Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/221

 CHAP. Yn. THE KELIGION OF THE CITY. 215 We are enabled to judge of the importance of this ceremony by the exorbitant power of the magistrate who presided at it. The censor, before commencing the sacrifice, ranged the people in a certain order; the senators, the knights, and the tribes, each rank in its appropriate place. Absolute master on that day, he fixed the place of each man in the different categories. Then, all having been arranged according to his direc- tions, he performed the sacred act. Now, a result of this was, that from that day to the following lustration, every man preserved in the city the rank which the •censor had assigned him in the ceremony. He was a senator if on that day he had been counted among the senators ; a knight if he had figured among the knights ; if a simple citizen, he formed a part of the tribe in the ranks of which he had been on that day; and if the magistrate had refused to admit him into the ceremony, he was no longer a citizen. Thus the place which one had occupied in the religious act, and where the gods had seen him, was the one he held in the city for five years. Such was the origin of the immense power of the censor. In this ceremony none but citizens took part ; but their wives, their children, their slaves, their prop- erty, real and personal, were in a manner purified in the person of the head of the family. It was for this reason that, before the sacrifice, each citizen was re- quired to give to the censor an account of the persons and property belonging to him. The lustration was accomplished in Augustus's time with the same exactitude and the same rites as in the ihe lustration; nothing could exempt them from this. Vo.lloius II 15.