ight well be employed in a clerical position, obviously could not be made
the sole civil servants of the princeps. Therefore, Augustus drew into his
service the equestrian order whose business interests and traditional
connection with the public finances seemed to mark them out as peculiarly
fitted to be his agents in the financial administration of the provinces.

The equestrian order in general was open to all Roman citizens in Italy
and the provinces who were eighteen years of age, of free birth and good
character, and possessed a census rating of 400,000 sesterces ($20,000).
Admission to the order was in the control of the princeps, and carried the
right to wear a narrow purple stripe on the toga and to receive a public
horse, the possession of which qualified an equestrian for the imperial
civil and military service. With the bestowal of the public horse Augustus
revived the long neglected annual parade and inspection of the _equites_.

Like the career of the senators, that of the equestrians included both
military and civil appointments. At the outset of his _cursus honorum_ the
equestrian held several military appointments, which somewhat later came
regularly to include a prefecture of a corps of auxiliary infantry, a
tribunate of a legionary cohort, and a prefecture of an auxiliary cavalry
corps. Thereupon he was eligible for a procuratorship, that is, a post in
the imperial civil service, usually in connection with the administration
of the finances. After filling several of these procuratorships, of which
there were a great number of varying importance, an equestrian might
finally attain one of the great prefectures, as commander of the city
watch, administrator of the corn supply of Rome, commander of the imperial
guards, or governor of Egypt. At the end of his equestrian career he might
be enrolled in the senatorial order. Thus through the imperial service the
equestrian order was bound closely to the princeps and from its ranks
there gradually developed a nobility thoroughly loyal to the new regime.

*The Comitia and the plebs.* The _comitia_, which had so long voiced the
will of the sovereign Roman people was not abolished, although it could no
longer claim to speak in the name of the Roman citizens as a whole. It
still kept up the form of electing magistrates and enacting legislation,
but its action was largely determined by the recommendations of the
princeps and his tribunician authority.

While the ci