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 obtained something like legal recognition, that a senator should be tried by his peers. But the character of the offence was the chief determinant of the Senate's jurisdiction. Any offence of a directly political character, even in the early Principate a breach of a treaty by a foreign prince, tended to come before it. It was the usual court for extortion or other misuse of powers by provincial governors; it judged offences against the majesty of the state; and when the majesty of the Princeps had become identified with that of the state, it might be employed as a convenient engine of judicial tyranny. Its utility was assisted by the unlimited and arbitrary character of its jurisdiction. It interpreted while it judged; it might extend the incidence of a law and frame new penalties; it might even punish in cases where no penalty was fixed by law; and the principle, forbidden in the quaestiones, of uniting several crimes in the same charge, was here admitted. This jurisdiction was technically,, and a senator, like Calpurnius Piso in 20, might be brought before the Emperor (Tac. Ann. iii. 10). But Septimius Severus permitted a senatus consultum to be passed that the Emperor should not be allowed to put a senator to death without the will of the Senate (Dio Cass. lxxiv. 2; Vita Severi 7). The principle had been stated earlier by Hadrian (Vita Hadriani 7 "juravit se nunquam senatorem nisi ex senatus sententia puniturum").]