Dio's Rome, Volume 4: An Historical Narrative Originally Composed in Greek During the Reigns of Septimius Severus, Geta and Caracalla, Macrinus, Elagabalus and Alexander Severus: and Now Presented in English FormCassius Dio Cocceianus
History
Dio's Rome, Volume 4: An Historical Narrative Originally Composed in Greek During the Reigns of Septimius Severus, Geta and Caracalla, Macrinus, Elagabalus and Alexander Severus: and Now Presented in English Form
Cassius Dio Cocceianus
Rome -- History
After this there was another reorganization of the senate. At first the
necessary value of their property had been limited to ten myriad denarii
because many of them had been deprived by the wars of their ancestral
estates. As time went on and men's possessions became larger, it was
advanced to twenty-five myriads, and no one was any longer found who
wanted to be senator. On the contrary, some children and grandchildren
of senators, of whom a part were really poor and another part had been
brought low through calamities suffered by their ancestors, not only
failed to lay claim to the senatorial dignity, but when already placed on
the list withdrew on oath. Therefore previous to this, while Augustus
was still out of the City, a decree had been passed that the so-called
viginti viri[8] should be appointed from the knights. Hence none of them
was any longed enrolled in the senate without having secured some one of
the other offices that lead to it.--These twenty men are a part of the
six-and-twenty.[9] Three of them have charge of capital cases at law. The
next three attend to the coinage of the money. Four act as commissioners
of the streets in the City. Ten are put over the courts that fall by lot
to the _Centumviri_. The two who were entrusted with the roads outside
the walls and the four who were sent to Campania had been abolished. The
senate had voted during the absence of Augustus another measure besides
this, namely that, since nobody could any longer be easily induced to
become a candidate for the tribuneship, they might appoint by lot some
who had been quæstors and were not yet forty years old. At this time the
emperor made a scrutiny of the whole body of citizens. Those of them who
were over thirty-five years of age he did not trouble, but those under
that age who had property of the requisite value he forced to become
senators, except in the case of cripples. Their bodies he viewed himself
but in regard to their property he accepted sworn statements, the men
themselves taking the oath (with others to corroborate their allegations)
and accounting for their lack of funds as well as for their habits of
life.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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