Blackwell Reference Online

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Romans of every order could well believe, in the consulship of Hortensius Hortalus and Quintus Metellus, that stability, so long dissolved in the acid of terror and warfare, was again fixed and hard. The consuls of 69 presided over a year remarkable for its signs of confidence and restored virtue: the censors, elected in 70, completed their work and celebrated the lustrum, by means of which ritual the restored and purified state received, after so long an interval, the sanction of the divine order. And yet this was to be the final lustrum of the Republic (Aug. Anc. 8. 2): in a mere 20 years, Rome would again be plunged into civil war, after which peace would be restored only by way of an enduring autocracy.Intensive moralism was not an innovation of the Augustan age. The census concluded in 69 was rigorous: 64 senators were expelled from the body. Plainly the censors agreed with Sulla that moral reform was vital in the aftermath of civil war, a disaster that could only be attributed to depravity on the part of some in the ruling order. It was the regular responsibility of censors to organize the People by classes, thereby enabling each man to exercise his franchise. In the aftermath of the Social War, the citizenry had become expanded, but various disputes, and the civil war, had delayed the actual enfranchisement of Rome's former allies, which was entirely completed only in 84. ... log in or subscribe to read full text