ome of the freedmen. So he brought together all his furniture,
considerable in amount and very beautiful, in the auction room as if he
were going to call for bids on all of it: but he sold only his senatorial
dress. By this he showed that he had received no deadly blow and could
enjoy life as a private citizen.--Beside these events of the time
the weekly market was transferred to a different day because of some
religious rites. That happened, too, on many other occasions.

[A.D. 45 _(a. u._ 798)]

[-25-] following year Marcus Vinicius for the second and Statilius
Corvinus for the first time entered upon the office of consul. Claudius
himself took all the customary oaths in detail, but prevented the rest
from taking oath separately. Accordingly, as in earlier times, one man
who was a praetor and second who was a tribune and one each of the other
officials repeated the oaths for those of the same grade. This custom was
followed for several years.

Now since the City was becoming filled with numbers of images,--for those
who wished might without restrictions appear in public in a painting or
in bronze or stone,--he had most of those already existing set somewhere
else and for the future forbade that any private citizen be allowed to
follow the practice, unless the senate should grant permission or except
he had built or repaired some public work. Such persons and their
relatives might have their likenesses set up in the places in question.

Having banished the governor of a certain province for venality the
emperor confiscated to public uses all the extra funds that the man had
gathered in office. Again, to prevent these persons eluding those who
wished to bring them to trial, he would give to nobody one office
immediately after another. This had been the custom in earlier days also,
to the end that any one without difficulty might institute a suit against
them in the intervening period; indeed, those whose terms had expired and
who were granted leave of absence from the City might not even take these
absences in succession, since it was intended that, if officials should
be guilty of any irregularity, they should not gain the further benefit
of escaping investigation by either continuous office or continuous
absence. The custom had, however, fallen out of use. So carefully did
Claudius guard against both possibilities that he would not without out
some delay allow even an official who was his colleague to be chosen by