20.1
Having entered upon his office,A. U. C. 695. he introduced a new regulation, that the daily acts both of the senate and people should be committed to writing, and published.The proceedings of the senate were reported in short notes taken by one of their own order, strangers not being admitted at their sittings. These notes included speeches as well as acts. These and the proceedings of the assemblies of the people, were daily published in journals [diurna], which contained also accounts of the trials at law, with miscellaneous intelligence of births and deaths, marriages and divorces. The practice of publishing the proceedings of the senate, introduced by Julius Caesar, was discontinued by Augustus. He also revived an old custom, that an officerWithin the city, the lictors walked before only one of the consuls, and that commonly for a month alternately. A public officer, called Accensus, preceded the other consul, and the lictors followed. This custom had long been disused, but was now restored by Caesar. should precede him, and his lictors follow him, on the alternate months when the fasces were not carried before him. Upon preferring a bill to the people for the division of some public lands, he was opposed by his colleague, whom he violently drove out of the forum. Next day the insulted consul made a complaint in the senate of this treatment; but such was the consternation, that no one having the courage to bring the matter forward or move a censure, which had been often done under outrages of less importance, he was so much dispirited, that until the expiration of his office he never stirred from home, and did nothing but issue edicts to obstruct his colleague's proceedings.