Page:Roman public life (IA romanpubliclife00greeiala).pdf/398

This page needs to be proofread.

census required, though it varied from time to time during the reign of Augustus, was finally fixed at a million sesterces.[1] Ingenuitas was required—Claudius even demanded free birth through three generations[2]—and it was counted one of the abuses of tyrannical rule when the favour of Emperors admitted freedmen into the Senate.[3] For a time the council maintained its mainly Roman character, but "new men" from Italy and the provinces crept in with the censorships of Claudius and Vespasian,[4] and the former Emperor even granted admission to the Gallic Aedui, perhaps by an employment of his right of adlectio.[5] The reception of provincials finally became so frequent that, to give them an Italian interest, it was decreed by Trajan that one-third of their property must be invested in land in Italy,[6] a quota that was changed by Marcus Aurelius to one-fourth.[7]

Removal from the Senate belonged to the Emperor either as censor, when he exercised the discretionary moral judgment which had been associated with the Republican lectio,[8] or in virtue of that power of revision which, as we have seen, became associated with the Principate.[9] The chief grounds of exclusion were lack of the requisite census, refusal to take the oath in acta Caesaris which was demanded of senators as of magistrates,[10] or condemnation for crime. The Senate itself, in the exercise of its judicial power, could add to the sentence which it inflicted on a senator the penalty of expulsion from the house;[11] it might even make this expulsion a punishment for calumnious accusation.[12] The revised list of the Senate (album senatorium) was

  1. ↑ Dio Cass. liv. 17, 30; Tac. Ann. i. 75, ii. 37.
  2. ↑ He declared "non lecturum se senatorem nisi civis Romani abnepotem" (Suet. Claud. 24).
  3. ↑ Vita Commodi 6 "ad cujus (Cleandri) nutum etiam libertini in senatum atque in patricios lecti sunt"; Vita Elagabali 11 "Fecit libertos praesides, legatos, consules, duces."
  4. ↑ Tac. Ann. iii. 4 "simul novi homines e municipiis et coloniis atque etiam provinciis in senatum crebro adsumpti"; Suet. Vesp. 9 "Amplissimos ordines . . . purgavit supplevitque, recenso senatu et equite . . . honestissimo quoque Italicorum ac provincialium adlecto."
  5. ↑ Tac. Ann. xi 25; Prof. Pelham in Classical Review ix. p. 441.
  6. ↑ Plin. Ep. vi. 19.
  7. ↑ Vita Marci 11.
  8. ↑ For the infliction of such a nota by Domitian see Suet. Dom. 8, "quaestorium virum, quod gesticulandi saltandique studio teneretur, movit senatu."
  9. ↑ p. 347.
  10. ↑ Tac. Ann. iv. 42 (Tiberius) "Apidium . . . Merulam, quod in acta ilivi Augusti non juraverat, albo senatorio crasit."
  11. ↑ ib. iii. 17; vi. 48.
  12. ↑ ib. iv. 21; xii. 59.
This article is issued from Wikisource. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.