lar fashion. Then, when he was
driven into a corner, he said: "You ought to admonish and command your
wives what you wish,--just as I myself do." When they heard that, they
plied him with questions all the more, wishing to learn the admonitions
which he said he gave Livia. Reluctantly thereupon he made a few remarks
about dress and about other adornment, about going out and modest
behavior on such occasions. He cared not at all that he did not make good
his words in fact. Something of the sort he had done also while censor.
They brought before him a young man who had married a woman after
seducing her, making the most violent accusations against him: Augustus
was at a loss what to do, not daring to overlook the affair nor yet to
administer any rebuke. After a very long time he heaved a deep sigh and
said: "The factional disputes have borne many terrible fruits: let us try
to forget them and give our attention to the future, to see that nothing
of the sort occurs again."

Inasmuch, too, as certain infants were obtaining by betrothal the honors
of married couples, but did not accomplish the object in view, he ordered
that no betrothal should be valid where a person did not marry before two
years had passed. That is, any one betrothed must be certainly ten years
old in order to reap any benefit from it. Twelve full years, as I have
said, is required by custom for girls to reach the marriageable age.

[-17-] Besides these separate enactments there was one instructing those
from time to time in office each to propose one of those who had been
praetors three years previously to attend to the distribution of the
grain, and providing that of that number the four who secured the lot
should give out grain in turn: and the praefectus urbi, appointed for the
Feriae, was always to choose one of them. The Sibylline verses which had
become indistinct through lapse of time he ordered the priests to copy
out with their own hands in order that no one else should read them. He
allowed the offices to be thrown open to all such as had property worth
ten myriad denarii and were competent to hold office in accordance with
the law. This was the value which he at first set upon the senatorial
rank: later he raised it to twenty-five myriads. Upon some of those who
lived upright lives but possessed less than ten myriads in the first case
or twenty-five in the second he bestowed the amount lacking. Again, he
allowed those praetors who so desired t