CHAP. XVII.
granted to every proconsul, and to every pretor, who
exercised a military or provincial command : with the
extent of conquest the two quaestors were gradually "
multiplied to the number of four, of eight, of twenty,
and, for a short time, perhaps of forty[1]; and the noblest citizens ambitiously solicited an office which gave
them a seat in the senate, and a just hope of obtaining
the honours of the republic. Whilst Augustus affected to maintain the freedom of election, he consented
to accept the annual privilege of recommending, or rather indeed of nominating, a certain proportion of candidates; and it was his custom to select one of these
distinguished youths to read his orations or epistles in
the assemblies of the senate[2]. The practice of Augustus was imitated by succeeding princes; the occasional commission was established as a permanent
office; and the favoured quajstor, assuming a new and
more illustrious character, alone survived the suppression of his ancient and useless colleagues[3]. As the
orations, which he composed in the name of the em-
peror[4], acquired the force, and at length the form, of
- ↑ Tacitus (Annal. xi. 22.) seems to consider twenty as the highest number of quæstors; and Dion(l. xliii. p. 374.) insinuates, that if the dictator Caesar once created forty, it was only to facilitate the payment of an immense debt of gratitude. Yet the augmentation which he made of pretors subsisted under the succeeding reigns.
- ↑ Sueton. in August, c. 65, and Torrent, ad loc. ; Dion. Cas. p. 755.
- ↑ The youth and inexperience of the quaestors, who entered on that important office in their twenty-fifth year, (Lips. Excurs. ad Tacit. I. iii. D.) engaged Augustus to remove them from the management of the treasury; and though they were restored by Claudius, they seem to have been finally dismissed by Nero. Tacit. Annal. xxii. 29; Sueton. in Aug. c. 36, in Claud, c. 24; Dion. p. 696. 9R1, etc.; Plin. Epistol. x. 20. et alib. In the provinces of the imperial division, the place of the quaestors was more ably supplied by the procurators, (Dion. Cas. p. 707; Tacit, in Vit. Agricol. c. 15.) or, as they were afterwards called, raiionales. Hist. August, p. 130. But in the provinces of the senate we may still discover a series of quaestors till the reign of Marcus Antoninus. See the inscriptions of Gruter, the epistlfs of Pliny, and a decisive fact in the Augustan History, p. 64. From Ulpian we may learn, (Pandect. I.i. tit. 13.) that under the government of the house of Severus, their provincial administration was abolished; and in the subsequent troubles, the annual or triennial elections of quæstors must have naturally ceased.
- ↑ Cum pairis nomine et epistolas ipse dictaret, et edicta conscriberet, orationesque in senatu recilaret, eliam quaestoris vice. Sueton. in Tit. c. 6. The office must have acquired new dignity, which was occasionally executed
of opinion that they had, long before that period, been annually appointed by the consuls, and even by the kings. But this obscure point of antiquity is contested by other writers.
