*Special powers and honors.* At the time of the conferment of the tribunician authority, a series of senatorial decrees added or gave greater precision to the powers of Augustus. He received the right to introduce the first topic for consideration at each meeting of the Senate, his military _imperium_ was made valid within the _pomerium_, but, in view of his resignation of the consulship, became proconsular in the provinces. It was probably in 23 B. C. also that Augustus received the unrestricted right of making war or peace, upon the occasion of the coming of an embassy from the king of the Parthians. In the next year he was granted the right to call meetings of the Senate. Three years later he was accorded the consular insignia, with twelve lictors, and the privilege of taking his seat on a curule chair between the consuls in office. These marks of honor gave him upon official occasions the precedence among the magistrates which his authority warranted. On the other hand, in 22 B. C. Augustus refused the dictatorship or the perpetual consulship, which were conferred upon him at the insistence of the city populace; and in the same spirit he declined to accept a general censorship of laws and morals (_cura legum et morum_) which was proffered to him in 19 B. C. *The principate.* It was by the gradual acquisition of the above powers that the position which Augustus was to hold in the state was finally determined. This position may be defined as that of a magistrate, whose province was a combination of various powers conferred upon him by the Senate and the Roman people, and who differed from the other magistrates of the state in the immensely wider scope of his functions and the greater length of his official term. But these various powers were separately conferred upon him and for each he could urge constitutional precedents. It was in this spirit of deference to constitutional traditions that Augustus did not create for himself one new office which would have given him the same authority nor accept any position that would have clothed him with autocratic power. Therefore, as he held no definite office, Augustus had no definite official title. But the reception of such wide powers caused him to surpass all other Romans in dignity; hence he came to be designated as the _princeps_, i. e. the first of the Roman citizens (_princeps civium Romanorum_). From this arose the term principate to designate the tenure of office of the princeps; a term which we now apply also to the system of government that Augustus established for the Roman Empire. The crowning honor of his career was received by Augustus in 2 A. D., when the senate, upon the motion of one who had fought under Brutus at Philippi, conferred upon him the title of “Father of His Country” (_pater patriae_), thus marking the reconciliation between the bulk of the old aristocracy and the new régime.