ABSTRACT
The system of personal government, at its origin, was confronted with two contradictory problems, a political problem, rising from the military character inherent in the new order, and an administrative problem, due to the increasingly imperative needs imposed on the Roman State by the government of the world. Augustus had tried, by the organization of the Principate, to reconcile them and to solve them so far as their antagonism allowed a solution. For three centuries we shall see these two problems dominating the history of the Empire and gradually determining a constitutional development which only ends with the transformation of the Principate into a "Dominate ", a monarchy.
