and allowed him to divorce her, upon her being caught in criminal
intercourse with her son-in-law. Women of ill-fame, divesting themselves
of the rights and dignity of matrons, had now begun a practice of
professing themselves prostitutes, to avoid (215) the punishment of the
laws; and the most profligate young men of the senatorian and equestrian
orders, to secure themselves against a decree of the senate, which
prohibited their performing on the stage, or in the amphitheatre,
voluntarily subjected themselves to an infamous sentence, by which they
were degraded. All those he banished, that none for the future might
evade by such artifices the intention and efficacy of the law. He
stripped a senator of the broad stripes on his robe, upon information of
his having removed to his gardens before the calends [the first] of July,
in order that he might afterwards hire a house cheaper in the city. He
likewise dismissed another from the office of quaestor, for repudiating,
the day after he had been lucky in drawing his lot, a wife whom he had
married only the day before.

XXXVI. He suppressed all foreign religions, and the Egyptian [334] and
Jewish rites, obliging those who practised that kind of superstition, to
burn their vestments, and all their sacred utensils. He distributed the
Jewish youths, under the pretence of military service, among the
provinces noted for an unhealthy climate; and dismissed from the city all
the rest of that nation as well as those who were proselytes to that
religion [335], under pain of slavery for life, unless they complied. He
also expelled the astrologers; but upon their suing for pardon, and
promising to renounce their profession, he revoked his decree.

XXXVII. But, above all things, he was careful to keep the (216) public
peace against robbers, burglars, and those who were disaffected to the
government. He therefore increased the number of military stations