Censor: Encyclopedia II - Censor - Attributes

Censor - Attributes

The censorship is distinguished from all other Roman magistracies by the length of time during which it was held. The censors were originally chosen for a whole lustrum (period of five years), but their office was limited to eighteen months as early as ten years after its institution (433 BC) by a law of the dictator Mamercus Aemilius Mamercinus (Livy iv.24, ix.33). The censors also held a very peculiar position with respect to rank and dignity. No imperium was bestowed upon them, and accordingly they had no lictors (Zonar. vii.19). The jus censurae ("right of the censorship") was granted to them by the Centuriate Assembly, and not by the curiae, and in that respect they were inferior in power to the consuls and praetors (Cicero, de Lege Agraria ii.11).

Notwithstanding this, the censorship was regarded as the highest dignity in the state, with the exception of the dictatorship; it was a "sacred magistracy" (sanctus magistratus), to which the deepest reverence was due (Plutarch Life of Cato the Elder 16, Life of Flaminius 18, Life of Camillus 2, 14, Life of Aemilius 38; Cicero ad Familiares iii.10). The high rank and dignity which the censorship obtained was due to the various important duties gradually entrusted to it, and especially to its possessing the regimen morum, or general control over the conduct and the morals of the citizens. In the exercise of this power, they were regulated solely by their own views of duty, and were not responsible to any other power in the state (Dionys. in Mai, Nova Coll. vol. ii p516; Livy iv.24, xxix.37; Valerius Maximus vii.2 §6).

The censors possessed of course the "curule seat" (sella curulis) (Livy xl.45), but there is some doubt with respect to their official dress. From a well-known passage of Polybius (vi.53) describing the use of the imagines at funerals, we may conclude that a consul or praetor wore the purple-bordered toga praetexta, one who triumphed the embroidered toga picta, and the censor a purple toga peculiar to him; but other writers speak of their official dress as the same as that of the other higher magistrates (Zonar. vii.19; Athen. xiv. p660c). The funeral of a censor was always conducted with great pomp and splendour, and hence a "censorial funeral" (funus censorium) was voted even to the emperors (Tacitus Annales iv.15, xiii.2).

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Attributes", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki