84 plint's NATUEAL HISTOET. [Book XXXIII. 



of victualling-houses, made complaint in the senate that the 

 proprietors of those places were in the habit of protecting 

 themselves from the consequences of their guilt by their plea 

 of wearing the golden ring.^^ For this reason, an ordinance 

 was made that no person whatsoever should have this right of 

 wearing the ring, unless, freeborn himself as regarded his 

 father and paternal grandfather, he should be assessed by the 

 censors at four hundred thousand sesterces, and entitled, under 

 the Julian Law,^^ to sit in the fourteen tiers of seats at the 

 theatre. In later times, however, people began to apply in 

 whole crowds for this mark of rank ; and in consequence of 

 the diversities of opinion which were occasioned thereby, the 

 Emperor Caius^* added a fifth decury to the number. Indeed 

 to such a pitch has conceit now arisen, that whereas, under the 

 late Emperor Augustus, the decuries could not be completed, 

 at the present day they will not suffice to receive all the mem- 

 bers of the equestrian order, and we see in every quarter per- 

 sons even who have been but just liberated from slavery, making 

 a leap all at once to the distinction of the golden ring ; a thing 

 that never used to happen in former days, as it was by the 

 ring of iron that the equites and the judices were then to be 

 recognized. 



Indeed, so promiscuously was this privilege at last conferred, 

 that Flavius Proculus, one of the equites, informed against 

 four hundred persons on this ground, before the Emperor Clau- 

 dius, who was then censor :^^ and thus we see, an order, which 

 was established as a mark of distinction from other private in- 

 dividuals of free birth, has been shared in common with slaves ! 



The Gracchi were the first to attach to this order the separate 

 appellation of ''judices," their object being at the same moment 

 a seditious popularity and the humiliation of the senate. After 

 the fall of these men, in consequence of the varying results of 

 seditious movements, the name and influence of the equestrian 

 order were lost, and became merged in those of the publicani,i8 



^2 Or, in other words, belonging to tlie equestrian order. The Roman 

 equites often followed the pursuits of bankers, and farmers of the public 

 revenues. 



^' A law passed in the time of Julius Caesar, no. 69, which permitted 

 Roman equites, in case they or their parents liad ever had a Census 

 equestris, to sit in the fourteen rows fixed by the Lex Roscia Theatralis. 



1* Caligula. ^^ Conjointly with L. Vitellius. 



^•^ Or farmers of the public revenues ; the " publicans" of Scripture. 



