[47] The fetials had charge of the formalities in declaring war and peace. Dio L, 4, says that Augustus went through the old-fashioned ceremonies in declaring war against Cleopatra. These three colleges had fallen into abeyance in the time of Cicero. Augustus undoubtedly revived them. Cf. Suet. _Aug._ 31. Such restoration, and religious conservatism in general, as even in the case of Domitian, marks the policy of the emperors for two hundred years, and was one of their favorite methods of posing simply as restorers of the good old times. [48] In 725. The Saenian law, passed by the people in 724, authorized this proceeding, and the senate’s decree followed. Hence the order, “people and senate.” Cf. Tac. _Ann._ XI, 25; Dio, LII, 42. An earlier creation of patricians is assigned by Dio to the year 721. But he is probably mistaken, as Tacitus, in the passage just noted, says that Claudius was obliged to create more patricians, “because the number had declined even after being recruited by the dictator Cæsar under the Cassian law, and by Augustus the _princeps_ under the Saenian law.” Such a creation was not a right of the principate. Cæsar and Augustus did it by special authorization of people and senate. Claudius did it in virtue of his censorship, and this status continued till Domitian absorbed the censorship in the principate, and assumed the right as a permanent one. [49] During most of the republican history the senate numbered, ideally, three hundred. In Cicero’s time it had over four hundred members. Julius Cæsar raised it to about nine hundred. Suet. _Aug._, 35, says: “By two separate scrutinies he (Augustus) reduced to their former number and splendor the senate, which had been swamped by a disorderly crowd; for they were now more than a thousand, and some of them very mean persons, who, after Cæsar’s death, had been chosen by dint of interest and bribery, so that they had the name of Orcini among the people.” They were also called Charonites, because they owed their elevation to the last will of Cæsar, who had gone into Orcus to Charon. Dio, XL, 48, 63, tells of freedmen in the senate and, XLIII, 22, of a private soldier; Gell., XV, 4, of a muleteer, cf. Juvenal, _Sat._ VII, 199. Dio, LII, 42, cf. LIII, 1, tells of the first scrutiny, in 725-6. A hint from Augustus was enough to cause the withdrawal first of sixty, then of one hundred and forty senators. He also tells, LIV, 13, 14, of a further revision in 736, by which the number was brought down to six hundred. He assigns a third sifting to 743 (LIV, 35), and a fourth to 757 (LV, 13). Mommsen, however, is inclined to connect the three revisions of Augustus with the censuses of 726, 746 and 767, and to regard those of 736 and 757 as extraordinary, and therefore not named by Augustus, in his desire to appear entirely within constitutional lines. Cf. Mommsen, _R. G._, p. 35.