LUSTRUM

among the Romans, was the purification, or absolution from sin, of the entire people. It took place at the close of each census (q.v.), commonly in May of the year following the censors' accession to office. The host of the people, horse and foot, in their newly constituted classes, was drawn up in full armour on the Campus Martius under the leadership of the censor to whom this duty fell by lot. The Suovetaurilia, a pig, ram, and bull, was carried three times round the whole army, and thereupon sacrificed to Mars, accompanied by a prayer of the censor in which he besought that the power of the Roman people might be increased and magnified, or as it ran later, might be maintained entirely undiminished. The censor then led the army under his banner to the city gate, where he dismissed them, while he himself, as a token of the completed lustrum, drove a nail into the wall of a temple and deposited the new roll of citizens in the Aerarium (or Treasury) of the people.