<TEI xmlns="http://www.tei-c.org/ns/1.0" xmlns:py="http://codespeak.net/lxml/objectify/pytype" py:pytype="TREE"><text xml:lang="eng"><body><div xml:lang="eng" type="translation" n="urn:cts:latinLit:phi1348.abo022.perseus-eng2"><div type="textpart" n="8" subtype="chapter"><p>In the administration of justice he was diligent and assiduous; and frequently
					sat in the forum out of course, to cancel the judgments of 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 practicing 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.<note anchored="true">This was an ancient law levelled against adultery and other pollutions,
						named from its author Caius Scatinius, a tribune of the people. There was a
						Julian law, with the same object. See AUGUSTUS, c. xxxiv.</note> 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 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 Comitium; excepting only a man of praetorian rank, to whom, because he
					confessed the fact, while the case was dubious, and it was not established
					against him, though the witnesses had been put to the torture, he granted the
					favour of banishment. And to preserve pure and undefiled the reverence due to
					the gods, he ordered the soldiers to demolish a tomb, which one of his freedmen
					had erected for his son out of the stones designed for the temple of Jupiter
					Capitolinus, and to sink in the sea the bones and relics buried in it.</p></div></div></body></text></TEI>