§ 1. The Dictator possessed greater government than the Consul; the Censor possessed honorary government and also some power over the Consul. The Dictator was also called Master of the People. The cause for naming a Dictator was a great necessity of the state. Cicero, book 3 of On the Laws: “But when a more serious war or discord among citizens arises, let one man possess for no more than six months, unless the Senate shall decree otherwise, the same law which the Consuls possess; and, the auspices being favorable, let him be named Master of the People. Whoever commands the cavalry shall possess equal law with the man who will be the administrator of justice.” Livy, book 2; Dionysius, book 5.
When the state was oppressed by the Latin War and domestic sedition, it seemed best that all Magistrates lay down their command. One man, chosen by the Senate and approved by the votes of the people, possessed for six months a power over all affairs greater than that of the Consuls. Livy also, book 4: “When these things were reported at Rome with a tumult greater even than the affair warranted, the Senate immediately ordered a Dictator to be named, which was the final counsel in perilous circumstances.” The Dictator afterward began to be hated by the Tribunes of the plebs and the people. The Tribunes complained that the thunderbolt of the Dictatorship was directed against them. For when the Tribunes harassed the Senate by intercessions and did not permit a levy to be held, and employed that weapon most fiercely against the nobles, the thunderbolt of the Dictatorship was opposed to them.
These things belonged to the Dictator: twenty-four axes were carried before him.
Sulla was the first to do this, as appears in the Livian Epitome, book 89. When the Decemvirs at first possessed the fasces one at a time, on the first day of the second year after entering the Magistracy, each came forth with twelve bundles, and one hundred and twenty Lictors filled the Forum. Livy, book 3.
The Dictator possessed command without appeal. For from the other Magistrates there was appeal to the Senate, Tribunes, and people. Once this had been established, confusion similar to that of Athens arose, which the Fathers always deservedly feared. Under that law no noble or good man would have been permitted to remain at Rome. The Dictator was named by a Consul; sometimes a particular man of proven virtue was demanded by name by the Senate.
He named the Master of Horse, who employed the right formerly possessed by the Tribune of the Celeres and afterward by the Praetorian Prefect. Cicero makes him equal to the man who administers justice—that is, the Praetor. Nevertheless, when a Master of Horse was first created from the plebs, the Dictator excused himself on the ground that that Magistracy was not greater than the consular Tribunate.
This was novel and neither of good example nor outcome: Minucius, Master of Horse, was made equal to Fabius the Dictator. If Fabius—a Commander who loved his fatherland and endured insults—had not administered the Dictatorship, the state might have received an incurable wound. For Minucius led the army into danger; Fabius liberated it.
It is established that the Dictatorship was excellently instituted, for a hundred times the state would have perished by sedition or war if it had lacked a Dictator. The government of the Consuls, as I have shown, was not sufficient for conducting affairs and restraining seditions. The Dictators down to Sulla were also most moderate. Lartius laid down the Dictatorship after the Consuls had been designated, with no citizen killed by him, driven into exile, or punished more severely. Thus Dionysius, book 5.
This is indeed astonishing: although so many raised tumults and sought tyranny through Consulships and tribunician power, no Dictator ever behaved uncivilly or cruelly, although the power of all had been gathered into one man; none even gave a beginning to tyranny. Sulla indeed exercised it tyrannically, but he was nevertheless more cruel before the Dictatorship. Before the Dictatorship he performed the deeds contained in the Livian Epitome, book 88: “After defeating Carbo’s army at Clusium, Faventia, and Fidentia, Sulla expelled him from Italy. He fought beside the city of Rome before the Colline Gate with the Samnites, who alone among the Italian peoples had not yet laid down their arms. Having recovered the state, he stained the most glorious victory with a cruelty such as never existed in any man. He slaughtered eight thousand men who had surrendered in the public villa; posted a list of proscription; filled the city and all Italy with slaughter; among these killings ordered all the unarmed Praenestines to be cut down; and killed Marius, a man of senatorial rank, after breaking his legs and arms, cutting off his ears, and gouging out his eyes. Gaius Marius, besieged at Praeneste by Lucretius Ofella, a man of Sulla’s party, when he sought to escape through a tunnel, was surrounded by the army and took his own life in the tunnel. When he perceived that he could not escape, he ran with drawn sword against Pontius Telesinus, his companion in flight; after killing him, he himself, wounded, obtained from a slave that the slave kill him.”
