It must not be supposed that the profession of the _scenici_ ever became an honourable one in the eyes of the Roman law. They were for the most part slaves or at best freedmen. They were deliberately branded with _infamia_ or incapacity for civil rights. This _infamia_ was of two kinds, depending respectively upon the action of the censors as guardians of public dignity and that of the praetors as presidents in the law courts. The censors habitually excluded actors from the _ius suffragii_ and the _ius honorum_, the rights of voting and of holding senatorial or equestrian rank; the praetors refused to allow them, if men, to appear as attorneys, if women, to appoint attorneys, in civil suits[24]. The legislation of Julius Caesar and of Augustus added some statutory disabilities. The _lex Iulia municipalis_ forbade actors to hold municipal _honores_[25]: the _lex Iulia de adulteriis_ set the example of denying them the right to bring criminal actions[26]; the _lex Iulia et Papia Poppaea_ limited their privileges when freed, and in particular forbade senators or the sons of senators to take to wife women who had been, or whose parents had been, on the stage[27]. On the other hand Augustus confined the _ius virgarum_, which the praetors had formerly had over _scenici_, to the actual place and time of performances[28]; and so far as the censorian _infamia_ was concerned, the whole tendency of the late Republic and early Empire was to relax its application to actors. It came to be possible for senators and knights to appear on the stage without losing caste. It was a grievous insult when Julius Caesar compelled the mimograph Laberius to appear in one of his own pieces. But after all Caesar restored Laberius to his rank of _eques_, a dignity which at a still earlier date Sulla had bestowed on Roscius[29]. Later the restriction broke down altogether, although not without an occasional reforming effort to restore it[30]. Nero himself was not ashamed to take the boards as a singer of _cantica_[31]. And even an _infamis_, if he were the boon companion of a prince, might be appointed to a post directly depending on the imperial dignity. Thus Caracalla sent a _pantomimus_ to hold a military command on the frontier, and Heliogabalus made another _praefectus urbi_ in Rome itself[32]. Under Constantine a reaction set in, and a new decree formally excluded _scenici_ from all _dignitates_[33]. The severe class legislation received only reluctant and piecemeal modification, and the praetorian _infamia_ outlived the Empire itself, and left its mark upon Carolingian jurisprudence[34].