liberty was still cherished in the hearts of Romans, and the title of king was detestable. The hardy virtues and democratic simplicity of the early republic were still remembered; and patriots like Cicero had dreamed of the restoration of the ancient order of things. But Roman conquest was complete, Roman manners were corrupt, and Roman patriotism was paralyzed. The hand of a dictator guided by a single intelligence was the natural result of the progressive degradation of the Roman state. The logical and inevitable outcome of the death of Cæsar and the dissolution of the Triumvirate was the régime of Augustus, a monarchy veiled under republican forms. Recognizing Roman horror of absolutism, Roman love of liberty, and Roman detestation of kingly power, Augustus, while in fact an emperor, claimed to be only a plain Roman citizen intrusted with general powers of government. He affected to despise public honors, disclaimed every idea of personal superiority, and exhibited extreme simplicity of manners in public and private life. This was the strategy of a successful politician who sought to conceal offensive reality under the cloak of a pleasant deception. Great Cæsar fallen at the foot of Pompey's statue was a solemn reminder to Augustus that the dagger of the assassin was still ready to defend the memory of freedom, after liberty was, in reality, dead. And the refusal by the greatest of the Romans, at the feast of the Lupercal, to accept a kingly crown when it was thrice offered him by Antony, was a model of discreet behavior and political caution for the first and most illustrious of the emperors. In short, Augustus dared not destroy the laws or assault the constitution of the state. But he accomplished his object, nevertheless. "He gathered into his own hands the whole honors and privileges, which the state had for centuries distributed among its great magistrates and representatives. He became perpetual Princeps Senatus, or leader of the legislative house. He became perpetual Pontifex Maximus, or chief of the national religion. He became perpetual Tribune, or guardian of the people, with his person thereby made sacred and inviolable. He became perpetual Consul, or supreme magistrate over the whole Roman world, with the control of its revenues, the disposal of its armies, and the execution of its laws. And lastly he became perpetual Imperator, or military chief, to whom every legionary throughout the world took the sacramentum, and whose sword swept the globe from Gibraltar to the Indus and the Baltic. And yet in all he was a simple citizen—a mere magistrate of the Republic. Only in this one man was now visibly accumulated and concentrated all that for centuries had broadened and expanded under the magnificent abstraction of Rome." The boundless authority of Rome was thus centered in the hands of a single person. Consuls, tribunes, prætors, proconsuls, and procurators were merely the agents and representatives of this person.

Tiberius Cæsar, the political master of Pontius Pilate, was the successor of Augustus and the first inheritor of his constitution. Under this constitution, Augustus had divided the provinces into two classes. The centrally located and peacefully disposed were governed by proconsuls appointed by the senate. The more distant and turbulent were subjected by Augustus to his personal control, and were governed by procurators who acted as his deputies or personal representatives. Judea came in his second class, and the real governor of his province was the emperor himself. Tiberius Cæsar was thus the real procurator of Judea at the time of the crucifixion and Pilate was his political substitute who did his bidding and obeyed his will. Whatever Tiberius might have done, Pilate might have done. We are thus enabled to judge the extent of Pilate's powers; powers clothed with imperium and revocable only by the great procurator at Rome.

In the government of the purely subject states of a province, the procurator exercised the unlimited jurisdiction of the military imperium. No law abridged the single and sovereign exercise of his will. Custom, however, having in fact the force of law, prescribed that he should summon to his aid a council of advisers. This advisory body was composed of two elements: (1) Roman citizens resident in this particular locality where the governor was holding court; and (2) members of his personal staff known as the Prætorian Cohort. The governor, in his conduct of judicial proceedings, might solicit the opinions of the members of his council. He might require them to vote upon the question at issue; and might, if he pleased, abide by the decision of the majority. But no rule of law required him to do it; it was merely a concession and a courtesy; it was not a legal duty.

Again, when it is said that the procurator exercised the "unlimited jurisdiction of the military imperium," we must interpret this, paradoxical though it may seem, in a restricted sense; that is, we must recognize the existence of exceptions to the rule. It is unreasonable to suppose that Rome, the mother of laws, ever contemplated the rule of despotism and caprice in the administration of justice in any part of the empire. It is true that the effect of the imperium, "as applied to provincial governorship, was to make each imperator a king in his own domain"; but kings themselves have nearly always been subject to restrictions; and the authorities are agreed that the imperium of the Roman procurator of the time of Christ was hemmed in by many limitations. A few of these may be named.

In the first place, the rights guaranteed to subject states within the provincial area by the law of the province (lex provinciæ) were the first limitations upon his power.

Again, it is a well-known fact that Roman citizens could appeal from the decision of the governor, in certain cases, to the emperor at Rome. Paul exercised this right, because he was a Roman citizen.[8] Jesus could not appeal from the judgment of Pilate, because He was not a Roman citizen.

Again, fear of an aroused and indignant public sentiment which might result in his removal by the emperor, exercised a salutary restraint upon the conduct, if it did not abridge the powers of the governor.

These various considerations bring us now to the second question asked in the beginning of this chapter: What forms of criminal procedure, if any, were employed by Pilate in conducting the Roman trial of Jesus?

It is historically true that Pilate exercised, as procurator of Judea, the unlimited jurisdiction of the military imperium; and that this imperium made him virtually an "imperator, a king in his own domain." It is also historically true that the inhabitants of the purely subject states of a province, who were not themselves Roman citizens, when accused of crime, stood before a Roman governor with no protection except the plea of justice against the summary exercise of absolute power. In other words, in the employment of the unlimited jurisdiction of the military imperium, a Roman governor, in the exercise of his discretion, might, in the case of non-Roman citizens of a subject state, throw all rules and forms of law to the wind, and decide the matter arbitrarily and despotically. It may be that Pilate did this in this case. But the best writers are agreed that this was not the policy of the Roman governors in the administration of justice in the provinces at the time of Christ. The lawgiving genius of Rome had then reached maturity and approximate perfection in the organization of its