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Form of government of the Roman empire / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Constitution of the Roman Empire
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The constitution of the Roman Empire was that of a military dictatorship. It also describes the theoretical political underpinnings and governmentality of the Roman Empire. It developed, initially, from the constitution of the Roman Republic and used continuities with the republic to legitimise itself, but evolved through the imperial period to become more clearly an autocratic government.
In the Principate, the emperor was putatively the first among equals, ruling with the consent of the senate and people of Rome, secured by law through the powers – an imperium proconsular maius and tribunicia potestas – granted to him by the senate. His actual power, however, was largely reliant on three elements: the loyalty of the army, the material wealth of the imperial estates, and the ability to grant boons to collaborators.
By the Severan era and the crisis of the third century, the constitutional niceties that Augustus would have needed to honour had fallen away: the so-called Dominate replaced it and revealed a monarchy which largely legitimised itself through appropriation of divine imagery.