The censor was a magistrate in ancient Rome who was responsible for maintaining the census, supervising public morality, and overseeing certain aspects of the government's finances.Suolahti, J. (1963) The Roman Censors: A Study on Social Structure (Helsinki)
Established under the Roman Republic, power of the censor was limited in subject matter but absolute within his sphere: in matters reserved for the censors, no magistrate could oppose his decisions, and only another censor who succeeded him could cancel those decisions. Censors were also given unusually long terms of office; unlike other elected offices of the Republic, which (excluding certain priests elected for life) had terms of 12 months or less, censors' terms were generally 18 months to 5 years (depending on the era). The censorate was thus highly prestigious, preceding all other regular magistracies in dignity if not in power and reserved with rare exceptions for former consuls. Attaining the censorship would thus be considered the crowning achievement of a Roman politician on the cursus honorum. However, the magistracy as a regular office did not survive the transition from the Republic to the Empire.
The censor's regulation of public morality is the origin of the modern meaning of the words censor and censorship.
Early history of the magistracy According to Livy's History of Rome, the census was first instituted by Servius Tullius, sixth king of Rome, BC. After the abolition of the monarchy and the founding of the Republic in 509 BC, the consuls had responsibility for the census until 443 BC. In 444 BC, no consuls were elected, but tribunes with consular power were appointed instead. This was a move by the plebeians to try to attain higher magistracies: only patricians could be elected consuls, while some military tribunes were plebeians. To prevent the possibility of plebeians obtaining control of the census, the patricians removed the right to take the census from the consuls and tribunes, and appointed for this duty two magistrates, called censores (censors), elected exclusively from the patricians in Rome.
The magistracy continued to be controlled by patricians until 351 BC, when Gaius Marcius Rutilus was appointed the first plebeian censor.Livy vii.22. Twelve years later, in 339 BC, one of the Publilian laws required that one censor had to be a plebeian.Livy viii.12. Despite this, no plebeian censor performed the solemn purification of the people (the lustrum; Livy Periochae 13) until 280 BC. In 131 BC, for the first time, both censors were plebeians.
The reason for having two censors was that the two consuls had previously taken the census together. If one of the censors died during his term of office, another was chosen to replace him, just as with consuls. This happened only once, in 393 BC. However, the Gauls captured Rome in that lustrum (five-year period), and the Romans thereafter regarded such replacement as "an offense against religion".Livy v.31. From then on, if one of the censors died, his colleague resigned, and two new censors were chosen to replace them.Livy vi.27, ix.34, xxiv.43, xxvii.6.
The office of censor was limited to eighteen months by a law proposed by the dictator Mamercus Aemilius Mamercinus.Livy iv.24, ix.33. During the censorship of Appius Claudius Caecus (312–308 BC) the prestige of the censorship massively increased. Caecus built the first-ever Roman road (the Via Appia) and the first Roman aqueduct (the Aqua Appia), both named after him."The Romans: From Village to Empire: A History of Rome from Earliest Times to the End of the Western Empire" by M. Boatwright, et al. 2nd edition. 2011. He changed the organisation of the Roman tribes and was the first censor to draw the list of senators. He also advocated the founding of Roman coloniae throughout Latium and Campania to support the Roman war effort in the Second Samnite War. With these efforts and reforms, Appius Claudius Caecus was able to hold the censorship for a whole lustrum (five-year period), and the office of censor, subsequently entrusted with various important duties, eventually attained one of the highest political statuses in the Roman Republic, second only to that of the consuls.
Election The censors were elected in the Centuriate Assembly, which met under the presidency of a consul.Aulus Gellius xiii.15; Livy xl.45. Barthold Niebuhr suggests that the censors were at first elected by the Curiate Assembly, and that the Assembly's selections were confirmed by the Centuriate, but William Smith believes that "there is no authority for this supposition, and the truth of it depends entirely upon the correctness of [Niebuhr's] views respecting the election of the consuls". Both censors had to be elected on the same day, and accordingly if the voting for the second was not finished in the same day, the election of the first was invalidated, and a new assembly had to be held.Livy ix.34.
The assembly for the election of the censors was held under different auspices from those at the election of the consuls and praetors, so the censors were not regarded as their colleagues, although they likewise possessed the maxima auspicia.Gellii xiii.15. The assembly was held by the new consuls shortly after they began their term of office;Livy xxiv.10, xxxix.41. and the censors, as soon as they were elected and the censorial power had been granted to them by a decree of the Centuriate Assembly (lex centuriata), were fully installed in their office.Cicero, de Lege Agraria ii.11; Livy xl.45.
As a general principle, the only ones eligible for the office of censor were those who had previously been consuls, but there were a few exceptions. At first, there was no law to prevent a person being censor twice, but the only person who was elected to the office twice was Gaius Marcius Rutilus in 265 BC. In that year, he originated a law stating that no one could be elected censor twice. In consequence of this, he received the cognomen of Censorinus.Plutarch, Life of Coriolanus 1; Valerius Maximus iv.1 §3.
