The Probert Encyclopaedia of People

CENSOR

Censors were two officers in ancient Rome who held office for eighteen months, and whose business was to draw up a register of the citizens and the amount of their property, for the purposes of taxation; to keep watch over the morals of the citizens, for which purpose they had power to censure vice and immorality by inflicting a public mark of ignominy on the offender; and to superintend the finance administration and the keeping up of public buildings. The office was the highest in the state next to the dictatorship, and was invested with a kind of sacred character. The term is now applied to an officer empowered to examine books before publication.
Research Censor