45.15
The
freedmen had been distributed amongst the four City tribes, those being
excepted who had a son of their own more than five years old, those they
ordered to be registered where they had been assessed at the last census, and
also all who possessed a farm or farms more than 30,000 sesterces in value,
these were given the right of being registered in the local tribes.
Notwithstanding these reservations Claudius insisted that without an order
of the people the suffrage could not be taken away from an individual
freedman, much less from the order as a whole. For though the censor could
remove him from his tribe, which simply meant ordering him to change his
tribe, he had no power to remove him from all the thirty-five tribes; that
meant depriving him of his citizenship and personal freedom, not deciding
where he was to be registered, but excluding him from the list of citizens
altogether. This was the question at issue between them. At last they made a
compromise. Out of the four City tribes they decided to choose one by lot,
publicly in the Hall of Liberty, into which all who had ever been slaves
should be incorporated. The lot fell upon the Esquiline tribe, and Tiberius
Gracchus announced that it was decided that all the freedmen should be
enrolled in that tribe. This action of the censors was greatly appreciated by
the senate, and a vote of thanks was accorded to Sempronius for his
perseverance in carrying so wise a measure and to Claudius for not opposing
it. More names were struck off the senatorial roll than had been the case
under former censors, and also off the register of the equites. Both censors
concurred in removing them from their tribes, and no one who was branded
by the one had the stigma effaced by the other. They requested that their
term of office -eighteen months -might be extended to allow of the repair of
buildings and the completion of the works for which they had placed
contracts, but a tribune of the plebs, Cneius Tremellius, interposed his veto
because he had been chosen for the senate. During this year C. Cicereius
dedicated the temple of Monata on the Alban Mount, five years after he had
vowed it, and L. Postumius Albinus was inaugurated as a Flamen of Mars.
