Page:Roman public life (IA romanpubliclife00greeiala).pdf/390

 This distinction was by no means reserved for persons legally qualified for the magistracy; it might be granted to knights high up in the imperial service, such as the praefects of the guard and of the watch, or to provincial procurators. Claudius granted it to imperial freedmen, and we find that even senators excluded from the curia were sometimes left the ornamenta of their rank.

The permission to use the ornaments of a triumph (ornamenta triumphalia) was the result of the limitation of the right to the actual triumph. The application of the principle that this right was inconsistent with a subordinate imperium, had, when applied to the Principate, the effect of legally confining triumphs to the Princeps alone; for the governors of his own provinces were merely his delegates, while those of senatorial provinces, though nominally in independent authority, had as a rule no armies at their command. The triumphal insignia might, however, be granted by the Senate on the proposal of the Princeps.

The election to the magistracies will be more fitly treated in connexion with the comitia and the Senate. The obligations to which their holders bound themselves on their appointment were those of the Republic, with the exception that the ''jus jurandum in leges was amplified by the inclusion of the valid acta'' of the Princeps—those, that is, of a living or a previous emperor whose binding character had been recognised by oath. *