[-17-] Besides these separate enactments there was one instructing those from time to time in office each to propose one of those who had been prætors three years previously to attend to the distribution of the grain, and providing that of that number the four who secured the lot should give out grain in turn: and the præfectus urbi, appointed for the Feriæ, was always to choose one of them. The Sibylline verses which had become indistinct through lapse of time he ordered the priests to copy out with their own hands in order that no one else should read them. He allowed the offices to be thrown open to all such as had property worth ten myriad denarii and were competent to hold office in accordance with the law. This was the value which he at first set upon the senatorial rank: later he raised it to twenty-five myriads. Upon some of those who lived upright lives but possessed less than ten myriads in the first case or twenty-five in the second he bestowed the amount lacking. Again, he allowed those prætors who so desired to spend on the festivals besides what was given them from the public treasury three times as much again, so that even if some were vexed at the minuteness of his other regulations yet by reason of this one and also because he brought back from exile one Pylades, a dancer, driven out on account of civil quarrels, they remembered them no longer. Hence Pylades is said to have rejoined very cleverly when the emperor rebuked him for having quarreled with Bathyllus, an artist in the same line and a relative of Mæcenas: "It is to your advantage, Cæsar, that the populace should exhaust its energy over us."--These were the occurrences of that year. [B.C. 17 (_a. u._ 737)] [-18-]In the consulship of Gaius Furnius and Gaius Silanus Agrippa again announced the birth of a son named Lucius, and Augustus immediately adopted him together with his brother Gaius, not waiting for them to become men but appointing them that very moment successors to his office, in order that less plots might be directed against him. The festival of Honor and of Virtus he transferred to the days which are at present theirs. Those that celebrated triumphs he commanded to erect out of the spoils some public work to commemorate their deeds. The Sæcularia he brought for the fifth time to a successful conclusion. The orators, he ordered, were to give their services without pay, on pain of a fine of quadruple the amount they might receive. Those whom the lot made jurymen in any season he forbade to enter any person's house during that year. And since members of the senate showed lack of interest in attending meetings of that body, he increased the penalties for such as were late without some good excuse. [B.C. 16 (_a. u._ 7386)]