census. Two other functions were subsequently
added:--(5) the selection of the senate (_lectio senatus_, see SENATE),
and (6) certain financial duties such as the leasing of the contracts
for tax-collecting and for the repair of public buildings. The first
four of these functions were those of the census, which was a detailed
examination of the citizen body as represented by heads of families
(_patres familiarum_) in the Campus Martius. The equites were a select
portion of this citizen body; but the review of these knights took
place, not in the Campus, but in the Forum (see EQUITES). It was in
connexion with this review of the ordinary citizens and the knights, as
well as with the choice of senators, that the censors published their
edicts stating the moral rules which they intended to enforce. The
offences which they punished were sometimes concerned with family life
and private relations, sometimes with breaches of political duty.
Certain professions, such as that of an actor or gladiator, also invoked
their stigma, and at times the disqualifications they pronounced were
the consequence of a previous judicial condemnation. _Infamia_ was the
general name given to the disabilities pronounced by the censor. These
varied in degree from the deprivation of a senator of his seat, or a
knight's loss of his horse, to exclusion from the tribes or centuries,
an exclusion which entailed the loss of voting power. All the
disabilities pronounced by one pair of censors might be removed by their
successors.

The censorship, although its control over the senate came to be
weakened (see SENATE), lasted as long as the republic; and it was only
suspended, not abolished, during the principate. Although the princeps
exercised censorial functions, he was seldom censor. Yet the office
itself was held by Claudius I. and Vespasian. Domitian assumed the title
of life censor (_censor perpetuus_), but the precedent was not followed.
A fruitless attempt to galvanize the republican office into new life was
made in A.D. 251, during the reign of the emperor Decius.

AUTHORITIES.--Mommsen, _Romisches Staatsrecht_, ii. 331 foll. (3rd
ed., Leipzig, 1887); Daremberg-Saglio, _Dictionnaire des antiquites
grecques et romaines_, i. 990 foll. (1875, &c.); Lange, _Romische
Alterthumer_, i. 572 foll. (Berlin, 1856, &c.); de Boor, _Fasti
Censorii_ (Berlin, 1873); Gerlach, _Die romische Censur in ihrem
Verhaltnisse zur Verfassung_ (Basel, 1842); Ni