"He gathered into his own hands the whole honors and privileges, which the state had for centuries distributed among its great magistrates and representatives. He became perpetual Princeps Senatus, or leader of the legislative house. He became perpetual Pontifex Maximus, or chief of the national religion. He became perpetual Tribune, or guardian of the people, with his person thereby made sacred and inviolable. He became perpetual Consul, or supreme magistrate over the whole Roman world, with the control of its revenues, the disposal of its armies, and the execution of its laws. And lastly he became perpetual Imperator, or military chief, to whom every legionary throughout the world took the _sacramentum_, and whose sword swept the globe from Gibraltar to the Indus and the Baltic. And yet in all he was a simple citizen--a mere magistrate of the Republic. Only in this one man was now visibly accumulated and concentrated all that for centuries had broadened and expanded under the magnificent abstraction of Rome." The boundless authority of Rome was thus centered in the hands of a single person. Consuls, tribunes, prætors, proconsuls, and procurators were merely the agents and representatives of this person. Tiberius Cæsar, the political master of Pontius Pilate, was the successor of Augustus and the first inheritor of his constitution. Under this constitution, Augustus had divided the provinces into two classes. The centrally located and peacefully disposed were governed by proconsuls appointed by the senate. The more distant and turbulent were subjected by Augustus to his personal control, and were governed by procurators who acted as his deputies or personal representatives. Judea came in his second class, and the real governor of his province was the emperor himself. Tiberius Cæsar was thus the real procurator of Judea at the time of the crucifixion and Pilate was his political substitute who did his bidding and obeyed his will. Whatever Tiberius might have done, Pilate might have done. We are thus enabled to judge the extent of Pilate's powers; powers clothed with _imperium_ and revocable only by the great procurator at Rome.