27. Quintus Fulvius Flaccus and Aulus Postumius, being created censors, reviewed the senate this year. Marcus Æmilius Lepidus, chief pontiff, was chosen chief of the senate. Nine senators were expelled. The remarkable censures pronounced were on Marcus Cornelius Maluginensis, who had been prætor in Spain two years before; on Lucius Cornelius Scipio, who was then prætor and exercised the jurisdiction between natives and foreigners; and on Cneius Fulvius, brother to the censor, and, as Valerius Antias says, partner in property. The consuls, after offering vows in the Capitol, set out for their provinces. Marcus Æmilius was commissioned by the senate to suppress an insurrection of the Patavians in Venetia; for their own ambassadors had given information that by the violent contests of opposing factions they had broken out into civil war. The ambassadors who had gone into Ætolia, to suppress commotions of a similar kind, reported on their return, that the outrageous temper of that nation could not be restrained. The consul’s arrival among the Patavians saved them from ruin; and having no other business in the province, he returned to Rome. The present censors were the first who contracted for paving the streets of Rome with flint stones, for laying with gravel the foundation of roads outside the city, and for forming raised foot-ways on the sides; for building bridges in several places; and affording seats in the theatre to the prætors and ædiles; they fixed up goals in the circus, with balls on the goals for marking the number of courses of the chariots; and erected iron grates, through which wild beasts might be let in. They caused the Capitoline hill to be paved with flint, and erected a piazza from the temple of Saturn, in the Capitol, to the council-chamber, and over that a public hall. On the outside of the gate Trigemina, they also paved a market-place with stones, and enclosed it with a paling; they repaired the Æmilian portico, and formed an ascent, by stairs, from the Tiber to the market-place. They paved, with flint, the portico, from the same gate to the Aventine, and built a court-house: contracted for walls to be built at Galatia and Oximum, and, after selling lots of ground there, which belonged to the public, employed the money arising from the sale in building shops round the forums of both places. Fulvius Flaccus (for Postumius _declared_, that, without a decree of the senate, or order of the people, he would not expend any money belonging to them) agreed for building a temple of Jupiter at Pisaurum; and another at Fundi; for bringing water to Pollentia; for paving the street of Pisaurum, and for many various works at Sinuessa; among which were, the structure of a sewer to fall into the river, the enclosure of the forum with porticoes and shops, and erection of three statues of Janus. These works were all contracted for by one of the censors, and gained him a high degree of favour with those colonists.