The Constitution of the Roman Empire was an unwritten set of guidelines and principles passed down mainly through precedent. After the fall of the Roman Republic, the constitutional balance of power shifted from the Roman Senate to the Roman Emperor. Beginning with the first emperor, Augustus, the emperor and the senate were technically two co-equal branches of government. In practice, however the actual authority of the imperial senate was negligible, as the emperor held the true power of the state. During the reign of the second Roman Emperor, Tiberius, the powers that had been held by the Roman assemblies were transferred to the senate. The neutering of the assemblies had become inevitable, in part because the electors were often ignorant as to the merits of the important questions that were laid before them.
The powers of an emperor existed by virtue of his legal standing. The two most significant components to an emperor's power were the "tribunician powers" and the "proconsular powers". The tribunician powers gave the emperor authority over Rome's civil government, while the proconsular powers gave him authority over the Roman army. While these distinctions were clearly defined during the early empire, eventually they were lost, and the emperor's powers became less constitutional and more monarchical. The traditional magistracies that survived the fall of the republic were the Consulship, Praetorship, Plebeian Tribunate, Aedileship, Quaestorship, and Military Tribunate. Any individual of the senatorial class could run for one of these offices. If an individual was not of the senatorial class, he could run for one of these offices if he was allowed to run by the emperor, or otherwise, he could be appointed to one of these offices by the emperor. Mark Antony abolished the offices of Roman Dictator and Master of the Horse during his Consulship in 44 BC, and shortly thereafter the offices of Interrex and Roman Censor were also abolished.
Read more about Constitution Of The Roman Empire: Constitutional History, Senate, Legislative Assemblies, Executive Magistrates, The End of The Principate
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“The Roman Empire stood appalled:
It dropped the reins of peace and war
When that fierce virgin and her Star
Out of the fabulous darkness called.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“The very hope of experimental philosophy, its expectation of constructing the sciences into a true philosophy of nature, is based on induction, or, if you please, the a priori presumption, that physical causation is universal; that the constitution of nature is written in its actual manifestations, and needs only to be deciphered by experimental and inductive research; that it is not a latent invisible writing, to be brought out by the magic of mental anticipation or metaphysical mediation.”
—Chauncey Wright (1830–1875)
“The whole constitution of property on its present tenures, is injurious, and its influence on persons deteriorating and degrading.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Ce corps qui s’appelait et qui s’appelle encore le saint empire romain n’était en aucune manière ni saint, ni romain, ni empire. This agglomeration which called itself and still calls itself the Holy Roman Empire was in no way holy, nor Roman, nor an empire.”
—Voltaire [François Marie Arouet] (1694–1778)
“I do not believe I am exaggerating in affirming that the empire of Russia is a country whose inhabitants are the most miserable on earth, because they suffer at one and the same time the evils of barbarism and of civilization.”
—Marquis De Custine (1790–1857)