a bulletin he even published to all the conjunction of stars under which he had been born.  In addition to forbidding the above he proclaimed to subject states that they should grant no honors to any one assigned to govern them either during his term of office or within sixty days after he had departed.  For some governors by arranging for testimonials and eulogies from their subjects were doing much harm.  Three senators, as before, transacted business with the embassies, and the knights,—­a fact which might cause surprise,—­were allowed to fight as gladiators.  The reason was that some persisted in disregarding the disenfranchisement stated as a penalty for such conduct.  And as there proved to be no use in forbidding it and the participants seemed to require a greater punishment before they would be turned aside from this course, they were given permission to do as they liked.  In this way they incurred death instead of disenfranchisement, for they fought more than ever, and especially because their contests were centers of attraction, so that even Augustus became a spectator in company with the praetors who superintended games.

[A.D. 12 (a. u. 765)]

[-26-] Germanicus soon after received the office of consul, though he had not even been praetor, and held it actually throughout the whole year, not because of fitness but as a number of others held office at that time.  The consul did nothing worthy of note save that at this time, too, he acted as advocate in suits, since his colleague Gaius Capito counted as a mere figurehead.  Augustus, because he was growing old, wrote a letter commending Germanicus to the senate and the latter to Tiberius:  the manuscript was not read by him in person, for he was unable to make himself heard, but by Germanicus, as usual.  After that he asked them, making the Celtic war his excuse, not to come to greet him at home nor to be angry if he did not continue to eat with them.  For generally, as often as they had a sitting, in the Forum and sometimes in the senate-house itself, they saluted him when he entered and again when he left; and it had already happened that, when he was sitting and sometimes lying down in the Palatium, not only the senate but the knights and many of the populace greeted him. [-27-] All this time he continued to attend to his business as before.  He allowed the knights to become candidates for the tribuneship.  And learning that vituperative books concerning certain men were being written, he ordered a search for them.  Those that he found in the city he had burned by the aediles and those outside by the officials who might be in charge, and he visited punishment upon some of the composers.  As there were many exiles who were either carrying on their occupations outsides of the places to which they had been banished or living too luxuriously in the proper places, he forbade that any one who had been debarred from fire and water should stay either on the mainland or on any of the