e who had served as praetors
five years or more previously, in every instance, to be chosen annually
to attend to the distribution of grain. As for the dictatorship, however,
he would not hear of it and went so far as to rend his clothing when
he found himself unable to restrain them in any other way, either by
reasoning or by prayer. As he already had authority and honor even beyond
that of dictators he did right to guard against the jealousy and hatred
which the title would arouse. [-2-] His course was the same when they
wished to elect him censor for life. Without entering upon the office
himself he immediately designated others as censors, namely Paulus
AEmilius Lepidus and Lucius Munatius Plancus, the latter a brother of that
Plancus who had been proscribed and the former a person who at that time
had himself been under sentence of death. These were the last private
citizens to hold the appointment, as was at once made manifest by the
men themselves. The platform on which they were intended to perform the
ceremonies pertaining to their position fell to the ground in pieces when
they had ascended it on the first day of their office. After that there
were no other censors appointed together, as they had been. Even at this
time Augustus in spite of their having been chosen took care of many
matters which properly belonged to them. Of the Public Messes he
abolished some altogether and reformed others so that greater temperance
prevailed. He committed the charge of all the festivals to the praetors,
commanding that an appropriation be given them from the public treasury.
Moreover he forbade them to spend from their own means on these occasions
more than they received from the other source, or to have armed combat
under any other conditions than if the senate should vote for it, and
even then there were to be not more than two such contests in each year
and they should consist of not more than one hundred and twenty men. To
the curule aediles he entrusted the extinguishment of conflagrations, for
which purpose he granted them six hundred slave assistants. And since
knights and women of note had thus early appeared in the orchestra, he
forbade not only the children of senators, to whom the prohibition had
even previously extended, but also their grandchildren, who naturally
found a place in the equestrian class, to do anything of the sort again.
[-3-] In these ordinances he let both the substance and the name of the
lawgive