“But after being made Dictator,” says the epitome of book 89, “which no one had ever done, Sulla came forth with twenty-four bundles. He confirmed the condition of the state with new measures, diminished the power of the Tribunes of the plebs, and took away their entire right of proposing laws. He enlarged the colleges of Pontiffs and Augurs so that there were fifteen; replenished the Senate from the equestrian order; deprived the children of the proscribed of the right to seek honors; and sold their goods, from which he plundered very much. Three thousand five hundred million sesterces were collected.”
Even Caesar’s perpetual Dictatorship was not so merciless that it was not better for it to remain than for Rome to experience greater cruelty afterward. If Sulla’s conduct certainly has no cause or excuse, it had at least a pretext—to omit everything else. Livian Epitome 87: “Lucius Damasippus the Praetor, by the will of Gaius Marius the Consul, after convening the Senate, slaughtered all the nobility present in the city. From their number Quintus Mucius Scaevola the Pontifex Maximus was killed while fleeing in the vestibule of the temple of Vesta.”
What wonder is it that Sulla blazed against the authors of these deeds? Yet he laid down the Dictatorship, which Julius did not do; nor was it safe to submit to the laws after so many crimes had been committed.
§ 2. Julius therefore acted prudently: when he saw that he could no longer depart from the Magistracy without destruction, he retained the Dictatorship. Augustus rejected the name of Dictator but retained all its force. Suetonius, Augustus, chapter 52: “When the people offered him the Dictatorship with great force, he knelt, cast the toga from his shoulders, bared his breast, and begged to be excused.”
He rejected not only the Dictatorship but at first tribunician power also, although the power of the Tribunes was otherwise not removed by a Dictator. A perpetual Dictatorship together with tribunician power is, however, enough for a perfect Monarchy. A Dictator is δυσύπατος, furnished with the power of two Consuls, μονάρχης προσωρινός, ἀνεύθυνος, a temporary Monarch—but afterward a perpetual one—who can be corrected by no one and is bound to render an account to no one.
§ 3. A Dictator was frequently named for the sake of elections. Livy, books 8 and 25, and elsewhere. This was necessary lest through interregna the state should be deprived of the care of Magistrates. It must never be permitted that certain men possess so great a power that they can impede the creation of ordinary Magistrates. The Venetians therefore prudently enacted a law that no man should depart from a provincial Magistracy before his successor had been given. For when the Senate called the Great Council, whose function it is to assign Magistracies, suffered from discord, cities were without Rulers and justice was suspended to the detriment of the state.
§ 4. It has often been asked why the Dictatorship was salutary to the Roman people but the Decemvirate ruinous. For the power in both was equal and without appeal, but it was more concentrated, and therefore more efficacious, in the Dictator. Some think the reason to be that the power of the Decemvirs was greater, for there were no Consuls or Tribunes under the Decemvirs; but once a Dictator was instituted, the majesty and name of the Magistrates remained, even though they were compelled to obey the Dictator.
Yet if we consider that time, the matter, and the circumstances, it was not the Decemvirate but the character of Claudius that invaded tyranny. For at first, as Livy says in book 3, “The government of the whole Magistracy was in Appius’s hands through the favor of the plebs, and he had put on a character so new that he suddenly became a protector of the plebs and a hunter after every popular breeze, in place of a savage and cruel persecutor of the plebs. Every tenth day each administered justice to the people. On that day the man presiding over the law possessed twelve fasces; to the other nine colleagues appeared one orderly each. The singular concord among them, which among private men might sometimes be harmful, was the highest equity toward others. It will suffice to note as an argument of their moderation the example of one affair. Although they had been created without appeal, when the body of a murdered man was found buried in the house of Publius Sextius, a man of patrician family, and brought forth into the assembly, the matter being manifest and atrocious, Gaius Julius the Decemvir appointed a day for Sextius and appeared as his accuser before the people, although he was the lawful Judge of the affair. He withdrew from his own right so that what was taken from the force of the Magistracy might be added to the liberty of the people. While that ready law, as though from an incorrupt oracle, was administered equally by them to the highest and lowest, attention was given to composing laws.
