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26He next dedicated the theatre named after Marcellus. In the course of the festival held for this purpose the patrician boys, including his grandson Gaius, performed the equestrian exercise called “Troy,” and six hundred wild beasts from Africa were slain. 2And to celebrate the birthday of Augustus, Iullus, the son of Antony, who was praetor, gave games in the Circus and a slaughter of wild beasts, and entertained both the emperor and the senate, in pursuance of a decree of that body, upon the Capitol.
3After this there was another purging of the lists of the senate. At first, as we have seen, the rating of senators had been fixed at four hundred thousand sesterces, because many of them had been stripped of their ancestral estates by the wars, and then, as time went on and men acquired wealth, it had been raised to one million sesterces. Consequently no one was any longer found who would of his own choice become a senator; 4on the contrary, sons and grandsons of senators, some of them really poor and others reduced to humble station by the misfortunes of their ancestors, not only would not lay claim to the senatorial dignity, but also, when already entered on the lists, swore that they were ineligible. 5Therefore, previous to this time, while Augustus was still absent from the city, a decree had been passed that the Vigintiviri, as they were called, should be appointed from the knights; and thus none of these men eligible to be senators was any longer enrolled in the senate without having also held one of the other offices that led to it. These Vigintiviri 6are what is left of the Vigintisexviri, of whom three are in charge of criminal trials, another three attend to the coinage of the money, four look after the streets in the city, and ten are assigned to the courts which are allotted to the Centumviri; 7for the two who were once entrusted with the roads outside the walls and the four who used to be sent to Campania had been abolished. This was one decree that was passed during the absence of Augustus; there was also another providing that, since no one was any longer ready to seek the tribuneship, some of the ex-quaestors who were not yet forty years old should be appointed to the office by lot. 8But on the present occasion Augustus himself made an investigation of the whole senatorial class. With those who were over thirty-five years of age he did not concern himself, but in the case of those who were under that age and possessed the requisite rating he compelled them to become senators, unless one of them was physically disabled. 9He examined their persons himself, but in regard to their property he accepted sworn statements, the men themselves and others as witnesses taking an oath and rendering an account of their poverty as well as of their manner of life.
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