Note 222 — Chapter VIII · THE NEW CONSTITUTION, B.C. 30-23

A good deal of confusion in our authorities has arisen by a failure to distinguish between a censoria potestas granted like the tribunicia by special vote and the censoria potestas inherent in the consulship, from which it had been devolved in B.C. 444. In the Monumentum, ch. 8, Augustus himself says nothing about the censoria potestas, but in the Venusian fasti (C. I. L. ix. 422) we find imp. Cæsar vi. M. Agrippa II. Cos. idem censoria potestate lustrum fecerunt. Suetonius (c. 27) knew that he was not Censor, but supposed him to have acted under a decree granting him morum legumque regimen perpetuum, an office, however, which Augustus expressly says that he declined (Mon., ch. 6). Dio (52, 42) describes him as τιμητεύσας σὺν τῷ Ἀγρίππᾳ, a direct confusion between the censorial power possessed by a Consul and that bestowed independently. He, however, apparently did receive censoria potestas (never the censorship) in B.C. 19 for five years.