The _Acta Senatus_ or deliberations of the senate were not published until Caesar. They were kept jealously secret, as is proved by a quaint story by Cato, quoted in Aulus Gellius (i. 23). At all important deliberations a senator, usually the praetor as being one of the junior members, acted as secretary. In the imperial times this functionary was always a confidant of the emperor. The _acta_ were sometimes inscribed on _tabulae publicae_ (Cic. pro Sull. 14, 15), but only on occasions when it was held expedient to make them known. As a rule the publication of the resolution (_Senatus Consultum_) was the first intimation the people had of the decisions of their rulers. In the times of the emperors there were also _acta_ of each emperor, apparently the memoranda of state councils held by him, and communicated to the senate for them to act upon. There appears also to have been _acta_ of private families when the estates were large enough to make it worth while to keep them. These are alluded to in Petronius Arbiter (ch. 53). We are now come to the _Acta Diurna, Populi, Urbana_ or _Publica_, by all which names the same thing is meant. The earliest allusion to them is in a passage of Sempronius Asellio, who distinguishes the annals from the _diaria_, which the Greeks call _ephaemeris_ (ap. A. Gell. V. 18). When about the year 131 B.C. the _Annales_ were redacted into a complete form, the _acta_ probably begun. When Servius (ad. Aen. i. 373) says that the _Annales_ registered each day all noteworthy events that had occurred, he is apparently confounding them with the _acta_, which seem to have quietly taken their place. During the time that Cicero was absent in Cilicia (62 B.C.) he received the news of town from his friend. Coelius (Cic. Fam. viii. 1, 8, 12, &c.). These news comprised all the topics which we should find now-a-days in a daily paper. Asconius Pedianus, a commentator on Cicero of the time of Claudius, in his notes on the Milo (p. 47, ed. Orell. 1833), quotes several passages from the _acta_, on the authority of which he bases some of his arguments. Among them are analyses of forensic orations, political and judicial; and it is therefore probable that these formed a regular portion of the daily journal in the latest age of the Republic. When Antony offered Caesar a crown on the feast of the Lupercalia, Caesar ordered it to be noted in the _acta_ (Dio xliv. 11); Antony, as we know from Cicero, even entered the fact in the _Fasti_, or religious calendar. Augustus continued the publication of the _Acta Populi_, under certain limitations, analogous to the control exercised over journalism by the governments of modern Europe; but he interdicted that of the _Acta Senatus_ (Suet. Aug. 36). Later emperors abridged even this liberty. A portico in Rome having been in danger of falling and shored up by a skilful architect, Tiberius forbade the publication of his name (Dio lvii. 21). Nero relaxed the supervision