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Please note that Mommsen uses the AUC chronology (Ab Urbe Condita), i.e. from the founding of the City of Rome. You can use this reference table to have the B.C. dates
From: The History of Rome, by Theodor Mommsen
Translated with the sanction of the author by William Purdie Dickson
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Page 35
The new wine might not be put into old bottles; here is a new name for the new thing, and that name most pregnantly sums up what the democratic party had already expressed in the Gabinian law, only with less precision, as the function of its chief--the concentration and perpetuation of official power (-imperium-) in the hands of a popular chief independent of the senate. We find on Caesar's coins, especially those of the last period, alongside of the dictatorship the title of Imperator prevailing, and in Caesar's law as to political crimes the monarch seems to have been designated by this name. Accordingly the following times, though not immediately, connected the monarchy with the name of Imperator. To lend to this new office at once a democratic and religious sanction, Caesar probably intended to associate with it once for all on the one hand the tribunician power, on the other the supreme pontificate.
That the new organization was not meant to be restricted merely to the lifetime of its founder, is beyond doubt; but he did not succeed in settling the especially difficult question of the succession, and it must remain an undecided point whether he had it in view to institute some sort of form for the election of a successor, such as had subsisted in the case of the original kingly office, or whether he wished to introduce for the supreme office not merely the tenure for life but also the hereditary character, as his adopted son subsequently maintained.(14)
14. That in Caesar's lifetime the -imperium- as well as the supreme pontificate was rendered by a formal legislative act hereditary for his agnate descendants--of his own body or through the medium of adoption--was asserted by Caesar the Younger as his legal title to rule. As our traditional accounts stand, the existence of such a law or resolution of the senate must be decidedly called in question; but doubtless it remains possible that Caesar intended the issue of such a decree. (Comp, Staatsrecht, ii. 3 787, 1106.)
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Reference address : https://ellopos.net/elpenor/rome/5-11-old-republic-new-monarchy.asp?pg=35
