Roman censor

The censor was a magistrate in ancient Rome who was responsible for maintaining the census, supervising public morality, and overseeing certain aspects of the government's finances.

With these efforts and reforms, Appius Claudius Caecus was able to hold the censorship for a whole lustrum (five-year period), and the office of censor, subsequently entrusted with various important duties, eventually attained one of the highest political statuses in the Roman Republic, second only to that of the consuls.

[20] Notwithstanding this, the censorship was regarded as the highest dignity in the state, with the exception of the dictatorship; it was a "sacred magistracy" (sanctus magistratus), to which the deepest reverence was due.

[21] The high rank and dignity which the censorship obtained was due to the various important duties gradually entrusted to it, and especially to its possessing the regimen morum, or general control over the conduct and the morals of the citizens.

[29] This law, however, was repealed in the third consulship of Pompey in 52 BC, on the urging of his colleague Q. Caecilius Metellus Scipio,[30] but the office of the censorship never recovered its former power and influence.

[31] During the civil wars which followed soon afterwards, no censors were elected; it was only after a long interval that they were again appointed, namely in 23 BC, when Augustus caused Lucius Munatius Plancus and Aemilius Lepidus Paullus to fill the office.

[32] This was the last time that such magistrates were appointed; the emperors in future discharged the duties of their office under the name of Praefectura Morum ("prefect of the morals").

A general view of these duties is briefly expressed in the following passage of Cicero:[40] "Censores populi aevitates, soboles, familias pecuniasque censento: urbis templa, vias, aquas, aerarium, vectigalia tuento: populique partes in tribus distribunto: exin pecunias, aevitates, ordines patiunto: equitum, peditumque prolem describunto: caelibes esse prohibento: mores populi regunto: probrum in senatu ne relinquunto."

Every pater familias had to appear in person before the censors, who were seated in their curule chairs, and those names were taken first which were considered to be of good omen, such as Valerius, Salvius, Statorius, etc.

[47] First he had to give his full name (praenomen, nomen, and cognomen) and that of his father, or if he were a libertus ("freedman") that of his patron, and he was likewise obliged to state his age.

[48] Single women and orphans were represented by their guardians; their names were entered in separate lists, and they were not included in the sum total of heads.

Judging from the practice of the imperial period, it was the custom to give a most minute specification of all such land as a citizen held according to the Quiritarian law.

In ancient times, the sudden outbreaks of war prevented the census from being taken,[58] because a large number of the citizens would necessarily be absent.

It is supposed from a passage in Livy[59] that in later times the censors sent commissioners into the provinces with full powers to take the census of the Roman soldiers there, but this seems to have been a special case.

These lists formed a most important part of the Tabulae Censoriae, under which name were included all the documents connected in any way with the discharge of the censors' duties.

[65] The emperor sent into the provinces special officers called censitores to take the census;[66] but the duty was sometimes discharged by the Imperial legati.

They were constituted as the conservators of public morality; they were not simply to prevent crime or particular acts of immorality, but rather to maintain the traditional Roman character, ethics, and habits (mos majorum)—regimen morum also encompassed this protection of traditional ways,[69] which was called in the times of the Empire cura ("supervision") or praefectura ("command").

The punishment inflicted by the censors in the exercise of this branch of their duties was called nota ("mark, letter") or notatio, or animadversio censoria ("censorial reproach").

Hence, the Roman censors might brand a man with their "censorial mark" (nota censoria) in case he had been convicted of a crime in an ordinary court of justice, and had already suffered punishment for it.

[71] Infamia and the censorial verdict was not a judicium or res judicata,[72] for its effects were not lasting, but might be removed by the following censors, or by a lex (roughly "law").

The ignominia was thus only a transitory reduction of status, which does not even appear to have deprived a magistrate of his office,[73] and certainly did not disqualify persons labouring under it for obtaining a magistracy, for being appointed as judices by the praetor, or for serving in the Roman army.

The punishments are generally divided into four classes: It was this authority of the Roman censors which eventually developed into the modern meaning of "censor" and "censorship"—i.e., officials who review published material and forbid the publication of material judged to be contrary to "public morality" as the term is interpreted in a given political and social environment.

The censors also possessed the right, though probably not without the assent of the Senate, of imposing new vectigalia,[104] and even of selling the land belonging to the state.

[105] It would thus appear that it was the duty of the censors to bring forward a budget for a five-year period, and to take care that the income of the state was sufficient for its expenditure during that time.

All the public money was paid into the aerarium, which was entirely under the jurisdiction of the Senate; and all disbursements were made by order of this body, which employed the quaestors as its officers.

The censors had the general superintendence of all the public buildings and works (opera publica), and to meet the expenses connected with this part of their duties, the Senate voted them a certain sum of money or certain revenues, to which they were restricted, but which they might at the same time employ according to their discretion.

[109] The persons who undertook the contract were called conductores, mancipes, redemptores, susceptores, etc., and the duties they had to discharge were specified in the Leges Censoriae.

The censors had also to superintend the expenses connected with the worship of the gods, even for instance the feeding of the sacred geese in the Capitol; these various tasks were also let out on contract.

Besides keeping existing public buildings and facilities in a proper state of repair, the censors were also in charge of constructing new ones, either for ornament or utility, both in Rome and in other parts of Italy, such as temples, basilicae, theatres, porticoes, fora, aqueducts, town walls, harbours, bridges, cloacae, roads, etc.

Long after the Roman census was no longer taken, the Latin word lustrum has survived, and been adopted in some modern languages, in the derived sense of a period of five years, i.e., half a decennium.