“With the ten tables displayed amid the great expectation of men, they summoned the people to an assembly and ordered them to go and read the proposed laws, which they prayed might be good, favorable, and fortunate for the state, themselves, and their children. They said that, so far as could be provided by the abilities of ten men, they had made the laws equal for all, highest and lowest; but that the abilities and counsels of many possessed greater force. Let the people turn over each matter in their minds, then discuss it in conversation, and bring into the open whatever was excessive or deficient in each matter. The Roman people would possess laws which the consensus of all appeared not so much to have commanded after they were proposed as itself to have proposed. When the laws appeared sufficiently corrected according to men’s reports concerning each head, the laws of the Ten Tables were enacted in the Centuriate Assembly. Even now, amid this immense heap of laws piled one upon another, they are the source of all public and private law. A report was then spread that two tables were lacking, by the addition of which the whole body of Roman law could be completed. As the day of elections approached, this expectation created a desire to elect Decemvirs a second time. By now the plebs, besides hating the name of Consuls no less than that of Kings, did not even seek tribunician aid, since the Decemvirs yielded by appeal to one another.”
Behold the Decemvirs already popular; behold Demagogues tending toward tyranny by the customary path. Appius courted the popular breeze as though he studied the advantages of the plebs, with such artifice that he persuaded them without becoming suspect to the Fathers. For they thought that these measures tended to remove the protections of the plebs—that is, the Tribunes of the plebs. Next they administered justice every tenth day with the highest agreement and equity. One man possessed the fasces; the others, with a single orderly, displayed the Magistracy rather than administered it. They yielded to the people and flattered it more than the Tribunes did. They proposed the Ten Tables for the people’s judgment. All these things were thought to pertain to the safety of the fatherland; Claudius alone meditated something else: that, after being reelected Decemvir, he might possess more power than all.
Accordingly he now returned to his own character. Livy says: “After the elections for creating Decemvirs were proclaimed for the third market day, so great an ambition blazed forth that even the principal men of the city—through fear, I believe, lest possession of so great a government, if the place were left empty by them, should lie open to men not sufficiently worthy—went about soliciting men and humbly sought from the plebs, with which they had contended, the honor which they had opposed with all their strength. The hazard to dignity at that age and after those honors had been discharged goaded Appius Claudius. You would not know whether to number him among the Decemvirs or the candidates. He was sometimes nearer to seeking than to administering the Magistracy: he accused the Optimates, extolled each most insignificant and lowborn candidate, flew about the Forum in the midst of the former Tribunes Duellius and Icilius, and through them offered himself for sale to the plebs. At last even his colleagues, who until that time had been singularly devoted to him, fixed their eyes upon him, wondering what he intended. It appeared that nothing was sincere; certainly such affability amid so great a pride would not be gratuitous. To force himself excessively into the common order and associate familiarly with private men belonged not so much to one hastening to depart from the Magistracy as to one seeking a path to continue it.”
These were the actions of Claudius, who labored to possess colleagues who were attendants and subject to him. In this alone he erred: although he attempted so great a thing, he did not court the Fathers sufficiently instead of the plebs. To one considering these matters it is clear that not the Decemvirate but popularity, just as with Marius, Caesar, Saturninus, and the Gracchi, was the cause of his power: namely, so that he might be reelected, reject illustrious men, and choose unequal men. Appius did this as Decemvir; he could have done far more as Dictator or Consul. As Dictator he could without danger have added to himself as Master of Horse the fiercest and bravest of the Tribunes of the plebs, and arranged that the Dictatorship be continued until equality of liberty had been established by laws. Nor could a Consul have attempted less, since he possessed the highest power of transacting with the people and Fathers. In the Decemvirate the multitude of colleagues could resist; in a Dictatorship all things were in the hands of one man.
