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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 36
It is not improbable that he had the intention of combining in some measure the two systems, and of arranging the succession, similarly to the course followed by Cromwell and by Napoleon, in such a way that the ruler should be succeeded in rule by his son, but, if he had no son, or the son should not seem fitted for the succession, the ruler should of his free choice nominate his successor in the form of adoption.
In point of state law the new office of Imperator was based on the position which the consuls or proconsuls occupied outside of the -pomerium-, so that primarily the military command, but, along with this, the supreme judicial and consequently also the administrative power, were included in it.(15)
15. The widely-spread opinion, which sees in the imperial office of Imperator nothing but the dignity of general of the empire tenable for life, is not warranted either by the signification of the word or by the view taken by the old authorities. -Imperium- is the power of command, -Imperator- is the possessor of that power; in these words as in the corresponding Greek terms --kratos--, --autokrator-- so little is there implied a specific military reference, that it is on the contrary the very characteristic of the Roman official power, where it appears purely and completely, to embrace in it war and process--that is, the military and the civil power of command--as one inseparable whole.
Dio says quite correctly (liii. 17; comp, xliii. 44; lii. 41) that the name Imperator was assumed by the emperors "to indicate their full power instead of the title of king and dictator (--pros deilosin teis autotelous sphon exousias, anti teis basileos tou te diktatoros epikleiseos--); for these other older titles disappeared in name, but in reality the title of Imperator gives the same prerogatives (--to de dei ergon auton tei tou autokratoros proseigoria bebaiountai--), for instance the right of levying soldiers, imposing taxes, declaring war and concluding peace, exercising the supreme authority over burgess and non-burgess in and out of the city and punishing any one at any place capitally or otherwise, and in general of assuming the prerogatives connected in the earliest times with the supreme imperium." It could not well be said in plainer terms, that Imperator is nothing at all but a synonym for rex, just as imperare coincides with regere.
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Reference address : https://www.ellopos.net/elpenor/rome/5-11-old-republic-new-monarchy.asp?pg=36
