and divine; and the Emperors came to regard themselves rather as vicegerents of God than as rulers set up by their people. Justinian, in one of his laws, speaks of the Emperor as sent down by God to be a living law.32 In the ninth century Basil I tells his son, “You received the Empire from God.”33
Under the Monarchy, the Emperor appropriated the full right of direct legislation, which had not belonged to him under the Principate.34 The Princeps possessed the right of initiating laws to be passed by the comitia of the people, but from the time of Tiberius legislation was seldom effected in this way, and after the first century it was exclusively in the hands of the Senate. The Emperor, communicating his instructions in the form of an oratio to the Senate, could have his wishes embodied in senatorial decrees (senatus consulta). But indirectly he possessed virtual powers of legislation by means of edicts and constitutions, which, though technically they were not laws, were for practical purposes equivalent.35 The edict, unlike a law, did not necessarily contain a command; it was properly a public communication made by a magistrate to the people. But the legislative activity of the early Emperors was chiefly exercised in the form of constitutions, a term which in the stricter sense applied to decisions which were only brought to the notice of the persons concerned.36 This term included the Imperial correspondence and especially the mandates, or instructions addressed to officials. These “acts” had full validity, and the magistrates every year swore to observe them.37 But when an act required a dispensation from an existing law, the Imperial constitution was valid only during the lifetime of its author.
The power of dispensing from a law properly belonged to the Senate, and the earlier Emperors sought from the Senate a dispensation when necessary. Domitian began to encroach on this privilege. But the principle remained that the Princeps, who was constitutionally a magistrate, was bound by the laws; and when lawyers of the third century speak of the Princeps as legibus solutus, they refer to laws from which Augustus had formally obtained dispensation by the Senate.38
Under the Monarchy the Emperors assumed full powers of legislation, and their laws took the form occasionally of an oratio to the Senate, but almost always of an edict. The term edict covered all the decisions which were formerly called constitutions, mandates, or rescripts, provided they had a general application.39 And the Emperor not only legislated; he was the sole legislator, and reserved to himself the sole right of interpreting the laws.40 He possessed the dispensing power. But he always considered himself bound by the laws. An edict of A.D. 429 expresses the spirit of reverence for law, as something superior to the throne itself, which always animated the Roman monarchs. “To acknowledge himself bound by the laws (alligatum legibus) is, for the sovran, an utterance befitting the majesty of a ruler. For the truth is that our authority depends on the authority of law. To submit our sovranty to the laws is verily a greater thing than Imperial power.”41 Deep respect for the rules of law, and their systematic observance characterised the Roman autocracy down to the fall of the Empire in the fifteenth century, and was one of the conditions of its long duration. It was never an arbitrary despotism, and the masses looked up to the Emperor as the guardian of the laws which protected against the oppression of nobles and officials.42
The laws, then, were a limitation on the power of the autocrat; and soon another means of limiting his power was discovered. In the fifth century, the duty of crowning a new Emperor at Constantinople was, as we saw, assigned to the Patriarch. In A.D. 491 the Patriarch refused to crown Anastasius unless he signed a written oath that he would introduce no novelty into the Church. This precedent was at first followed perhaps only in cases where a new Emperor was suspected of heretical tendencies, but by the tenth century43 an oath of this kind seems to have been a regular preliminary to coronation. The fact that such capitulations could be and were imposed at the time of elevation shows that the autocracy was limited.
The essence of an autocracy is that no co-ordinate body exists which is able constitutionally to act as a check upon the monarch’s will. The authority of the Senate or the Imperial Council might constitute a strong practical check upon an Emperor’s acts, but if he chose to disregard their views, he could not be accused of acting unconstitutionally. The ultimate check on any autocracy is the force of public opinion. There is always a point beyond which the most arbitrary despot cannot go in defying it. In the case of a Roman Emperor, public opinion could exert this control constitutionally, by an extreme measure. The Emperor could be deposed. The right of deposition corresponded to the right of election. The deposition was accomplished not by any formal process, but by the proclamation of a new Emperor. If any one so proclaimed obtained sufficient support from the army, Senate, and people, the old Emperor was compelled to vacate the throne by force majeure; while the new Emperor was regarded as the legitimate monarch from the day on which he was proclaimed; the proclamation was taken as the legal expression of the general will. If he had not a sufficiently powerful following to render the proclamation effective and was suppressed, he was treated as a rebel; but during the struggle and before the catastrophe, the fact that the Senate or a portion of the army had proclaimed him gave him a presumptive constitutional status which the event might either confirm or annul. The method of deposition was, in fact, revolution; and we are accustomed to regard revolution as something essentially unconstitutional, an appeal from law to force; but under the Imperial system it was not unconstitutional; the government was, as has been said,44 “an autocracy tempered by the legal right of revolution.”45
The transformation of the Principate into the Autocracy was accomplished by changes in the titular style of the Emperors, in their dress, in the etiquette of the court, which showed how entirely the old tradition of the republic had been forgotten.
The oriental conception of divine royalty is now formally expressed in the diadem; and it affects all that appertains to the Emperor. His person is divine; all that belongs to him is “sacred.” Those who come into his presence perform the act of adoration;46 they kneel down and kiss the purple. It had long been the habit to address the Imperator as dominus, “lord’; in the fourth century the sovrans began to use it of themselves and Dominus Noster appears on their coins.47
Since the first century we can trace the use of Basileus to designate the Princeps, and Basileia to describe the Imperial power, in the eastern provinces of the Empire.48 Dion Chrysostom wrote a discourse on the Basileia; Fronto calls Marcus Aurelius “the great Basileus, ruler of land and sea.” Basileus was the equivalent of Rex, a title odious to Roman ears; but by the fourth century the Greek name had long ceased to wound any susceptibilities; it became the term regularly employed by Greek writers and in Greek inscriptions, and the Emperors began to employ it themselves. Usage soon went further. Basileus was reserved for the Emperor and the Persian king,49 and rex was employed to designate other barbarian royalties.
The Imperial Chancery was conservative, and it was not till the seventh century that the Emperor designated himself as Basileus in his constitutions and rescripts.50 The official Greek equivalent of Imperator was Autokrator, which was similarly used as a praenomen.51 The mint of Constantinople continued to inscribe the Imperial coins with Latin legends till the eighth century.52 The earliest coins with Greek inscriptions have Basileus and Despotes.
The general use of Despotes is one of the most characteristic oriental features of the new Empire. It denoted the relation of a master to his slaves, and it was regularly used in addressing the Emperor from the time of Constantine to the fall of the Empire. Justinian expected this form of address. The subject spoke of himself as “your slave.” But this orientalism was a superficial etiquette; the autocrat seldom forgot that his subjects were freemen, that if he was a dominus, he was a dominus liberorum.
A few words may be said here about the unity of the Empire. From the reign of Diocletian to the last quarter of the fifth century, the Empire is