For since the name of Consuls was hated no less than that of Kings, and the oppressed plebs detested the assembly of Senators no otherwise than the offspring of the Tarquins, nothing was easier for a Consul or Dictator than to acquire the highest power and oppress the Senate. Since the government of the nobility over the citizens was proud, harsh, and avaricious, the hatred of the plebs was therefore immense, so that they declared that they would not remain in a city in which they participated in no good. All were continually in danger: whichever Consul or Dictator presented himself to the plebs as leader against the Fathers could obtain possession of affairs. The Senate could resist that power in no other way than either by killing the man or by deserving well of the people, so that it might venerate and love the Senate rather than one man as author of its advantages. Caesar as a young man possessed more power than the whole Senate, and afterward more than the people.
Machiavelli is therefore mistaken when, in book 1 of The Republic, he thinks that the magnitude of the power, its annual term, and the cessation of the other Magistracies were the causes of decemviral insolence. For the Dictator’s power was equal and greater because more united. Its term was sometimes annual: Camillus, Papirius, and Fabius Maximus possessed Dictatorships longer than six months; and Cicero wishes the law to provide: “Let one man possess it for no more than six months, unless the Senate shall decree otherwise.” The cause of the power was therefore favor toward Appius, by which he chose colleagues according to his judgment. For if even one had judged the affair otherwise or dissented, at the beginning of the Magistracy what finally happened after bitter conflicts would have occurred.
§ 5. The state has need of a Censor if this office cannot be discharged by Consuls or princes. Livy describes the beginning of the censorship at Rome in book 4: “This same year”—namely, 310—“was the beginning of the censorship, a thing which arose from a small origin but afterwards grew by so great an increase that the governance of Roman morals and discipline, the distinction of honor and dishonor among the Senate and the centuries of knights, the right over public and private places, and the revenues of the Roman people were under the sway of that Magistracy and subject to its nod and judgment. The origin and beginning of the thing was that the census could neither be deferred among a people not assessed for many years, nor did the Consuls, when the wars of so many peoples were threatening, have leisure to conduct that business. The Senate introduced the proposal that this laborious and by no means consular matter should be conducted by its own proper Magistracy, to which the service of scribes, the keeping and care of the records, and the determination of the formula for making the assessment should be subjected.”
The primary work of the Censors was the assessment, for they assessed the number and resources of the citizens. So that the labor of the Censors may appear, I shall give several census totals. Livy, in book 3 and thereafter, reports: 124,214; 132,319; 262,000; 273,000; 278,222; 221,224; 317,227;
251,222; the diminution caused by wars and the establishment of colonies, 270,020; 137,108; after many had been killed in the Second Punic War, 265,029; 143,704; at the end of the Second Punic War, 268,308; 269,015; 327,022; 324,000; 428,342; 323,000; 823,000.
From this it followed that, since the classes were established from the census, they divided the whole state into its members and parts. No one who has treated antiquity has failed to write about the six classes established by Tullius. That division was afterwards neglected. Tertullian, chapter 4 of On the Pallium: “Indeed, now, with the brow of censorial sternness dispersed, whatever passive labeling offers is doubtful: freedmen among the equestrian classes, persons browned by the sun among the liberal, surrendered enemies among the freeborn, rustics among city-dwellers, buffoons among men of the Forum, countrymen among soldiers. The corpse-bearer, the pimp, and the gladiatorial trainer are clothed along with you.”
He uses epischynium for the brow; he shows that he was clothed in the same garment. Afterwards Syrians and Phoenicians came into the Senate, nor could this appear unworthy when Felixes and Narcissuses were adored even by Consuls.
