Editing Roman censor (section)

====Punishments====
The punishments inflicted by the censors generally differed according to the station which a man occupied, though sometimes a person of the highest rank might suffer all the punishments at once, by being degraded to the lowest class of citizens. The punishments are generally divided into four classes:

#''Motio'' ("removal") or ''ejectio e senatu'' ("ejection from the Senate"), or the exclusion of a man from the ranks of senators. This punishment might either be a simple exclusion from the list of senators, or the person might at the same time be excluded from the tribes and degraded to the rank of an ''[[Aerarii|aerarian]]''.<ref>Liv. xxiv.18.</ref> The latter course seems to have been seldom adopted; the ordinary mode of inflicting the punishment was simply this: the censors in their new lists omitted the names of such senators as they wished to exclude, and in reading these new lists in public, quietly omitted the names of those who were no longer to be senators. Hence the expression ''praeteriti senatores'' ("senators passed over") is equivalent to ''e senatu ejecti'' (those removed from the Senate).<ref>Livy xxxviii.28, xxvii.11, xxxiv.44; Festus, s.v. Praeteriti.</ref> In some cases, however, the censors did not acquiesce to this simple mode of proceeding, but addressed the senator whom they had noted, and publicly reprimanded him for his conduct.<ref>Livy xxiv.18.</ref> As in ordinary cases an ex-senator was not disqualified by his ''ignominia'' for holding any of the magistracies which opened the way to the Senate, he might at the next census again become a senator.<ref>Cicero ''pro Cluentio Oratio'' 42, Plutarch ''Life of Cicero'' 17.</ref>
#The ''ademptio equi'', or the taking away the publicly funded horse from an [[Equites|equestrian]]. This punishment might likewise be simple, or combined with the exclusion from the tribes and the degradation to the rank of an ''aerarian''.<ref>Livy xxiv.18, 43, xxvii.11, xxix.37, xliii.16.</ref>
#The ''motio e tribu'', or the exclusion of a person from his tribe. This punishment and the degradation to the rank of an ''aerarian'' were originally the same, but when in the course of time a distinction was made between the rural or rustic tribes and the urban tribes, the ''motio e tribu'' transferred a person from the rustic tribes to the less respectable city tribes, and if the further degradation to the rank of an ''aerarian'' was combined with the ''motio e tribu'', it was always expressly stated.<ref>Liv. xlv.15, Plin. H.N. xviii.3.</ref>
#The fourth punishment was called ''referre in aerarios''<ref>Livy xxiv.18; Cicero ''pro Cluentio Oratio'' 43.</ref> or ''facere aliquem aerarium'',<ref>Livy xliii.43.</ref> and might be inflicted on any person who was thought by the censors to deserve it. This degradation, properly speaking, included all the other punishments, for an equestrian could not be made an ''aerarius'' unless he was previously deprived of his horse, nor could a member of a rustic tribe be made an ''aerarius'' unless he was previously excluded from it.<ref>Livy iv.24, xxiv.18, &c.</ref>

It was this authority of the Roman censors which eventually developed into the modern meaning of "censor" and "[[censorship]]"—i.e., officials who review published material and forbid the publication of material judged to be contrary to "public morality" as the term is interpreted in a given political and social environment.