=242. Contents of the Acta Diurna.=--The Acta Diurna, however, is issued by a government bureau, and a certain degree of official responsibility is attached to the more formal statements. The editors, nevertheless, are allowed to add racy anecdotes of a personal nature, especially concerning the higher aristocracy. The relations between the senatorial nobility and the freedmen and equites in the imperial government bureaus are none the best; and Hadrian himself is not on perfect terms with the Conscript Fathers.[146] Official circles, therefore, are never careful to suppress spicy bits about the aristocrats. The public record offices and dispatches from the provinces supply most of the items, but some of the material can only have come from direct reportorial activity. In any case the interest in this Daily Gazette is enormous. Its single copy will be multiplied many times, copies being made of the copies, and the same sent to wealthy people in all parts of the Empire. A month from now groups will probably be gathering in Spanish Corduba and Syrian Antioch to read the items published to-day in Rome. Owing to the limitations of space, despite the use of many “white boards,” the Acta Diurna has to maintain a very dry journalistic style indeed. The lively Italian imagination, however, can provide most of the details, even if they are not at once eked out by quantities of that “smoke,” oral rumor, which is passed about amid the copyists the moment the new gazette is posted. This is a very commonplace issue, and the albums read something like this:[147] “Records for the tenth day of June. Yesterday ---- boys and ---- girls were born in the city of Rome. ---- bushels of grain were landed at the Emporium. ---- head of cattle [and other commodities specified] were also brought into the city. On this same day the palace slave Mithridates was ordered crucified for blaspheming the guardian genius of his master the Emperor. At the imperial treasury ---- million sesterces, which it proved impossible to loan out at interest, were ordered returned to the public funds. A fire broke out in the insula of Nasta in the Viminal district but was extinguished.”