=The Censors.=—­The highest of all the magistrates are the censors.  They are charged with taking the census every five years, that is to say, the enumeration of the Roman people.  All the citizens appear before them to declare under oath their name, the number of their children and their slaves, the amount of their fortune; all this is inscribed on the registers.  It is their duty, too, to draw up the list of the senators, of the knights, and of the citizens, assigning to each his proper rank in the city.  They are charged as a result with making the lustrum, a great ceremony of purification which occurs every five years.[122]

On that day all the citizens are assembled on the Campus Martius arranged in order of battle; thrice there are led around the assembly three expiatory victims, a bull, a ram, and a swine; these are killed and their blood sprinkled on the people; the city is purified and reconciled with the gods.

The censors are the masters of the registration and they rank each as they please; they may degrade a senator by striking him from the senate-list, a knight by not registering him among the knights, and a citizen by not placing his name on the registers of the tribes.  It is for them an easy means of punishing those whom they regard at fault and of reaching those whom the law does not condemn.  They have been known to degrade citizens for poor tillage of the soil and for having too costly an equipage, a senator because he possessed ten pounds of silver, another for having repudiated his wife.  It is this overweening power that the Romans call the supervision of morals.  It makes the censors the masters of the city.

=The Senate.=—­The Senate is composed of about 300 persons appointed by the censor.  But the censor does not appoint at random; he chooses only rich citizens respected and of high family, the majority of them former magistrates.  Almost always he appoints those who are already members of the Senate, so that ordinarily one remains a senator for life.  The Senate is an assembly of the principal men of Rome, hence its authority.  As soon as business is presented, one of the magistrates convokes the senators in a temple, lays the question before them, and then asks “what they think concerning this matter.”  The senators reply one by one, following the order of dignity.  This is what they call “consulting the Senate,” and the judgment of the majority is a senatus consultum (decree of the Senate).  This conclusion is only advisory as the Senate has no power to make laws; but Rome obeys this advice as if it were a law.  The people have confidence in the senators, knowing that they have more experience than themselves; the magistrates do not dare to resist an assembly composed of nobles who are their peers.  And so the Senate regulates all public business:  it declares war and determines the number of the armies; it receives ambassadors and makes peace; it fixes the revenues and the expenses.  The people ratify