Roman Public LifeGreenidge, A. H. J. (Abel Hendy Jones)
History
Roman Public Life
Greenidge, A. H. J. (Abel Hendy Jones)
Constitutional history -- Rome; Rome -- Politics and government
(iv.) The censors sometimes pronounced disqualifications as the result of
a judicial sentence.[1099] Theft and other private delicts were attended
with infamy, and sometimes the censure was independent of the judgment of
a court.[1100] The censure, which followed a criminal condemnation, might
be either one of the censors’ own creation[1101] or the mere fulfilment
of a disqualification already enjoined by law. Of the second kind were
the disabilities pronounced by the _lex Cassia_ of 104 B.C.[1102] or by
the _lex Calpurnia de ambitu_ of 67 B.C., the latter of which enjoined
perpetual exclusion from the Senate as a result of condemnation.[1103]
IV. The effects of the censorian _infamia_ depended partly on the rank
of the person disqualified, but were always regulated to some extent
by the gravity of the offence. The senator was removed from the list,
the knight from the equestrian centuries, the commoner is said _tribu
moveri_ or _aerarius fieri_, or both.[1104] “Removal from the tribe”
has two meanings: either that of the milder penalty of relegation from a
higher to a lower tribe, or of the severer punishment of total exclusion
from the tribes, while _aerarium facere_ implies exclusion from the
centuries.[1105]
V. _The lustrum._—After the ranks of the various orders had thus been
purified, the lustral sacrifice (_lustratio_) was offered for the whole
assembled army in the field of Mars.[1106] The ox, the sheep, and the
pig (_suovetaurilia_), which were led round the host and then sacrificed
to the god, were at once an atonement for sin and a thanksgiving
for blessings prayed for at the preceding _lustrum_ and since
vouchsafed.[1107] The completion of this ceremonial marked the close of
the censor’s functions, at least of those connected with the _census_.
VI. _Other functions of the censors._—The necessity for the division of
functions, which had created the censorship, led to financial duties,
analogous to but unconnected with those of the _census_, being taken from
other magistracies and attached to that office. These were the leasing
of the public revenues, the maintenance of public property, and the
administrative jurisdiction connected with these duties.
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