Attributes The censorship differed from all other Roman magistracies in the length of office. The censors were originally chosen for a whole lustrum (a period of five years), but as early as ten years after its institution (433 BC) their office was limited to eighteen months by a law of Dictator Mamercus Aemilius Mamercinus. The censors were also unique with respect to rank and dignity. They had no imperium, and accordingly no lictors.Zonar. vii.19. Their rank was granted to them by the Centuriate Assembly, and not by the curiae, and in that respect they were inferior in power to the consuls and praetors.Cicero, de Lege Agraria ii.11.
Notwithstanding this, the censorship was regarded as the highest dignity in the state, with the exception of the dictatorship; it was a "sacred magistracy" (sanctus magistratus), to which the deepest reverence was due.Plutarch Life of Cato the Elder 16, Life of Flaminius 18, Life of Camillus 2, 14, Life of Aemilius 38; Cicero ad Familiares iii.10. The high rank and dignity which the censorship obtained was due to the various important duties gradually entrusted to it, and especially to its possessing the regimen morum, or general control over the conduct and the morals of the citizens. In the exercise of this power, they were regulated solely by their own views of duty, and were not responsible to any other power in the state.Dionys. in Mai, Nova Coll. vol. ii p516; Livy iv.24, xxix.37; Valerius Maximus vii.2 §6.
The censors possessed the official stool called a "curule chair" (sella curulis),Livy xl.45. but some doubt exists with respect to their official dress. A well-known passage of Polybiusvi.53. describes the use of the imagines at funerals; we may conclude that a consul or praetor wore the purple-bordered toga praetexta, one who triumphed the embroidered toga picta, and the censor a purple toga peculiar to him, but other writers speak of their official dress as being the same as that of the other higher magistrates.Zonar. vii.19; Athen. xiv. p660c. The funeral of a censor was always conducted with great pomp and splendour, and hence a "censorial funeral" (funus censorium) was voted even to the emperors.Tacitus Annales iv.15, xiii.2.
Abolition The censorship continued in existence for 421 years, from 443 BC to 22 BC, but during this period, many lustra passed by without any censor being chosen at all. According to one statement, the office was abolished by Lucius Cornelius Sulla.Schol. Gronov. ad Cic. Div. in Caecil. 3, p384, ed. Johann Caspar Orelli. Although the authority on which this statement rests is not of much weight, the fact itself is probable, since there was no census during the two lustra which elapsed from Sulla's dictatorship to Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (Pompey)'s first consulship (82–70 BC), and any strict "imposition of morals" would have been found inconvenient to the aristocracy that supported Sulla.
If the censorship had been done away with by Sulla, it was at any rate restored in the consulship of Pompey and Marcus Licinius Crassus. Its power was limited by one of the laws of the tribune Publius Clodius Pulcher (58 BC), which prescribed certain regular forms of proceeding before the censors in expelling a person from the Roman Senate, and required that the censors be in agreement to exact this punishment.Cassius Dio xxxviii.13; Cicero pro Sestio 25, de Prov. Cons. 15. This law, however, was repealed in the third consulship of Pompey in 52 BC, on the urging of his colleague Q. Caecilius Metellus Scipio,Cassius Dio xl.57. but the office of the censorship never recovered its former power and influence.
During the civil wars which followed soon afterwards, no censors were elected; it was only after a long interval that they were again appointed, namely in 23 BC, when Augustus caused Lucius Munatius Plancus and Aemilius Lepidus Paullus to fill the office.Suetonius Life of Augustus 37, Life of Claudius 16; Cassius Dio liv.2. This was the last time that such magistrates were appointed; the emperors in future discharged the duties of their office under the name of Praefectura Morum ("prefect of the morals").
Some of the emperors sometimes took the name of censor when they held a census of the Roman people; this was the case with Claudius, who appointed the elder Lucius Vitellius as his colleague,Suetonius Life of Claudius 16; Tacitus Annales xii.4, Historia i.9. and with Vespasian, who likewise had a colleague in his son Titus.Suet. Vesp. 8, Tit. 6. Domitian assumed the title of "perpetual censor" (censor perpetuus),Cassius Dio liii.18. but this example was not imitated by succeeding emperors. In the reign of Decius, the elder Valerian was nominated to the censorship, but declined the position.Symmach. Ep. iv.29, v.9)
Duties The duties of the censors may be divided into three classes, all of which were closely connected with one another:
The Census, register of all citizens and their property, confirmation or appointment of senators (lectio senatus, ), and recognition of those who qualified for the equestrian rank (recognitio equitum); The Regimen Morum, keeping of public morals; and The administration of the finances of the state, superintendence of public buildings, and erection of all new public works.Suolahti, J. (1963) The Roman Censors: A Study on Social Structure (Helsinki) 58f