the censors must not be confounded with the _Equitum Transvectio_, which was a solemn procession of the body every year on the Ides of Quintilis (July). The procession started from the temple of Mars outside the city, and passed through the city over the forum, and by the temple of the Dioscuri. On this occasion the equites were always crowned with olive chaplets, and wore their state dress, the trabea, with all the honourable distinctions which they had gained in battle. According to Livy, this annual procession was first established by the censors Q. Fabius and P. Decius, B.C. 304; but according to Dionysius it was instituted after the defeat of the Latins near the lake Regillus, of which an account was brought to Rome by the Dioscuri.--It may be asked how long did the knight retain his public horse, and a vote in the equestrian century to which he belonged? On this subject we have no positive information; but as those equites, who served with their own horses, were only obliged to serve for ten years (_stipendia_) under the age of 46, we may presume that the same rule extended to those who served with the public horses, provided they _wished_ to give up the service. For it is certain that in the ancient times of the republic a knight might retain his horse as long as he pleased, even after he had entered the senate, provided he continued able to discharge the duties of a knight. Thus the two censors, M. Livius Salinator and C. Claudius Nero, in B.C. 204, were also equites, and L. Scipio Asiaticus, who was deprived of his horse by the censors in B.C. 185, had himself been censor in B.C. 191. But during the later times of the republic the knights were obliged to give up their horses on entering the senate, and consequently ceased to belong to the equestrian centuries. It thus naturally came to pass, that the greater number of the equites equo publico, after the exclusion of senators from the equestrian centuries, were young men.--The equestrian centuries, of which we have hitherto been treating, were only regarded as a division of the army: they did not form a distinct class or ordo in the constitution. The community, in a political point of view, was divided only into patricians and plebeians, and the equestrian centuries were composed of both. But in the year B.C. 123, a new class, called the _Ordo Equestris_, was formed in the state by the Lex Sempronia, which was introduced by C. Gracchus. By this law, or one passed a few years afterwards, every person who was to be chosen judex was required to be above 30 and under 60 years of age, to have either an equus publicus, or to be qualified by his fortune to possess one, and _not_ to be a senator. The number of judices, who were required yearly, was chosen from this class by the praetor urbanus. As the name of equites had been originally extended from those who possessed the public horses to those who served with their own horses, it now came to be applied