perduellionis reappear at intervals during the early Republic. Their financial functions are generally taken to imply the existence of a state treasury (aerarium). Tradition credits the first consul Valerius Publicola with its institution, and makes the quaestors the guardians of its wealth and probably of its archives.[1] The public chest of Rome must have been a primitive matter enough at a time when coined money was not in general use; but it is not improbable that finance did at this time become a definite department. It could no longer be a purely domestic matter; the lands of the kings had become crown lands of the state; the series of wars into which Rome was plunged must have rendered a constant collection of the war-tax necessary; none would more naturally have been entrusted with the control and disbursement of revenue than the perpetual delegates of the consuls; and the formalism of Roman character would lead us to believe that the consuls had regular modes of acting through their quaestors, and that these officials so far limited the power of their masters. It is not improbable that the quaestors were originally nominated by the consuls without the direct intervention of the people; but this does not exclude some popular ratification of the choice.[2] It was not until about the year 449 that their election was transferred to the newly-constituted comitia of the tribes.
And, as the consuls nominated their delegates, so the regal tradition was continued which gave them the nomination of their council of state, the Senate. In their choice of members
- [Footnote: (Liv. ii. 41; Cic. de Rep. ii. 35, 60), and of Camillus in 396 B.C. (Plin. H.N. xxxiv.
3, 13); but various accounts are given of the procedure in these two trials.]. The first quaestors appointed were Publius Veturius and Marcus Minucius. Pomponius (p. 80) puts the creation of the financial quaestors after the first secession of the Plebs; Lydus (de Mag. i. 38) attributes them to the Licinian law of 367.]
- ↑ Plut. Public. 12 [Greek: tamieion men apedeixe ton tou Kronou naon . . . tamias de tô dêmô dyo tôn neôn edôken apodeixai
- ↑ Tac. Ann. xi. 22 "Sed quaestores regibus etiam tum imperantibus instituti sunt, quod lex curiata ostendit ab L. Bruto repetita. Mansitque consulibus potestas deligendi, donec eum quoque honorem populus mandaret. Creatique primum Valerius Potitus et Aemilius Mamercus sexagesimo tertio anno post Tarquinios exactos, ut rem militarem comitarentur" (i.e. 447 B.C.; hence Mommsen, Staatsr. ii. p. 529, thinks the change was due to the Valerio-Horatian laws of 449 B.C.). Plutarch (see note 1) thinks they were elected from the first. The meaning of the passage of Tacitus seems to be that the king nominated his quaestors after his own election, and their appointment was then ratified by the lex curiata. Another explanation is that the lex recited that the kings had appointed quaestors and empowered the consuls to do so. Cf. Ulpian in Dig. 1, 13.
