Page:Frontinus - The stratagems, and, the aqueducts of Rome (Bennet et al 1925).djvu/487

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Aqueducts of Rome, II. 100–101

each of them, and the same number of secretaries, clerks, assistants, and criers as those have who distribute wheat among the people; and when they have business inside the City on the same duties, they shall make use of all the same attendants, omitting the lictors; and, further, that the list of attendants granted to the water-commissioner by this resolution of the Senate shall be by them presented to the public treasurer within ten days from its promulgation, and to those whose names shall be thus reported the praetors of the treasury shall grant and give, as compensation, food by the year, as much as the food-commissioners are wont to give and allot, and they shall be authorized to take money for that purpose without prejudice to themselves. Further, there shall be furnished to the commissioners tablets, paper, and everything else necessary for the exercise of their functions. To this effect, the consuls, Quintus Aelius and Paulus Fabius, are ordered, both or either one, as may sees best to them, to consult with the praetors of the treasury in contracting for these supplies.

"Furthermore, inasmuch as the superintendents of streets and those in charge of the distribution of grain occupy a fourth part of the year in fulfilling their State duties, the water-commissioners likewise shall adjudicate (for a like period) in private and State causes."[1] Although the treasury has continued down to the present to pay for these attendants and servants, they have, as far as appearance goes, ceased to belong to the commissioners, who through laziness and indolence neglect their duties. Moreover, when the commissioners went out of the City, provided it was

  1. The resolution of the senate ends at this point. The rest of the section is taken up with some comments of Frontinus on various provisions of the bill.
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