offices. * To supernumerary candidates he gave command in the legions, to comfort them under the delay of their hopes. * The consulship he commonly conferred for six months; and one of the two consuls dying a little before the first of January, he substituted no one in his place; disliking what had been formerly done for Caninius Rebilus on such an occasion, who was consul for one day only. * He allowed the triumphal honours only to those who were of quaestorian rank, and to some of the equestrian order; and bestowed them without regard to military service. * And instead of the quaestors, whose office it properly was, he frequently ordered that the addresses, which he sent to the senate on certain occasions, should
XVI. He devised a new style of building in the city, ordering piazzas to be erected before all houses, both in the streets and detached, to give facilities from their terraces, in case of fire, for preventing it from spreading; and these he built at his own expense.
He likewise designed to extend the city walls as far as Ostia, and bring the sea from thence by a canal into the old city.
Many severe regulations and new orders were made in his time.
- A sumptuary law was enacted.
- Public suppers were limited to the Sportulae 576; and victualling-houses restrained from selling any dressed victuals, except pulse and herbs, whereas before they sold all kinds of meat.
- He likewise inflicted punishments on the Christians, a sort of people who held a new and impious 577 superstition.
(348) He forbad the revels of the charioteers, who had long assumed a licence to stroll about, and established for themselves a kind of prescriptive right to cheat and thieve, making a jest of it. The partisans of the rival theatrical performers were banished, as well as the actors themselves.