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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1886 Excerpt:...with very important material interests, was an active magistracy; the political importance grew, and asserted a moral authority.3 Those details which no law could anticipate, those innovations which silently unsettle republics by destroying equality, the censors knew how to reach and punish. They often expelled powerful citizens from the Senate or the equestrian order, or deprived them of their political rights, and in the re-partition of classes "they exercised legislation even over the hody which had the legislative power,"1 and they placed their acts under the sanction of religion, by offering at the closing of the census the solemn sacrifice of the suovetaurilia. By their uncontrolled power they came to the aid of the executive power,--always so weak in democracies. 1 Bas-relief from the Louvre, showing the ceremony of the suoeetaurilia. Before the altar, the magistrate, standing with veiled head, jerformed the functions of sacrificer: near him are two assistants or camilli carrying, the one the acerra, or incense-box, the other the vase of libations, guttus; behind are the two lictors of the magistrate with their fasces; next come the vietimarii crowned with laurel, leading the victims, or preparing to strike them; lastly, on the second slab, are seen some assistants at the ceremony. See p. 233. 2 I think the influence of the Athenian Areopagus is underrated by the author.--Ed. Censores popali aevitates, soboles, fnmilias, pecuniasijue rensento; urbis tecta. tpmpla, vias, aquas, aerarium, vectigalia tuento, populique paries in trihus discrihunto, ezin pecunias, aevitates, ordines partinnto, equitum ptditvaujue prnlem dmcribuntn, caelibes esse prohibento, mores populi regunto, probrum in senatu ne reliquunto, Bini sunto. (Cic. de Leg. iii. 3.)...