Titus Livius (Livy), The History of Rome, Book 39
Evan T. Sage, Ph.D., Ed.

44. In reviewing the equites Cato deprived Lucius Scipio Asiaticus of his horse. Also in accepting assessments¹ his censorship was stern and harsh towards all ranks. [2] Jewels and women's dresses and vehicles which were worth more than fifteen thousand asses he directed the assessors to list at ten times more than their actual value;² likewise slaves less than twenty years old, who had been bought since the previous lustrum for ten thousand asses or more, he directed to be assessed at ten times more than their actual cost, and he ordered that on all these [p. 361]articles a tax of three asses per thousand should be³ imposed.⁴ All public water⁵ flowing into a private dwelling or lot they shut off; and what private persons had built or erected on public property they tore down on thirty days' [4] notice. Then they let contracts for the public works to be constructed from funds appropriated for that purpose, the paving of [5??] fountain basins with stone, the cleaning of sewers wherever that was necessary, and the construction of new sewers on the Aventine and elsewhere where none had yet been [6] built. And Flaccus separately built a dike at the Neptunian waters⁶ that the people might have a footpath there, and a road over the hill at Formiae, and Cato built two markets,⁷ the Maenium and the Titium, in the region of the Lautumiae,⁸ and bought four shops for the state and erected there the basilica⁹ which is called [7] Porcia. The revenues also they farmed at the highest rates and contracted for voluntary services at the [8] lowest. When the senate, moved by the prayers and tears of the publicani, had ordered these contracts to be cancelled and new ones made, the censors, removing by edict from the place of auction¹⁰ those bidders who had evaded the original contracts, let all the same contracts at slightly lowered [9] figures. It was a remarkable censorship and full of quarrels, which occupied Marcus Porcius, to whom the severity was attributed, through his whole life.

In the same year two colonies, Potentia in the [p. 363]Picene territory, Pisaurum in the Gallic, were¹¹ [10] founded. Six iugera were given to each colonist. The division of the land and the organization of the colonies were the work of the same commissioners, Quintus Fabius Labeo, Marcus Fulvius Flaccus and Quintus Fulvius [11] Nobilior.¹² The consuls of this year did nothing noteworthy either at home or in the field.