the court of The One Hundred, which had been procured through favour, or
interest. He occasionally cautioned the judges of the court of recovery
to beware of being too ready to admit claims for freedom brought before
them. He set a mark of infamy upon judges who were convicted of taking
bribes, as well as upon their assessors. He likewise instigated the
tribunes of the people to prosecute a corrupt aedile for extortion, and
to desire the senate to appoint judges for his trial. He likewise took
such effectual care in punishing magistrates of the city, and governors
of provinces, guilty of malversation, that they never were at any time
more moderate or more just. Most of these, since his reign, we have seen
prosecuted for crimes of various kinds. Having taken upon himself the
reformation of the public manners, he restrained the licence of the
populace in sitting promiscuously with the knights in the theatre.
Scandalous libels, published to defame persons of rank, of either sex, he
suppressed, and inflicted upon their authors a mark of infamy. He
expelled a man of quaestorian rank from the senate, for practising
mimicry and dancing. He debarred infamous women the use of litters; as
also the right of receiving legacies, or inheriting estates. He struck
out of the list of judges a Roman knight for taking again his wife whom
he had divorced and prosecuted for adultery. He condemned several men of
the senatorian and equestrian orders, upon the Scantinian law [813]. The
lewdness of the Vestal Virgins, which had been overlooked by his father
and brother, he punished severely, but in different ways; viz. offences
committed before his reign, with death, and those since its commencement,
according to ancient custom. For to the two sisters called Ocellatae, he
gave liberty to choose the mode of death which they preferred, and
banished (486) their paramours. But Cornelia, the president of the
Vestals, who had formerly been acquitted upon a charge of incontinence,
being a long time after again prosecuted and condemned, he ordered to be
buried alive; and her gallants to be whipped to death with rods in the