dined well with his neighbour and then informed against him; but under the Didia, if he ate his friend's dinner, he must also keep his tongue quiet. We cannot conceive how a law like the Didia could be enforced without the help of informers; and this Lex, whether the sapient tribune saw it or not, prevented any guest at least from informing. This absurd legislation was probably prompted by a few honest men of the old times, who saw that luxury was rapidly increasing at Rome and wished to check it; and as the rich would alone come within the penalties of such laws, we can understand better how they were enacted by the popular vote.

In B.C. 142 in the consulship of L. Caecilius Metellus Calvus and Q. Fabius Maximus Servilianus, P. Scipio Africanus was censor and L. Mummius was his colleague. The lustrum was not celebrated till the next year, if we follow the authority of Livy's Epitome. The number of citizens' heads, as the Romans expressed it, registered in the census (capita civium censa) was 328,442. It is plain that this number does not include the whole population, men, women and children. Clinton (Fasti, Lustra Romana) concludes from the passages which he quotes that the numbers of the Roman census appear to have described the males of military age,' which age 'included male citizens from seventeen to sixty years of age.' In order to deduce the whole number of Roman citizens from the numbers given by our authorities (capita censa), Clinton assumes the proportion of the numbers given to the whole number to be about 4746 to 20,160 persons. He has given his reasons for fixing this proportion, and if it is near the truth, the reader may in any case deduce the whole Roman population from the number of males of military age who are registered. Dionysius (Antiq. Rom. i. c. 74) informs us that these registers of the citizens were not kept in any public place, but they remained in the possession of the Censors, in whose families they were carefully preserved, and he had examined some of these registers. The numbers, as we have them, may of course have been often corrupted by errors of transcription, but still these registers are valuable historical documents.

The censors did not agree well in their office, which was no unusual thing at Rome. Scipio was severe in his censure, and Mummius was lax, which gave occasion to one of Scipio's sharp sayings. He said in the Senate, I wish you had either given me a colleague or had not given me one. According to Valerius Maximus, Scipio said this in his address to the people after they had elected himself and Mummius.

It was usual for the censors, or one of them at least, to make a public address, a kind of homily, in which the preacher spoke of any bad habits which were prevalent, and exhorted the people to sobriety and good morals. Men who had offended in any notorious manner against morality or their duty as citizens were publicly admonished. The censors' supervision was directed to such matters as law did not touch it was an attempt to supply the imperfection of law by the arbitrary judgment of two men, who could do formally and directly what public opinion in modern times does indirectly, incompletely, and often unjustly. The defects of the Roman system are obvious. The censors might misuse their power or abuse it; but there was this advantage over the loose and indefinite censure of opinion, that the censors' judgment was pronounced by men of mature years and of great experience who had been elected to the highest offices in the state. Their judgment named 'notatio' or 'animadversio censoria' was founded on their conviction of the truth of the matter which was the ground of censure, and no particular form of inquiry or proof was necessary. They took an oath that they would discharge their duty without being moved by dislike or favour, but to the best of their judgment for the interest of the state; and they were bound to assign in the censorial lists the reasons of their judgment. The men who were liable to censure were often, perhaps always, summoned before the censors, and allowed to explain or defend themselves, and so there would be something of the form of a court, but the censors pronounced judgment according to their pleasure. The censors' 'notatio' was not strictly a 'judicium' or judicial sentence. It was a mark on a man's character or good name, and hence it was called 'ignominia,' because it affected his name. But it went further

than that; for it might extend to depriving a man of his rank, as for example when the censors ejected a man from the Senate or from the Equites, removed him into a lower tribe, or ejected him altogether from the tribes and reduced him to the condition of an aerarius by which the man lost his vote. The judgment of the censors must be unanimous, and one censor might prevent the Ignominia which the other would fix on a man's name. The censors' judgment was also valid only during their term of office; and the next censors might reverse it. Accordingly we find examples of men, who had been marked with Ignominia by the censors, being restored to their former condition and filling the highest offices of the State. Thus Ignominia was quite a different thing from that which the Romans named Infamia; for Infamia was fixed on a man for life, and it did not proceed like Ignominia from the mere pleasure of any man, but was founded on the application of general rules and so might be avoided by any one whose conduct did not make him subject to these rules. He who was Infamis was still a citizen, but he lost his political rights for ever. He who was marked with Ignominia, might, as we have seen, be restored to his former condition.