But because uprightness of morals was also required in the state, without it the orders could not be established by a census. An examination of morals was therefore conducted, and there survive many distinguished examples of a censorship which is sometimes lacking today among Christians. Livy, book 24: “The Censors, free from the care of contracting for public works because of the poverty of the treasury, turned their attention to the morals of human beings and to chastising the vices which, having arisen from the war, were generating themselves just as bodies sick with long-lasting diseases do. First they summoned those who were said to have wished to desert the state and depart from Italy after the battle of Cannae; foremost among them was Lucius Caecilius Metellus, who happened then to be Quaestor. Then, after these men and the others accused of the same offense had been ordered to plead their cause and had been unable to clear themselves, the Censors pronounced that they had spoken words and delivered a speech against the state so that a conspiracy might be formed for abandoning Italy. After them were summoned the excessively subtle interpreters of how to discharge an oath: having returned from the captives’ journey, they secretly went back into Hannibal’s camp, supposing that the oath by which they had sworn to return had been discharged. From these and the former men the horses were taken away if they possessed a public horse; all were removed from their tribe and made aerarii. Nor did the Censors’ care confine itself merely to regulating the Senate or equestrian order.”
It therefore pertained to the censorship to choose the Senate on the basis of property and morals. Once the census was completed, the names of the Senators were read out. Those who had been passed over were judged unworthy of that order, yet were not infamous; for sometimes they were marked on reputation alone and were afterwards promoted not only to a Magistracy but to the Consulship and even to the censorship. This practice doubtless introduced a great stain into the city, for a censorial mark which could be cast against the best men was no disgrace to the wicked.
They therefore removed unworthy persons from the Senate. Dio says that the censorship had very great power: ἐκβαλεῖν δὲ ἔξεστι συγκλητικὸν ἀπρεπῶς ζῶντα, ἐγγράψαι δὲ τὸν ἄριστον. “To remove from the Senate one living disgracefully, and to enroll the best man.” This remained in the age of the Emperors. Trebellius in Valerian: “You will judge who ought to remain in the Senate,” and so forth. He nevertheless excepts the Prefect of the City, ordinary Consuls, the King of the Sacred Rites, and the chief of the Vestal Virgins, provided that she has remained incorrupt. They took away a horse if the horse was lean, if it was insufficiently sleek, or if the knight was not of good morals. Ovid concerning Augustus:
But I remember that you approved my life and morals, When I passed before you with the horse you had given;
and:
And I had published poems when, as you marked offenses, I passed before you so often, an unquiet knight.
They removed men from their tribe. This was a great ignominy, by which they were deprived of the right of voting. This too was done because of morals: if men were bad, the Censors removed them not only from the Senate but also from their tribe; indeed, they sometimes marked entire tribes.
They made men aerarii. Aulus Gellius, book 4, chapter 12: “They make him an aerarius who has permitted his field to become foul, or has kept his vineyard in neglect.” To make a man an aerarius was more severe than to enter him on the tablets of the Caerites. For to make him an aerarius was to leave him no right in the city or tribe except that he should contribute bronze for his own person: he was deprived not only of the vote but also of military pay. The Caerites possessed citizenship and all its rights except the casting of a vote.
They added tribes. At first there were three—the Ramnes, Tities, and Luceres. Tullius wished there to be four. Others were then added before the Censors, and in years 366, 395, and 421 of the city. Great was that power by which they held in their hand even the offices and elections of other Magistrates, since by their censorship they could not only choose the Senate but also mark the Consuls and other Magistrates.
To be transferred from a rural tribe to an urban one was ignominious.
They cared for temples, roads, harbors, aqueducts, and all public buildings. These things were omitted during the Second Punic War because of the poverty of the treasury, but were accomplished by the magnificence and liberality of the orders, since before the end of the war they declared that they would accept no money.
They farmed out the revenues. The speech to Valerian also contains these words: “You will set a measure for assessments, establish the revenues, divide the condition of persons, and review the states.”
They framed laws. Trebellius: “Authority to frame laws will be given to you.” Laws had to be proposed by Magistrates—not, however, by all but by the greater Magistrates, such as the Consul, Praetor, Dictator, Censor, Interrex, Decemvirs, Military Tribunes with consular power, and Tribunes of the plebs.
