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17Besides these several enactments, Augustus further provided that, for the distribution of grain, one candidate, who must have served as praetor three years previously, should be nominated each year by each of the officials then serving, and that, from these nominees, four men should be chosen by lot to serve in succession as distributors of grain. 2And he commanded that the office of prefect of the city, who was chosen for the Feriae, should always be filled by the election of one man, and that the Sibylline verses, which had become indistinct through lapse of time, should be copied off by the priests with their own hands, in order that no one else might read them. 3He permitted all to stand for office who possessed property worth four hundred thousand sesterces and were eligible by the laws to hold office. This was the senatorial rating which he at first established; but later he raised it to one million sesterces. Upon some of those who lived upright lives but possessed less than the four hundred thousand sesterces in the first instance, or the million in the second, he bestowed the amount lacking. 4And because of this he allowed the praetors who so desired to spend on the public festivals three times the amount granted them from the treasury. Thus, even if some were vexed at the strictness of his other regulations, yet by reason of this action and also because he restored one Pylades, a dancer, who had been exiled on account of sedition, they remembered them no longer. 5Hence Pylades is said to have rejoined very cleverly, when the emperor rebuked him for having quarrelled with Bathyllus, a fellow-artist and a favourite of Maecenas: “It is to your advantage, Caesar, that the people should devote their spare time to us.”
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