Probably it was just this consideration thatinduced Caesar not to declare the land formally a province, but to leave the harmless Lagids there; and certainly for this reason the legions stationed in Egypt were not entrusted to a man belonging to the senate or, in other words, to the former government, but this command was, just like the posts of tax-receivers, treated as a menial office.( 25) In general however the consideration had weight with Caesar, that the soldiers of Rome should not, like those of Oriental kings, be commanded by lackeys.

It remained the rule to entrust the more important governorships to those who had been consuls, the less important to those who had been praetors; and once more, instead of the five years' interval prescribed by the law of 702,( 26) the commencement of the governorship probably was in the ancient fashion annexed directly to the close of the official functions in the city.

On the other hand the distribution of the provinces among the qualified candidates, which had hitherto been arranged sometimes by decree of the people or senate, sometimes by concert among the magistrates or by lot, passed over to the monarch.

And, as the consuls were frequently induced to abdicate before the end of the year and to make room for after- elected consuls (-consules suffecti-); as, moreover, the number of praetors annually nominated was raised from eight to sixteen, and the nomination of half of them was entrusted to the Imperator in the same way as that of the half of the quaestors; and, lastly, as there was reserved to the Imperator the right of nominating, if not titular consuls, at any rate titular praetors and titular quaestors: Caesar secured a sufficient number of candidates acceptable to him for filling up the governorships.

Their recall remained of course left to the discretion of the regent as well as their nomination; as a rule it was assumed that the consular governor should not remain more than two years, nor the praetorian more than one year, in the province.
In the Administration of the Capital Lastly, so far as concerns the administration of the city which was his capital and residence, the Imperator evidently intended for a time to entrust this also to magistrates similarly nominated by him.
He revived the old city-lieutenancy of the regal period;( 27) on different occasions he committed during his absence the administration of the capital to one or more such lieutenants nominated by him without consulting the people and for an indefinite period, who united in themselves the functions of all the administrative magistrates and possessed even the right of coining money with their own name, although of course not with their own effigy In 707 and in the first nine months of 709 there were, moreover, neither praetors nor curule aediles nor quaestors; the consuls too were nominated in the former year only towards its close, and in the latter Caesar was even consul without a colleague.
This looks altogether like an attempt to revive completely the old regal authority within the city of Rome, as far as the limits enjoined by the democratic past of the new monarch; in other words, of magistrates additional to the king himself, to allow only the prefect of the city during the king's absence and the tribunes and plebeian aediles appointed for protecting popular freedom to continue in existence, and to abolish the consulship, the censorship, the praetorship, the curule aedileship and the quaestorship.( 28) But Caesar subsequently departed from this; he neither accepted the royal title himself, nor did he cancel those venerable names interwoven with the glorious history of the republic.