the most honourable persons in Italy and the provinces. And to let it be
known that those two orders differed not so much in privileges as in
dignity, he declared publicly, when some altercation passed between a
senator and a Roman knight, "that senators ought not to be treated with
scurrilous language, unless they were the aggressors, and then it was
fair and lawful to return it."

X. The business of the courts had prodigiously accumulated, partly from
old law-suits which, on account of the interruption that had been given
to the course of justice, still remained undecided, and partly from the
accession of new suits arising out of the disorder of the times. He,
therefore, chose commissioners by lot to provide for the restitution of
what had been seized by violence during the war, and others with
extraordinary jurisdiction to decide causes belonging to the centumviri,
and reduce them to as small a number as possible, for the dispatch of
which, otherwise, the lives of the litigants could scarcely allow
sufficient time.

XI. Lust and luxury, from the licence which had long prevailed, had also
grown to an enormous height. He, therefore, obtained a decree of the
senate, that a woman who formed an union with the slave of another
person, should be considered (454) a bondwoman herself; and that usurers
should not be allowed to take proceedings at law for the recovery of
money lent to young men whilst they lived in their father's family, not
even after their fathers were dead.

XII. In other affairs, from the beginning to the end of his government,
he conducted himself with great moderation and clemency. He was so far
from dissembling the obscurity of his extraction, that he frequently made
mention of it himself. When some affected to trace his pedigree to the