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Quote of the day: Urgulania's influence, however, was so f
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Annals by Tacitus
Translated by Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodribb
Book XI Chapter 25: Gauls in the Senate? Yes[AD 48]
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The emperor's speech was followed by a decree of the Senate, and the Aedui were the first to obtain the right of becoming senators at Rome. This compliment was paid to their ancient alliance, and to the fact that they alone of the Gauls cling to the name of brothers of the Roman people. About the same time the emperor enrolled in the ranks of the patricians such senators as were of the oldest families, and such as had had distinguished ancestors. There were now but scanty relics of the Greater Houses of Romulus and of the Lesser Houses of Lucius Brutus, as they had been called, and those too were exhausted which the dictator Caesar by the Cassian Law and the emperor Augustus by the Saenian Law had chosen into their place. These acts, as being welcome to the State, were undertaken with hearty gladness by the imperial censor. Anxiously considering how he was to rid the Senate of men of notorious infamy, he preferred a gentle method, recently devised, to one which accorded with the sternness of antiquity, and advised each to examine his own case and seek the privilege of laying aside his rank. Permission, he said, would be readily obtained. He would publish in the same list those who had been expelled and those who had been allowed to retire, that by this confounding together of the decision of the censors and the modesty of voluntary resignation the disgrace might be softened. For this, the consul Vipstanus moved that Claudius should be called Father of the Senate. The title of Father of the country had, he argued, been indiscriminately bestowed; new services ought to be recognized by unusual titles. The emperor, however, himself stopped the consul's flattery, as extravagant. He closed the lustrum, the census for which gave a total of 5,984,072 citizens. Then too ended his blindness as to his domestic affairs. He was soon compelled to notice and punish his wife's infamies till he afterwards craved passionately for an unhallowed union.

Event: Gauls in the Senate?

Orationem principis secuto patrum consulto primi Aedui senatorum in urbe ius adepti sunt. datum id foederi antiquo et quia soli Gallorum fraternitatis nomen cum populo Romano usurpant.     Isdem diebus in numerum patriciorum adscivit Caesar vetustissimum quemque e senatu aut quibus clari parentes fuerant, paucis iam reliquis familiarum, quas Romulus maiorum et L. Brutus minorum gentium appellaverant, exhaustis etiam quas dictator Caesar lege Cassia et princeps Augustus lege Saenia sublegere; laetaque haec in rem publicam munia multo gaudio censoris inibantur. famosos probris quonam modo senatu depelleret anxius, mitem et recens repertam quam ex severitate prisca rationem adhibuit, monendo secum quisque de se consultaret peteretque ius exuendi ordinis: facilem eius rei veniam; et motos senatu excusatosque simul propositurum ut iudicium censorum ac pudor sponte cedentium permixta ignominiam mollirent. ob ea Vipstanus consul rettulit patrem senatus appellandum esse Claudium: quippe promiscum patris patriae cognomentum; nova in rem publicam merita non usitatis vocabulis honoranda: sed ipse cohibuit consulem ut nimium adsentantem. condiditque lustrum quo censa sunt civium quinquagies novies centena octoginta quattuor milia septuaginta duo. isque illi finis inscitiae erga domum suam fuit: haud multo post flagitia uxoris noscere ac punire adactus est ut deinde ardesceret in nuptias incestas.