all the guilds, except such as were of ancient foundation. Crimes were
punished with greater severity; and the rich being more easily induced to
commit them because they were only liable to banishment, without the
forfeiture of their property, he stripped murderers, as Cicero observes,
of their whole estates, and other offenders of one half.

XLIII. He was extremely assiduous and strict in the administration of
justice. He expelled from the senate such members as were convicted of
bribery; and he dissolved the marriage of a man of pretorian rank, who
had married a lady two days after her divorce from a former husband,
although there was no suspicion that they had been guilty of any illicit
connection. He imposed duties on the importation of foreign goods. The
use of litters for travelling, purple robes, and jewels, he permitted
only to persons of a certain age and station, and on particular days. He
enforced a rigid execution of the sumptuary laws; placing officers about
the markets, to seize upon all meats exposed to sale contrary to the
rules, and bring them to him; sometimes sending his lictors and soldiers
to (30) carry away such victuals as had escaped the notice of the
officers, even when they were upon the table.

XLIV. His thoughts were now fully employed from day to day on a variety
of great projects for the embellishment and improvement of the city, as
well as for guarding and extending the bounds of the empire. In the
first place, he meditated the construction of a temple to Mars, which
should exceed in grandeur every thing of that kind in the world. For
this purpose, he intended to fill up the lake on which he had entertained
the people with the spectacle of a sea-fight. He also projected a most
spacious theatre adjacent to the Tarpeian mount; and also proposed to
reduce the civil law to a reasonable compass, and out of that immense and
undigested mass of statutes to extract the best and most necessary parts