Some instances of Scipio's exercise of his office have been recorded by Gellius. One P. Sulpicius Gallus, a dandy of the day, among other grounds of censure was publicly reproached by Scipio for wearing a tunic with long sleeves which covered his hands, for it was considered indecorous at Rome for a man to wear a tunic which came down below his arms as far as his hands and almost to his fingers. The Romans had a Greek name for tunics of this kind, which they named 'sleeved' (xepidwroí). A passage from Scipio's address to this unlucky fellow is quoted by Gellius. It is expressed in vigorous language, but so coarse that those who would see it must read the original. It was the censors' business, when the census began, to require every man to give in a particular statement of his property conformably to the general rules in that behalf. Every man began by giving in his name, and the name of his father, or if he was a freedman, his patron's name, and his own age. He was then asked

if he had a wife, and if he had, he gave in her name, and the names and age of his children, if he had any. There was a tax imposed at some time on those above a certain age, who were not married; and it was called very inappropriately 'uxorium' or wife tax, when it ought to have been called bachelors' tax. But all this matter about the tax is very doubtful. The form in which the questions were put to the citizens seems not to have required an oath, but a declaration on honour, and perhaps the same form applied to every question put to the citizens. It is stated by Gellius that the form of the question about marriage was this, Have you, on your honour, a wife? But the Roman expression is ambiguous and might mean, Have you, to your satisfaction, a wife? A man who loved a joke being asked the question by the censor replied, Yes, I have a wife, but in truth not to my liking. The censor punished the joker for his unseasonable wit by degrading him among the aerarii. Cicero tells this story about Cato and his censorship (B.c. 184), but Gellius' authority for a story of this kind is much better than that of Cicero, who is very careless about historical facts.

Another man who happened to make a terrible yawn before the censors was going to be punished for it, but he mitigated their anger by declaring that he had offended unintentionally, and that he was subject to the infirmity which the Romans named Oscedo.

When the census was ended, it was the custom for the censors to determine by lot which of them should perform the religious ceremony called the Lustrum, with which the whole business ended. The lot fell on Mummius. It happened that at this time there was scarcity and a pestilence, a common occurrence in the annals of Rome.

CHAPTER VI.

NUMANTIA.

B.C. 143—136.

In the year B.C. 143 (chap. iv. v.) the consul Q. Caecilius Metellus Macedonicus was sent into Spain against the Celtiberi, and he was there two years. This is generally considered the commencement of the Numantine war. There are only a few scanty notices of the campaign of Metellus. As we have seen, he fell on the Arevaci (Appian, perhaps incorrectly, writes Vaccaei) while they were busy with the harvest, and defeated them. In the second year, when he was proconsul, at the siege of Contrebia, a town whose site is uncertain, five legionary cohorts were driven from their post by the enemy. Metellus commanded them to recover the ground which they had lost and he gave orders to his army to kill every man who should again seek safety in flight. The inflexible severity of the general gave fresh spirit to the men and they drove the enemy back and recovered their position. Appian's text is probably defective in the part where he speaks of the campaigns of Metellus. Florus says that Contrebia was taken. There is recorded by Valerius an example of the humanity of Metellus at the siege of a place which he names Centobriga, and Florus apparently alludes to it under the name of Nertobriga. The engines had been brought up to a part of the wall which was weakest, and were preparing to batter it, when the townspeople placed on this very spot the sons of a man named Rhetogenes who had gone over to Metellus. The father made no opposition to the consul effecting a breach though his sons would perish, but Metellus would not take the place

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