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2He took the same course also when they wished to elect him censor for life; for, declining to take the office himself, he immediately appointed others to be censors, namely Paulus Aemilius Lepidus and Lucius Munatius Plancus, the latter a brother of that Plancus who had been proscribed, and the former a man who had himself been condemned to die at that same time. 2These were the last two private citizens to hold the censorship together, which was no doubt the meaning of the sign given to them; for the platform, on which they were to perform one of the functions devolving upon them, collapsed as they ascended it on the first day of their holding the office, and was shattered in pieces, and after that no others of the same rank as these became censors together. 3Even at this time, in spite of their having been chosen to the position, Augustus performed many of the duties belonging to their office. Of the public banquets, he abolished some altogether and limited the extravagance of others. He committed the charge of all the festivals to the praetors, commanding that an appropriation should be given them from the public treasury, 4and also forbidding any one of them to spend more than another from his own means on these festivals, or to give a gladiatorial combat unless the senate decreed it, or, in fact, oftener than twice in each year or with more than one hundred and twenty men. To the curule aediles he entrusted the putting out of fires, for which purpose he granted them six hundred slaves as assistants. 5And since knights and women of rank had given exhibitions on the stage even then, he forbade not only the sons of senators, who had even before this been excluded, but also their grandsons, so far, at least, as these belonged to the equestrian order, to do anything of the sort again.
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