Book 41
27
These censors were the first to make contracts for paving the streets of the City with flints and the roads outside with gravel, and footpaths raised at the sides, and also for the construction of bridges at various points. They furnished the praetors and aediles with a stage, placed the barriers in the Circus and provided egg-shaped balls to mark the number of laps, turning-posts on the course and iron doors for the cages through which the animals were sent into the arena. They also undertook the paving of the ascent from the Forum to the Capitol with flint and the construction of a colonnade from the temple of Saturn to the Capitol, and then on to the senaculum, and beyond that to the senate-house. The market-place outside the Porta Trigemina was paved with stone slabs and enclosed by a palisading; they also repaired the Aemilian colonnade and made a flight of stone steps on the slope leading from the Tiber. Inside the same gate they paved the colonnade leading to the Aventine with flint and made a road from the temple of Venus by the Clivus Publicius. These censors also signed contracts for the erection of walls at Calatia and Auximium, and the money which they received from the sale of portions of the State domain was spent in building shops round the forums in both these places. Postumius gave out that without the orders of the Roman senate or people he would not spend their money, so Fulvius Flaccus, acting alone, built a temple to Jupiter at Pisaurum and at Fundi and brought water to Placentia. He also paved a street at Pisaurum with flint. At Sinuessa he added some suburban residences with aviaries, constructed sewers, enclosed the place with a wall, built colonnades and shops all round the forum, setting up three statues of Janus there. These works contracted for by one of the censors were greatly appreciated by the members of the colony. The censors were strict and painstaking in the regulation of morals; several of the equites were deprived of their horses.
