperor never expressed such a doctrine as a fundamental principle of jurisprudence. On the contrary the emperor was not empowered even to suspend the prevailing law; under Augustus at any rate this remained the privilege of the senate. He recognised it, too, without opposition; for instance, in not publishing a gift to the people before he had requested and received permission from the senate. It was then a constitution full of contradictions, capable of interpretation only by means of compromise, this constitution substituted by the new ruler for the old republic, in order, beneath the garb of republican form, to make the exercise of monarchical power possible. Whether the student of systems called it a republic or a monarchy troubled him little, although until his death he himself clung to the fiction (and with a certain degree of truth) that he had restored the ancient and legitimate constitution of the state.[7][e] A most extraordinary man, then, was this foremost citizen of the new Roman state. But nothing about him is more extraordinary than the view regarding him that has been entertained by posterity. He has been almost uniformly regarded as not a man of the very first capacity,--as an opportunist rather than a creative leader. He held the world under the sway of his will for almost half a century, and was never so autocratic in his power, so securely fixed in his position, as at the hour of his death. He found Rome brick and left it marble; he found the Roman state an inchoate, wavering commonwealth, and left it a peerless empire. Yet the world has denied him the title of “great”; is disposed to deny him even the possession of genius.