The power of the Emperor was based largely on his patronage. The Empire had been divided between the Emperor and the Senate; those provinces in which it was necessary to maintain a standing and mobilized army, in which swift action, continuous authority, and unity of purpose were imperatively necessary, were governed by Augustus as a private estate; their highest official was a “Procurator,” “a manager”; they comprised two districts in the west and north of Spain, the whole of Gaul, the Germanic frontier, the Balkan, Cilicia, Cœlesyria Phenicia, Cyprus and Egypt; the Senate retained the old settled provinces, Eastern Spain, Sardinia, Sicily, Northern Africa, the district round Cyrene, the west of Asia Minor, and Achaia. Thus the Emperor’s direct patronage was large, but even in the Senatorial Provinces he could intervene with superior powers, and the liberty which the Senate enjoyed of appointing their Governors, was nominal rather than real, for the Senate itself was increasingly composed of men who had owed their advancement to the Emperor, or expected further promotion from his hands. Senatorial Governorships tended to become merely honorary, and the wealthy or noble men, who held courts for limited periods in Sicily or Asia had little more actual responsibility or power than an English Viceroy in Ireland. Further, those parts of the Empire in which active work was to be done, or in which the administration really tested capacity, and was rewarded with further promotions, were precisely those parts in which the Emperor was exclusive patron.