changes involved no actual change in the position of af-
fairs, since while he held the consulship he had possessed all
these powers by reason of his office. All that was done
was to permit him to lay down that office and yet retain
some of its rights and privileges which seemed more or less
necessary to secure the smooth and convenient transaction
of the public business. No alarm seems to have been felt
at these extensions of his power, or rather at these reserva-
tions on his surrender of the consulship. The popular
clamor was in quite the opposite direction. The fear of
anarchy was still strong, and men were disposed to quarrel
with the princeps because he took so little, rather than be-
cause he asked too much. Confident that what he had
gained was ample for his purpose, he steadfastly refused
the still more sweeping powers that were offered him.

With the changes made in 22 b.c. the principate was
given its final form in point of legal theory. Throughout
the early empire this theory was destined to undergo scarcely
any alteration. It is true that the actual working of the
government was speedily and radically transformed, but for
this Augustus was by no means wholly responsible. The
pressure of circumstances and the necessities of the ad-
ministration were forces which no one man's will was able
to control; after a brief vision of a restored republic, the
drift toward monarchy overwhelmed the constitution.
Even in his lifetime the principate had been profoundly
modified in point of fact, and when Augustus died he had
come to be, not the first citizen of a republic, but an em-
peror in the modern sense. This transformation was
brought about by causes far deeper than his personal voli-
tion. In the main it was not his fault that the republic
that he had restored failed to maintain itself. Its vital
weaknesses were not those that any single man could remedy,
and it was far less the conscious choice of Augustus than the
irresistible pressure of imperial necessities that led to the
development of the principate in the direction of a despotism.

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