Page:The history of Rome. Translated with the author's sanction and additions.djvu/282

262 to the performance of these acts, which could only be properly performed by a single individual, the college probably about this period first nominated a president, the Pontifex maximus. This separation of the supreme authority in things sacred from the civil power (while the already-mentioned rex sacrorum had neither the civil nor the sacred powers of the king, but simply the title, conferred upon him), and the semi-magisterial position of the new high priest prominently contrasting with the character which otherwise marked the priesthood in Rome, form one of the most significant and important peculiarities of a state revolution, the aim of which was to impose limits on the powers of the magistrates mainly in the interest of the aristocracy. With this circumstance was probably connected the fact that the opinions of the men of sacred lore as to auspices, prodigies, and the like occurrences, assumed more and more a character legally binding, so that, if the consul held an assembly of the people against the opinion of the augurs or consecrated a temple in opposition to that of the poritifices, such an act on his part was now regarded as not merely impious, but null and void.

We have already mentioned that the outward state of the consul was far inferior to that of the regal office hedged round with so much reverence and terror, that the regal name and the priestly consecration were withheld from him, and that the axe was taken away from his attendants. We have to add that, instead of the purple robe which the king had worn, the consul was distinguished from the ordinary burgess simply by the purple border of his toga, and that, while the king in all probability regularly appeared in public in his chariot, the consul was bound to accommodate himself to the general rule, and like every other burgess to go within the city on foot.

These limitations, however, of the plenary power and of the insignia of the magistrate in reality applied only to the ordinary presidency of the community. In extraordinary cases, as we have already said, the two presidents chosen by the community were superseded by a single one, the master of the people (magister populi) or commander (dictator). In the election of dictator the community bore no part at all; his nomination proceeded solely from one of the consuls for the time being. There lay no appeal from his sentences any more than from those of the king, unless he chose to allow