The Censorship

Summary

I Have already intimated that by the constitution of 311 the censors were chosen by the curies: of course the centuries had to confirm the election. Hence in aftertimes the strange anomaly, that at the appointment of censors the latter assembly voted twice over: this cannot have been the case from the beginning; but when the election came to be taken away from the patricians, the previous practice of having it confirmed by the centuries might still be retained as an unimportant formality: to have transferred it by way of exchange to the curies would have been a hazardous measure, and directly adverse to the spirit of the age. Nor in like manner would the curies before the time of Servius Tullius have voted twice on the same king, if the assembly that elected him had from the first been, as it was after the time of Tarquinius Priscus, the same with that which confirmed the election; whereas the latter had originally been a much larger body than the former.

The regulation that the censors were to be appointed by the curies was the same which ever since the compact of had been in force with regard to the higher place in the consulship, applied to what was far the most important half of the consular power.