The term census is also used in Latin authors to signify the amount of a per son's estate, and hence we read of census equestris, the estate of an eques, and cen sus senatorius, the estate of a senator.
The nature of the Roman census may be collected from various particulars. One object was to ascertain the number of men capable of bearing arms; and an other, to ascertain the amount of each person's property, and the various heads of which it consisted. Cicero's treatise on Laws, though it contains a picture of an ideal republic, appears in one passage 3, 4) to describe what the Roman census was as it existed in his time. He says—" Let the censors take a census of the ages of the people, the children, the slaves, the property ; let them look after the temples of the city, the roads, waters, treasury, the taxes ; let them diitribute into tribes the parts of which the people consist ; then let them distribute the po pulation according to property, ages, classes ; let them register the children of the cavalry and the infantry ; let them forbid celibacy ; let them regulate the morals of the people ; let them leave no iufamons man in the seuate ; let there be two censors ; let them hold their office for five years, and let the censorial authority be always continued. Let the censors faith fully guard the law ; and let private per sons bring to them their acts ' (probably their vouchers or evidences). Thus the Romans must have had an immense mass of statistical documents, collected every five years, from which the population and the wealth of the community at each quinquennial period could be accurately known. Florus (i. 6) observes, " that by the great wisdom of Servius the state was so ordered that all the differences of property, rank, age, occupations, and pro fessions were registered, and thus a large state was administered with the same ex actness as the smallest family." The
Roman law fixed the age of legal ca pacity, and the ages at which a man could enjoy the various offices of the state. Ther5 must consequently have been a register of births under the republic ; and a constitution of the emperor Marcus Antoninus, as to the registration of births for a special purpose, is recorded. (Jul. Capitolinus, M. Antonin. c. 9.) In addition to this we have from the Codes of Theodosius and Justinian various particulars as to the census under the empire, and particularly from a valuable fragment of Ulpian, entitled De Censi bus.' (Dig. 50, tit. 15, s. 2, 3, 4.) These authorities have preserved even the form of the registration under the Roman census. These registers showed the num ber, class, age, and property of all free persons, and also indicated the heads of families, mothers, sons, and daughters ; they also comprised the slaves, male and female, with their occupations and the produce of their labour. They also con tained all the lands, and indicated the mode in which they were cultivated ; whether as vineyards, olive-yards, corn land, pastures, forest, and so forth. They showed the number of acres (jugera), of vines, olives, and other trees. In fact, the Roman census under the empire was a complete register of the population and wealth of all the countries included within the limits of the Caesar's domi nions. These remarks are from Dureau de la Malle, Economie Politique des RomaIns,' who has given at the end of one of his volumes the form of the regis tration tables.