[-26-] Germanicus soon after received the office of consul, though he had not even been prætor, and held it actually throughout the whole year, not because of fitness but as a number of others held office at that time. The consul did nothing worthy of note save that at this time, too, he acted as advocate in suits, since his colleague Gaius Capito counted as a mere figurehead. Augustus, because he was growing old, wrote a letter commending Germanicus to the senate and the latter to Tiberius: the manuscript was not read by him in person, for he was unable to make himself heard, but by Germanicus, as usual. After that he asked them, making the Celtic war his excuse, not to come to greet him at home nor to be angry if he did not continue to eat with them. For generally, as often as they had a sitting, in the Forum and sometimes in the senate-house itself, they saluted him when he entered and again when he left; and it had already happened that, when he was sitting and sometimes lying down in the Palatium, not only the senate but the knights and many of the populace greeted him. [-27-] All this time he continued to attend to his business as before. He allowed the knights to become candidates for the tribuneship. And learning that vituperative books concerning certain men were being written, he ordered a search for them. Those that he found in the city he had burned by the ædiles and those outside by the officials who might be in charge, and he visited punishment upon some of the composers. As there were many exiles who were either carrying on their occupations outsides of the places to which they had been banished or living too luxuriously in the proper places, he forbade that any one who had been debarred from fire and water should stay either on the mainland or on any of the islands distant less than four hundred stadia from the mainland. Only he made an exception of Cos, Rhodes, Samos[5], and Lesbos, for what reason I know not. He enjoined upon them also that they should not cross the seas to any other point and should not possess more than one ship of burden having a capacity of one thousand amphoræ, and two driven by oars; that they should not employ more than twenty slaves or freedmen; that they should not hold property above twelve and a half myriads; and he threatened to take vengeance upon them for any violation as well as upon all others who should in any way assist them in violating these ordinances. These are the laws, as fully as is necessary for our history, that he laid down.