Note 48 — Below is a copy of the deeds of the divine Augustus, by which he subjected the whole world to the dominion of the Roman people, and of the amounts which he expended upon the commonwealth and the Roman people, as engraved upon two brazen columns which are set up at Rome.1

In 725. The Saenian law, passed by the people in 724, authorized this proceeding, and the senate’s decree followed. Hence the order, “people and senate.” Cf. Tac. Ann. XI, 25; Dio, LII, 42. An earlier creation of patricians is assigned by Dio to the year 721. But he is probably mistaken, as Tacitus, in the passage just noted, says that Claudius was obliged to create more patricians, “because the number had declined even after being recruited by the dictator Cæsar under the Cassian law, and by Augustus the princeps under the Saenian law.” Such a creation was not a right of the principate. Cæsar and Augustus did it by special authorization of people and senate. Claudius did it in virtue of his censorship, and this status continued till Domitian absorbed the censorship in the principate, and assumed the right as a permanent one.