They completed the lustrum. This was begun by Servius, of whom Livy writes in book 1: “When the census, which he had hastened by a law passed concerning those not assessed, had been completed, he proclaimed under threat of chains and death that all Roman citizens, knights and infantrymen, should be present at first light in the Campus Martius, each in his own century. There he purified the whole army, drawn up in formation, with the sacrifice of a pig, sheep, and bull. This was called the completed lustrum, because an end had been made in the assessment.”
Sometimes the census was conducted, yet the lustrum was not completed. Livy, book 3. The Censors also possessed the right of dealing with the people and Fathers, which was common to all the greater Magistrates.
They also made inquiry into the morals of married couples. For the Censor exacted a solemn oath from husbands. Varro, book 5 of On the Latin Language: “Do you, according to the judgment of your mind, have a wife?” If he had answered that he did not, the Censor had cognizance of his morals. Nor could an agreement be made that no inquiry into morals should occur. If husband and wife mutually accused one another, neither was heard. They also made inquiry concerning contempt for marriage. They dealt with usury. Thus the Censor possessed the greatest authority over private persons.
§ 6. The Censors possessed excessive authority in the free state. Marcus Livius and Gaius Claudius demonstrated this in Livy, book 29: “The lustrum was completed later because the Censors sent men through the provinces to report how great the number of Roman citizens in the armies was everywhere. Gaius Claudius Nero completed the lustrum after 265,000 men had been assessed with them. Then they received the census returns of twelve
colonies—something which had never previously been done—when the Censors delivered them, so that records of how strong they were in number of soldiers and in money might survive in the public tablets. Then the assessment of the knights began, and both Censors happened to possess a public horse. When they came to the Pollian tribe, in which the name of Marcus Livius was listed, and the herald hesitated to summon the Censor himself, Nero said, ‘Summon Marcus Livius’; and, whether from a remaining and ancient quarrel or puffed up by an untimely display of severity, he ordered Marcus Livius to sell his horse because he had been condemned by the judgment of the people. Likewise, when Marcus Livius came to the Narnian tribe and the name of his colleague, he ordered Gaius Claudius to sell his horse for two reasons: first, because he had given false testimony against him; second, because he had not returned into favor with him in sincere good faith. Thus there occurred a foul contest to stain the other’s reputation at the cost of one’s own reputation. At the end of the censorship, after Gaius Claudius had sworn to the laws and ascended to the treasury, among the names of those whom he was leaving as aerarii he entered that of his colleague. Marcus Livius then entered the treasury and, excepting the Maecian tribe, which had neither condemned him nor made him Consul or Censor after his condemnation, he left the whole Roman people—the thirty-four tribes—as aerarii, because they had both condemned him when innocent and made him Consul and Censor after his condemnation. They could not deny that they had offended once by a judgment and twice in elections; among the thirty-four tribes, Gaius Claudius too would be an aerarius. He said that, if there were a precedent for leaving the same man twice as an aerarius, he would have expressly left Gaius Claudius among the aerarii. This petty contest of censorial marks between the Censors, and this chastisement of the people’s inconstancy by censorial gravity, was worthy of those times. Since the Censors were objects of hatred, Gaius Baebius, Tribune of the plebs, supposing that from this he had an opportunity to increase his standing, appointed a day before the people for both. The matter was dismissed by agreement of the Fathers, lest henceforth the censorship be subject to the popular breeze.”
First, indeed, there was the foul persecution of colleagues and mutual defamation. Next came the marking of the people because of an unjust judgment, as though a man were a suitable judge in his own case. Finally came the reproach that they had conferred an honor. All these things were full of severe folly; to make the whole people aerarii, with one tribe excepted, was entirely insane, for it was a consolation to the wicked and infamous to lie hidden among all.
