[1897] Mommsen Römisches Münzwesen pp. 742 ff. He shows that the transitory usurpation of the copper coinage by Nero was due to the same desire of making a profit as his reduction of the value of silver.
[1898] Dig. 2, 15, 8 “divus Marcus oratione in senatu recitata effecit ne, etc.” Cf. 24, 1, 23; 27, 9, 1.
[1899] Tacitus (Ann. vi. 2 [8]) remarks, with reference to proposals carried in the Senate in 32 A.D., “et bona Sejani ablata aerario ut in fiscum cogerentur, tanquam referret.”
[1900] Suet. Aug. 38 “Liberis senatorum, quo celerius rei publicae assuescerent, protinus ... latum clavum induere et curiae interesse permisit.”
[1901] Wilmanns Index p. 602; cf. Suet. Dom. 10.
[1902] Augustus had given the post of praefectus alae as well as that of tribunus militum to senators’ sons (Suet. Aug. 38). Mommsen (Staatsr. i. p. 548) thinks that after Tiberius these laticlavii, as a rule, filled the office of tribune alone. They could scarcely have been given a real command when they first joined the standards.
[1903] The poet Ovid, who assumed the latus clavus by right of birth, took the first steps towards a senatorial career by filling two posts in the vigintivirate, but he went no further and subsided into equestrian rank (Ovid Trist. iv. 10, 29; Fasti iv. 383).
[1904] Suet. Claud. 24 “Senatoriam dignitatem recusantibus equestrem quoque ademit.”
[1905] Suet. Claud. 24 “Latum clavum (quamvis initio affirmasset non lecturum se senatorem nisi civis Romani abnepotem) etiam libertini filio tribuit, sed sub conditione si prius ab equite Romano adoptatus esset.” Claudius then appealed to the famous precedent set by his ancestor Appius Caecus.
[1906] Dig. 23, 2, 44.