[178] Young men until they were seventeen years of age, and young women until they were married, wore a white robe bordered with purple, called Toga Praetexta. The former, when they had completed this period, laid aside the dress of minority, and assumed the Toga Virilis, or manly habit. The ceremony of changing the Toga was performed with great solemnity before the images of the Lares, to whom the Bulla was consecrated. On this occasion, they went either to the Capitol, or to some temple, to pay their devotions to the Gods. [179] Transvectio: a procession of the equestrian order, which they made with great splendour through the city, every year, on the fifteenth of July. They rode on horseback from the temple of Honour, or of Mars, without the city, to the Capitol, with wreaths of olive on their heads, dressed in robes of scarlet, and bearing in their hands the military ornaments which they had received from their general, as a reward of their valour. The knights rode up to the censor, seated on his curule chair in front of the Capitol, and dismounting, led their horses in review before him. If any of the knights was corrupt in his morals, had diminished his fortune below the legal standard, or even had not taken proper care of his horse, the censor ordered him to sell his horse, by which he was considered as degraded from the equestrian order. [180] Pugillaria were a kind of pocket book, so called, because memorandums were written or impinged by the styli, on their waxed surface. They appear to have been of very ancient origin, for we read of them in Homer under the name of pinokes.--II. z. 169. Graphas en pinaki ptukto thyrophthora polla. Writing dire things upon his tablet's roll. [181] Pullatorum; dusky, either from their dark colour, or their being soiled. The toga was white, and was the distinguishing costume of the sovereign people of Rome, without which, they were not to appear in public; as members of an university are forbidden to do so, without the academical dress, or officers in garrisons out of their regimentals. [182] Aen. i. 186. [183] It is hardly necessary to direct the careful reader's attention to views of political economy so worthy of an enlightened prince. But it was easier to make the Roman people wear the toga, than to forego the cry of "Panem et Circenses." [184] Septa were enclosures made with boards, commonly for the purpose of distributing the people into distinct classes, and erected occasionally like our hustings.