supreme authority in things sacred from the civil power--while the
already-mentioned "king for sacrifice" 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, so decidedly
contrasting with the character which otherwise marked the priesthood
in Rome, form one of the most significant and important peculiarities
of this state-revolution, the aim of which was to impose limits on the
powers of the magistrates mainly in the interest of the aristocracy.

We have already mentioned that the outward state of the consul was
far inferior to that of the regal office hedged round as it was
with 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 perhaps 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.

The Dictator

These limitations, however, of the plenary power and of the insignia
of the magistracy applied in the main only to the ordinary presidency
of the community. In extraordinary cases, alongside of, and in a
certain sense instead of, the two presidents chosen by the community
there emerged a single one, the master of the army (-magister populi-)
usually designated as the -dictator-. In the choice of dictator the
community exercised no influence at all, but it proceeded solely
from the free resolve of one of the consuls for the time being, whose