— they were to choose, up to the number of three hundred or thereabout, "every most excellent citizen of any rank" (optimum quemque ex omni ordine).[1] But by what standard were they to measure this excellence? Whatever was the precise intention of the words just quoted, — if indeed they were the actual words of the statute, — there is no doubt at all as to the way in which the censors interpreted them. In a community like the Roman, where the virtues of the private man could not expect to attract notice, they had practically no choice. The only available measure of excellence was the performance of public duty. They first of all put upon the roll all who had in any year held a curule office, i.e. who had been consul, prætor, or curule ædile. All of these had already sat in the Senate ever since their year of office, and were well acquainted with senatorial procedure and the manner of conducting business; those who had held office since the last revision now became for the first time full senators, though they had been allowed hitherto to retain the seats they had acquired as magistrates. Next the censors added all who had been non-curule magistrates, i.e. all ex-ædiles of the plebs, ex-tribunes of the plebs, and ex-quæstors. It has been calculated that, without going further, the list of three
- ↑ The only information we have about this important law is in Festus' abridgment of Verrius Flaccus, the antiquary of the Augustan age: ed. Müller, p. 246, s. v. præteriti senatores. A full discussion of it in Willems' Sénat, i. 153 foll. Cf. Mommsen, Staatsrecht, ii, 413; iii. 873.