The Roman people itself judged this when it limited the censorship to a year and six months: the Dictator Aemilius Mamercus diminished it. Livy, book 4: “Then the Dictator, lest he should have been created to no purpose—since the opportunity to seek glory in war had been taken away—desired to accomplish in peace some work that would be a memorial of his Dictatorship, and prepared to curtail the censorship, whether because he judged its power excessive or was offended not so much by the greatness of the honor as by its duration. Accordingly, after summoning an assembly, he said that the immortal gods had undertaken that the state should be managed abroad and that all things should be made secure; he would take counsel for the liberty of the Roman people concerning what must be done within the walls. But the greatest safeguard of that liberty was that great commands should not be long-lasting, and that a limit of time should be imposed upon those upon whom no limit of law could be imposed. The other Magistracies were annual; a censorship of five years was burdensome, for men lived subject to the same persons during a great part of their lives. He would therefore propose a law that a censorship should be no longer than a year and six months.”
Therefore, since so many persons were unjustly degraded and so many entered among the aerarii, the law of Clodius was not so unjust in forbidding anyone to be removed from the Senate or affected with ignominy unless, after his case had been pleaded, he had been accused before the Tribunes. Then the supreme power ceased, but the Consul Metellus restored it, and it existed in the time of Dio. Τιμητείαν, ait, ἀρχὴν ταύτην εἶναι ἱερωτάτην, καὶ δυναμένην μέγα. “The censorship,” he says, “is a most sacred and very powerful government”; but its holders were to judge morals, not rage according to their own judgment.
Deservedly, therefore, Cicero says in Against Piso: “For nearly a hundred years we had retained the Aelian and Fufian laws, and for four hundred years the censorial judgment and cognizance. No wicked man failed to dare against those laws, yet no one was ever able to overthrow them; no one was so extravagantly wanton as to attempt to diminish that power so that judgment concerning our morals should not be made every fifth year.”
§ 7. Most of the Emperors also bore the censorial dignity. Dio says that Augustus was elected ἐπιμελητὴν καὶ τιμητὴν εἰς πενταετίαν χειροτονεῖσθαι, curator of morals and Censor for a five-year period. The same Dio says this of Claudius in book 5; Suetonius relates that Domitian was Censor. Trajan undertook the censorship late—not from avoidance of the honor, or, as Pliny flatters him, because he preferred to test characters by benefactions rather than remedies, but from consciousness of his own life. For although others were worse than Trajan and accepted the censorship, Trajan nevertheless showed greater modesty.
Most states therefore retain this principle of censorship: judgment concerning morals rests with a Magistrate. This is also customary in the Church, for the Bishops and prelates of the Church themselves are masters of morals. Since the end of a prince is the blessed life of his subjects, and that life cannot exist without virtue, he must himself exercise the greatest care for it. What would so great and severe a power not accomplish? Valerius, book 2, chapter 9, makes it equal to martial praises: “The firmest bond of camp discipline and the diligent observance of military order admonish me to pass to the censorship, mistress and guardian of peace. For just as the resources of the Roman people advanced to so great an amplitude through the virtues of commanders, so uprightness and continence were examined by the censorial brow, an achievement equal to martial praises. For what profit is there in being vigorous abroad if life is evil at home? Though cities be stormed, nations chastised, and hands laid upon kingdoms, unless duty and modesty maintain their place in the Forum and Curia, the heap of acquired things, though made equal to heaven, will have no stable seat. It therefore pertains to the matter to know, and indeed to remember, the acts of censorial power.”
If the vigor of the censorship had endured, great Emperors would never have seized their fatherland from fear of poverty. The posterity of the Romans marveled at the severity of the ancients. “What,” says Valerius, “shall I say of the censorship of Fabricius Luscinus? Every age has related and will continue to relate that Cornelius Rufinus, who had discharged two Consulships and a Dictatorship most splendidly, was not retained in the senatorial order because he had acquired ten pounds of silver plate, as though luxurious through an evil example. By the god of faith, the very letters of our age seem to me to be astonished when they are compelled to accommodate their service to recording so venerable a severity, and to fear lest they be thought to commemorate the deeds not of our city. For it is scarcely credible that within the same pomerium the possession of ten pounds of silver was once an object of odium, while poverty is now held in the greatest contempt.”
