Although the sovereignty of the Roman people was limitless, it was not, as a matter of fact, capriciously exercised. During the republic the theory of provincial organization had been somewhat of the following nature. Within any given territory contained in the limits of the province, there existed a certain number of individual civic units, which might take the form of city-states, territorial states of varying extent, leagues of communities, kingdoms, tetrarchies, or hieratic religious communes. Any or all of these might be gathered within a single province, a word which is essentially abstract, and denoted a magisterial function rather than a territory. Into the midst of these _civitates_, this jumble of conflicting civic interests, there was sent a representative of the sovereign Roman people, invested with _imperium_, or supreme power, a term in which for Romans was the essence of the higher magistracies. Since the provincial magistrate had no colleagues, and since the tribunician check upon him was inoperative beyond the first milestone from the city, the wielder of the _imperium_ outside of Italy was at law and often in fact an absolute despot for the period of his office. However, in theory his functions were divided as follows: first, he was the only officer with jurisdiction over the Roman citizens temporarily resident in the province; secondly, he kept the peace; thirdly, he guaranteed the treaty rights of those communities that had treaties with Rome; and fourthly, he enforced and maintained the local customary law of all these communities. His judicial functions might include cases of all these kinds, so that in rapid succession the praetor or propraetor might be called upon to enforce the Twelve Tables and an ancient tribal usage of the Galatian Tectosages. The checks upon the holder of _imperium_ at Rome consisted in the peculiar Roman theory of magistracy, one of the corollaries of which was the right of any other equal or superior magistrate, or of any tribune, to veto any administrative act. A second check lay in the right of appeal in capital cases to the people. A third was found in the accountability for every illegal or oppressive action. This accountability however existed only after the magistracy had expired.