In so large a body of “gentry,” however, imposture becomes fairly common. Nearly every Emperor issues an edict for the purging of the order, and every now and then some adventurous nobody is divested of his “narrow stripe.” Calvus came home lately from the Flaminian Circus laughing heartily. Just behind his senatorial tier a perfumed and beringed fellow set off with a splendid lacerna sat down saying loudly, “Now at last, thanks to our Cæsar, due honors have come to the Roman equites, and the vulgar are kept away”; but hardly had he spoken ere a lynx-eyed usher identified him and amid the jeering of hundreds “forced that very fine lacerna to get up!” =134. The Senatorial Order. The First-Class Nobility.=--The first class in the nobility is the Senatorial. The actual functioning of the Senate which is still a most venerable and powerful council will be told later (see p. 334); here we have to see its members merely in social and unofficial life. They number six hundred and entrance into their gilded circle comes usually by a kind of hereditary right. The sons of a senator can almost always count on becoming senators themselves if the family fortune is not too impaired and they have not fallen under imperial disfavor. To win the honor you must either be elected (by the Senate itself) to some one of the old Republican offices--quæstors, ædiles, prætors, consuls, etc.,--which carried a life seat in the Senate with them, or be appointed outright by fiat of the Emperor. The latter, furthermore, is always pushing forward his favorites by “inviting” the senators to elect them to office, and the “Conscript Fathers” never disregarded such a broad hint from “Cæsar.” =135. Social Glories of Senators.=--Senators alone are eligible for the highest commands in the army, for the governorships for the more important provinces, except Egypt, and for most of the other exalted offices which do not involve a vulgar handling of money. The Emperor himself ranks as the head of their noble body. Even when he is at bitter odds with them, he must not forget that they share part of his glory. Still is told the story of how one of Nero’s parasites raised a laugh from the tyrant one day. “I hate you, Cæsar!” he announced. “And why is that?” “Oh, just because you are a senator.” All the senators are officially the “friends,” _amici_, of the monarch. These great nobles are entitled to visit the Emperor in the palace somewhat as clients visit their patron. He is expected to extend his hand to them; to treat them as a kind of social equals; and to allow the more important of them to kiss him. They and their wives must be invited to all the greater palace banquets. Finally all the better monarchs are expected to take oath at the beginning of their reigns that they “will never put any senator to death”--that is, that the Senate shall be the supreme judge over its own members.