Lest we suppose that only a few were marked, the same Valerius shows that there were very many: “A large and good part of the equestrian order—four hundred young men—also endured the censorial mark with a patient spirit. Valerius and Publius Sempronius, because they had been ordered to go to Sicily to perform work on fortifications and had neglected to do it, deprived them of their public horses and entered them in the number of the aerarii.”
And thereafter: “The Censors also exacted the penalty for shameful fear with the greatest severity. For Marcus Atilius Regulus and Publius Furius Philus swore that Lucius Metellus the Quaestor and several Roman knights—who after the ill-fated battle at Cannae had sworn that they would depart from Italy with him—must be deprived of their public horses and entered among the aerarii. They also affected with a grave mark those who, after they had come into Hannibal’s power and had been sent by him as envoys to the Senate concerning the exchange of captives, remained in the city when they did not obtain what they sought. For it was fitting both to keep faith with Roman blood, and for Marcus Atilius Regulus the Censor to mark perfidy, since his father had judged it preferable to expire amid the utmost torments rather than deceive the Carthaginians. How this censorship passed from the Forum into the camp, for it wished neither to fear nor to deceive the enemy!”
There are two eminent censorial memorials of the ancient state in this affair. They marked very many together with Metellus, concerning whom Livy writes in book 22. Then those who had returned from the camp were marked and affected with grave ignominy, concerning whom the same Livy writes: “Moreover, they had been so utterly broken by every mark and ignominy under the next Censors that some of them immediately brought death upon themselves; the others were deprived not only of the Forum throughout all their remaining life, but almost of light and public society.”
In this matter the power of the Censors was greater than that of the Consuls. Indeed, they could mark the Consuls themselves.
§ 8. The censorship, especially of nobles, flourishes and formerly flourished among the Venetians; it is established that that state has been preserved by it more than by war. Among the Lucchese a severe, mature, and better censorship than that formerly exercised at Rome is practiced. In the week immediately before Easter, which is called Holy, those who belong to this council assemble in a certain place. Each of them places in a chest prepared for this purpose a ballot on which is written the name of the man whom he regards as wicked and unworthy of the city. Once this has been done, the ballots are taken out. If by chance someone’s name is read repeatedly, the matter is referred to the Greater Council, where the votes are cast again. If he is condemned by them, such a man is judged wicked and unworthy of the city and is immediately ordered by the public voice of the herald to go into exile that very evening. The manner of proscription is that for three years he must remain fifty miles from the city. If he contravenes this, he incurs capital punishment. When the three years have ended, if upon returning he has not amended his life, he is again driven into exile in the same manner.
To this also pertains the fact that the Eight Men there, who observe inns and guests, correct deceitful and lying persons. For the corruptions of many cities arise from the negligence of innkeepers, since the dregs of cities flow together into those places, and vices first grow strong in those places where they are a source of profit to their abettors. Among the Genoese the office of the Censors is given partly to those whom they call Censors and partly to the Magistracy of St. George.
§ 9. I shall add as a conclusion that the Censors were formerly anointed. Varro, book 3 of On the Latin Language: “Now first concerning the censorial tablets. When the censorship takes its auspices by night in the temple and a report from the sky has been made, the herald is commanded thus to summon the men: ‘May it be good, fortunate, happy, and salutary to the Roman people, the Quirites, and to the state of the Quirites, and to me and my colleague, and to our fidelity and Magistracy. Summon all Quirites, infantrymen, armed men, and private curators of all the tribes; if anyone wishes a curatorship to be assigned for himself or another, summon the assembly here before me.’ The herald summons them first in the temple; afterwards he likewise summons them according to custom. When it grows light, the Censor, scribes, and Magistrates are anointed with myrrh and unguents.”
The Censors correct those things on account of which the Praetor grants no action. Bodin, book 6 of the Politics; Lipsius, book 4; Alexander ab Alexandro, book 3, chapter 13, of the Genial Days. But above all, the life of the best and most modest Prince is a censorship. Pacatus says concerning Theodosius: “The man who corrects vices to which the prince is himself subject, even if you do not punish the prince himself, nevertheless brands him.”