At this period a clamor arose in the senate regarding the disorderly conduct of the women and the young men, this being alleged as a reason for the difficulty of persuading them to contract marriage; and when they urged him to remedy this abuse also, meanwhile indulging in sarcasms because he enjoyed the favors of many women, at first he made answer that the most necessary restrictions had been laid down and that anything further could not be defined in a similar fashion.  Then, when he was driven into a corner, he said:  “You ought to admonish and command your wives what you wish,—­just as I myself do.”  When they heard that, they plied him with questions all the more, wishing to learn the admonitions which he said he gave Livia.  Reluctantly thereupon he made a few remarks about dress and about other adornment, about going out and modest behavior on such occasions.  He cared not at all that he did not make good his words in fact.  Something of the sort he had done also while censor.  They brought before him a young man who had married a woman after seducing her, making the most violent accusations against him:  Augustus was at a loss what to do, not daring to overlook the affair nor yet to administer any rebuke.  After a very long time he heaved a deep sigh and said:  “The factional disputes have borne many terrible fruits:  let us try to forget them and give our attention to the future, to see that nothing of the sort occurs again.”

Inasmuch, too, as certain infants were obtaining by betrothal the honors of married couples, but did not accomplish the object in view, he ordered that no betrothal should be valid where a person did not marry before two years had passed.  That is, any one betrothed must be certainly ten years old in order to reap any benefit from it.  Twelve full years, as I have said, is required by custom for girls to reach the marriageable age.

[-17-] Besides these separate enactments there was one instructing those from time to time in office each to propose one of those who had been praetors three years previously to attend to the distribution of the grain, and providing that of that number the four who secured the lot should give out grain in turn:  and the praefectus urbi, appointed for the Feriae, was always to choose one of them.  The Sibylline verses which had become indistinct through lapse of time he ordered the priests to copy out with their own hands in order that no one else should read them.  He allowed the offices to be thrown open to all such as had property worth ten myriad denarii and were competent to hold office in accordance with the law.  This was the value which he at first set upon the senatorial rank:  later he raised it to twenty-five myriads.  Upon some of those who lived upright lives but possessed less than ten myriads in the first case or twenty-five in the second he bestowed the amount lacking.  Again, he allowed those praetors who so desired to spend on the festivals besides what was given them from the public treasury