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The functions of the censorship, which recurred, as in Rome, every five years and, to all appearance, consisted chiefly in the superintendence of public buildings, were also undertaken by the supreme magistrates of the community, namely the ordinary -duumviri-, who in this case assumed the distinctive title of -duumviri- "with censorial or quinquennial power."
Again the multitude of the capital was fed from the state-chest, in other words by the provinces; again the tribunician authority gave to every demagogue a legal license to overturn the arrangements of the state; again the moneyed nobility, as farmers of the revenue and possessed of the judicial control over the governors, raised their heads alongside of the government as powerfully as ever; again the senate trembled before the verdict of jurymen of the equestrian order and before the censorial censure.
It is certain too that after the passage of the lex Iulia in 45 B.C., that the census was taken in the Italian towns at the same time as in Rome, and the reports sent to the censor in Rome. This duty was performed by the duovirs with quinquennial power, also often called censorial power. The inscriptions under consideration, then, would seem to date certainly before 49 B.C.
A censorial power of this excessive kind would be revolting to the population of the most absolute monarchies; here, however, it is submitted to without difficulty. Nowhere has so much been left by the law to the arbitrary determination of the magistrates as in democratic republics, because this arbitrary power is unattended by any alarming consequences.
In the arrangement of Augustus the senatorial houses retained the hereditary equestrian right; but by its side the censorial bestowal of the equestrian horse is renewed as a prerogative of the emperor and without restriction to a definite time, and thereby the designation of equites for the first class of the census as such falls into abeyance. II. III. Increasing Powers of the Burgesses
The villas and the luxurious rural and sea- bathing life rendered Baiae and generally the district around the Bay of Naples the El Dorado of noble idleness. Games of hazard, in which the stake was no longer as in the Italian dice-playing a trifle, became common, and as early as 639 a censorial edict was issued against them.
Even the theatres, operas, cafes, and all places of public amusement, are under the same rigid surveillance. No play can be performed, no opera given, no cafe opened, no garden amusements offered to the public, unless under the supervision and with the sanction of the censorial authorities.
The holding of an inferior magistracy, of the tribunate or the quaestorship, gave doubtless a claim de facto to a place in the senate inasmuch as the censorial selection especially turned towards the men who had held such offices but by no means a reversion de jure.
V. The Basilica called Porcia was a censorial dedication of the old Cato. Now, as the tribunes were accustomed to transact business here, and there was a pillar which was considered to be in the way of their seats, they resolved to take it away or to remove it to another spot.
There was destined for distribution only the Italian domain-land, that is to say, substantially, the territory of Capua, and, if this should not suffice, other Italian estates were to be purchased out of the revenue of the new eastern provinces at the taxable value recorded in the censorial rolls; all existing rights of property and heritable possession thus remained unaffected.
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