When some decrees were made contrary to his opinion, he did not even make any
					complaint. And though he thought that no magistrates after their nomination
					should be allowed to absent themselves from the city, but reside in it
					constantly, to receive their honours in person, a praetor-elect obtained liberty
					to depart under the honorary title of a legate at large. Again, when he proposed
					to the senate, that the Trebians might have leave granted them to divert some
					money which had been left them by will for the purpose of building a new
					theatre, to that of making a road, he could not prevail to have the will of the
					testator set aside. And when, upon a division of the house, he went over to the
					minority, nobody followed him. All other things of a public nature were likewise
					transacted by the magistrates, and in the usual forms; the authority of the
					consuls remaining so great, that some ambassadors from Africa applied to them, and complained, that
					they could not have their business dispatched by Caesar, to whom they had been
					sent. And no wonder; since it was observed that he used to rise up as the
					consuls approached, and give them the way. He reprimanded some persons of consular rank in command of armies, for not
					writing to the senate an account of their proceedings, anc for consulting him
					about the distribution of military rewards; as if they themselves had not a
					right to bestow them as they judged proper. He commended a praetor, who, on
					entering office, revived an old custom of celebrating the memory of his
					ancestors, in a speech to the people. He attended the corpses of some persons of
					distinction to the funeral pile. He displayed the same moderation with regard to
					persons and things of inferior consideration. The magistrates of Rhodes , having dispatched to him a letter on
					public business, which was not subscribed, he sent for them, and without giving
					them so much as one harsh word, desired them to subscribe it, and so dismissed
					them. Diogenes, the grammarian, who used to hold public disquisitions at
						 Rhodes every sabbath-day, once
					refused him admittance upon his coming to hear him out of course, and sent him a
					message by a servant, postponing his admission to the nexth seventh-day.
					Diogenes afterwards coming to Rome , and
					waiting at his door to be allowed to pay his respects to him, he sent him word
					to come again at the end of seven years. To some governors, who advised him to
					load the provinces with taxes, he answered, "It is the part of a good shepherd
					to shear, not flay, his sheep." He assumed the sovereignty Princeps,
							principatus , are the terms gencrally used by Suetonius to
						describe the supreme authority vested in the Caesars, as before at the
						beginning of chapter xxiv., distinguished from any terms which conveyed an
						idea of kingly power, the forms of the republic, as we have lately seen,
						still subsisting. by slow degrees, and exercised it for a long time
					with great variety of conduct, though generally with a due regard to the public
					good. At first he only interposed to prevent ill management. Accordingly, he
					rescinded some decrees of the senate; and when the magistrates sat for the
					administration of justice, he frequently offered his service as assessor, either
					taking his place promiscuously amongst them, or seating himself in a corner of
					the tribunal. If a rumour prevailed, that any person under prosecution was
					likely to be acquitted by his interest, he would suddenly make his appearance,
					and from the floor of the court, or the praetor's bench, remind the judges of
					the laws, and of their oaths, and the nature of the charge brought before them.
					He likewise took upon himself the correction of public morals, where they tended
					to decay, either through neglect, or evil custom. He reduced the expense of the plays and public spectacles, by diminishing the
					allowances to actors, and curtailing the number of gladiators. He made grievous
					complaints to the senate, that the price of Corinthian vessels was become
					enormous, and that three mullets had been sold for thirty thousand sesterces:
					upon which he proposed that a new sumptuary law should be enacted; that the
					butchers and other dealers in viands should be subject to an assize, fixed by
					the senate yearly; and the aediles commissioned to restrain eating-houses and
					taverns, so far as not even to permit the sale of any kind of pastry. And to
					encourage frugality in the public by his own example, he would often, at his
					solemn feasts, have at his tables victuals which had been served up the day
					before, and were partly eaten, and half a boar, affirming, It has all the same
					good bits that the whole had." He published an edict against the practice of
					people's kissing each other when they met; and would not allow new year's gifts
						 Strenas ; the French
							 étrennes . to be presented after
					the calends [the first] of January was passed. He had been in the habit of
					returning these offerings four-fold, and making them with his own hand; but
					being annoyed by the continual interruption to which he was exposed during the
					whole month, by those who had not the opportunity of attending him on the
					festival, he returned none after that day. Married women guilty of adultery, though not prosecuted publicly, he authorised
					the nearest relations to punish by agreement among themselves, according to
					ancient custom. He discharged a Roman knight from the obligation of an oath he
					had taken, never to turn away his wife; and allowed him to divorce her, upon her
					being caught in criminal intercourse with her son-in-law. Women of ill-fame,
					divesting themselves of the rights and dignity of matrons, had now begun a
					practice of professing themselves prostitutes, to avoid the punishment of the
					laws; and the most profligate young men of the senatorian and equestrian orders,
					to secure themselves agairist a decree of the senate, which prohibited their
					performing on the stage, or in the amphitheatre, voluntarily subjected
					themselves to an infamous sentence, by which they were degraded. All those he
					banished, that none for the future might evade by such artifices the intention
					and efficacy of the law. He stripped a senator of the broad stripes on his robe,
					upon information of his having removed to his gardens before the calends [the
					first] of July, in order that he might afterwards hire a house cheaper in the
					city. He likewise dismissed another from the office of quaestor, for
					repudiating, the day after he had been lucky in drawing his lot, a wife whom he
					had married only the day before.