Dio's Rome, Volume 4 - An Historical Narrative Originally Composed in Greek During the - Reigns of Septimius Severus, Geta and Caracalla, Macrinus, - Elagabalus and Alexander Severus: and Now Presented in English Form by Cassius Dio
page 64 of 363 (17%)
page 64 of 363 (17%)
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right to make enrollments, to collect moneys, declare wars make peace,
rule foreign and native territory alike everywhere and always, even to the extent of putting to death both knights and senators within the pomerium, and all the other privileges once granted to the consuls and other officials with full powers. By virtue of the office of censor they investigate our lives and characters and take the census. Some they list in the equestrian and senatorial class and others they erase from the roll, as pleases them. By virtue of being consecrated in all the priesthoods and furthermore having the right to give the majority of them to others and from the fact that _one_ of the high priests (if there be two or three holding office at once) is chosen from their number, they are themselves also masters of holy and sacred things. The so-called tribunician authority which the men of very greatest attainment used to hold gives them the right to stop any measure brought up by some one else, in case they do not join in approving it, and to be free from personal abuse. Moreover if they are thought to be wronged in even the slightest degree not merely by action but even by conversation they may destroy the guilty party without a trial as one polluted. They do not think it lawful to be tribune, because they belong altogether to the patrician class, but they assume all the power of the tribuneship undiminished from the period of its greatest extent; and thereby the enumeration of the years they have held the office in question goes forward on the assumption that they receive it year by year along with the others who are successively tribunes. Thus by these names they have secured these privileges in accordance with all the various usages of the democracy, in order that they may appear to possess nothing that has not been given them. [-18-] They have gained also another prerogative which was given to none of the ancient Romans outright to apply to all cases, and it is through |
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