Tacitus wrote that Augustus conferred judicial power to the equestrian governors of the province of Egypt and that later a large number of judicial cases which had been presided over by the praetors both in Rome and in the other provinces were similarly transferred. The emperor Claudius (reigned 41–54) remarked that the judgement of his procurators ought to have the same validity as the rulings of the emperor and handed the judicial power over to them in full. In this manner the emperor gained direct control over judicial matters via their procuratorial agents in Rome. The role of the praetors in Rome was reduced to organising public games. With regard to the provinces, Tacitus did not specify whether this applied to both imperial and senatorial provinces. He did not use the term propraetor either. Given that in the senatorial provinces the role of the procurators was restricted to supervising the imperial estates, it is unlikely that they took on judicial roles there. The mentioned correspondence between Pliny the Younger and Trajan, who reigned later (98–117), indicates that the governor of Bithynia et Pontus, a senatorial province, did preside over judicial cases. In 359 AD Constantius II (the son of Constantine the Great) tried to revive the old judicial role of the praetors in Constantinople by assigning cases regarding guardianship, the emancipation of sons from the legal authority of their fathers (patria potestas) and the manumission of slaves to them.