Notwithstanding the improbability of the matter, I am inclined to believe that a number of aged patricianstheir number may not be exactly historicalsat down in the Forum, in their official robes, on their curule chairs, and that the chief pontiff devoted them to death.

The cost of these new festal amusements was defrayed by the magistrates entrusted with the providing of the respective festivals from their own means: thus the curule aediles had, over and above the old national festival, those of the Mother of the Gods and of Flora; the plebeian aediles had the plebeian festival and that of Ceres, and the urban praetor the Apollinarian games.

Thus Caesar took possession of the city without a blow and was appointed consul also by the people, though two proconsuls were chosen to hold the elections; it was impossible, according to precedent, for an interrex to be created for so short a period merely to superintend the comitia, because many men who held the curule offices were absent from the city.

The term nobilitas implied that some one of a man's ancestors had filled a curule magistracy.

And as the Senate in its best days contained between three and four hundred men, not all the curule magistrates could enter it, unless there were vacancies; but a selection from them was made by the censors.

To the curule ædiles he entrusted the extinguishment of conflagrations, for which purpose he granted them six hundred slave assistants.

The curule officers were the consuls, the praetors, the aediles, the quaestors, the tribunes; so that an able senator was sure of a great office in the course of his life.

We have already mentioned that the face-masks of those ancestors who had filled the curule aedileship or any higher ordinary magistracy, wrought in wax and paintedmodelled as far as possible after life, but not wanting even for the earlier ages up to and beyond the time of the kingswere wont to be placed in wooden niches along the walls of the family hall, and were regarded as the chief ornament of the house.

Now that the plebeian families ennobled by their curule ancestors were united into one body with the patrician families and acquired a distinctive position and distinguished power in the commonwealth, the Romans had again arrived at the point whence they had started; there was once more not merely a governing aristocracy and a hereditary nobilityboth of which in fact had never disappearedbut there was a governing hereditary nobility, and

The censors, in consequence of the poverty of the treasury, having abstained from receiving contracts for the repairs of the sacred edifices, the furnishing of curule horses, and similar matters, the persons who had been accustomed to attend auctions of this description, came to the censors in great numbers, and exhorted them to "transact all their business and let out the contracts in the same manner as if there were money in the treasury.