51.
The censors chose the senate faithfully and harmoniously. The princeps senatus selected was Marcus Aemilius Lepidus himself, a censor and the pontifix maximus;1 three were expelled from the senate; Lepidus retained some who had been passed over by his colleague.2
[2]
Public works, out of the money assigned and divided between them, they carried out as follows.
[3]
Lepidus built a mole at Tarracina, a work which brought him censure because he owned property there and had included with expenditures chargeable to the state some private expenses; he contracted for a theatre and proscenium-building3 at the temple of Apollo, and for the cleaning and whitening of the temple of Jupiter on the Capitoline and of the columns around it; and from these columns he removed the statues which seemed to be so placed as to obstruct the view, and he took down the shields from the columns and the military standards of every sort which were affixed to them.
[4]
Marcus Fulvius contracted for [p. 159]additional works and of greater utility: a harbour4 5 and the piles for a bridge over the Tiber, the piles on which many years later Publius Scipio Africanus and Lucius Mummius in
[5??]
their censorship contracted for the construction of arches,6 a basilica behind the new shops of the silver-smiths7 and a fish-market8 with shops about it which he sold for private
[6]
use; also a portico9 outside the Porta Trigemina, and another behind the dock-yards, and near the shrine of Hercules, and behind the temple of Spes on the Tiber, and near the shrine of Apollo
[7]
Medicus.10 They had, besides, money in common: from this they let contracts in the names of both for the construction of an aqueduct and the erection of arches. This undertaking was blocked by Marcus Licinius Crassus, who would not permit the aqueduct to run across his property.11 The same censors established many port-dues and
[8]
taxes.12 Many shrines and public places, occupied by private persons, they caused to be public and sacred and open to the
[9]
people. They changed the method of voting and constituted the tribes according to districts and to the classes and situations and occupations of the members.13 [p. 161]
1 His predecessor Lucius Valerius Flaccus, who had died the preceding year (xlii. 6 above), had also been censor.
2 i.e., the colleague had been in favour of rejecting these men also, as indicated by his not having included them in the “approved” list. The agreement of the censors was necessary for expulsion.
3 By theatrum Livy means the auditorium (cavea), a common meaning of the Greek θέατρον. Perhaps the theatre was used only for the Apollo cult; if it was an actual theatre, it was the earliest of permanent character in Rome, although that distinction is usually given to the theatre of Pompey, erected more than a century later. This theatre may have been torn down by later censors, but the fact is not recorded.
4 It was probably near the bridge.
5 B.C. 179
6 The bridge is the pons Aemilius, finished by Scipio Aemilianus and Mummius in their censorship in 142 B.C. The single arch still standing in the river may belong to it.
7 On the north side of the Forum. Originally called basilica Fulvia or Aemilia et Fulvia, its restorations by later Aemilii have caused it to be known as basilica Aemilia. For the earlier basilica Porcia cf. XXXIX. xliv. 7 and the note.
8 It lay to the north of the basilica and was probably identical with the macellum of XXVII. xi. 16.
9 If et forum should be read before et porticum, it may refer to the forum Pistorum below the Aventine, but information as to this is scanty.
10 The temples of Spes and Apollo were probably in the region of the forum Olitorium, that of Hercules in the forum Boariurm. The portico system then seems to connect the two districts where Fulvius was most active, that near the upper end of the island and that below the Aventine.
11 Condemnation of private property for such purposes was not authorized. Nothing more seems to be known about this project, and it may have fallen through by reason of the opposition of Crassus.
12 Particularly on public lands which were in private hands.
13 Unfortunately, Livy is not explicit as to this reorganization, and we cannot go beyond speculation.
Livy. Books XL-XLII With An English Translation. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1938: published without copyright notice.
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