Roman Public Life

by A. H. J. Greenidge

The quaestors also conducted sales on behalf of the treasury—not of those large portions of the public domain which were alienated by the censors, but of current acquisitions, such as those of slaves and booty captured in war,[1000] and of that portion of conquered land which was brought immediately under the hammer (ager quaestorius).[1001] This threefold function of guardianship, collection, and sale gave the urban quaestors an unequalled grasp of the state of the public revenues, and as they were annual, while the censors—the budget-makers—were merely occasional officials, we are not surprised to find them making financial statements in the Senate.[1002]

(ii.) The general assistance which the quaestors were meant to render to the consuls was extended, as we saw,[1003] in the year 421 B.C. to their activity in the field. Each consul or praetor who assumed a military command was given a particular quaestor (the dictator being exempted from what was regarded as a limitation on the discretionary powers of the magistrate), and, after the custom had grown up of extending the imperium, these assistants accompanied the proconsuls and propraetors to their provinces. The term of the quaestorship was prolonged with that of the office with which it was associated,[1004] for the connexion between the superior and inferior was regarded as being of almost as personal a character as that between father and son.[1005] We shall examine the relation more minutely when we come to deal with provincial organisation. It is sufficient to remark here that, though the quaestors’ functions were mainly financial, they were in all other respects true administrative delegates of the magistrates with imperium,[1006] and were constantly employed on judicial and military business.

(iii.) The quaestors of Italy were probably identical with those of the fleet (classici), and were a result of the organisation of Italy which followed the war with Pyrrhus (267 B.C.). For the purposes of the Pyrrhine war twelve quaestors were created, whose number, when they were given permanent stations, was reduced to four.[1007] Three of these stations can be approximately determined. One was Ostia, and the tenure of this post was burdened with the duty of the supply of corn to Rome.[1008] The second appears to have been the woods and forests (calles) of Italy.[1009] The third was in Cispadane Gaul,[1010] perhaps at Ravenna or Ariminum. The fourth is unknown, but was perhaps the quaestorship at Lilybaeum in Sicily, which, after the creation of the first Sicilian praetor in 227 B.C., would have become a provincial post. The other three survived the Republic as spheres of Italian administration.[1011] The functions of these quaestors were chiefly the levying of contingents from the allies in ships and men,[1012] the protection of the coasts, and at Ostia, as we have seen, the supply of corn for the capital.

A further quaestorian department is mentioned by Cicero—the provincia aquaria, which was probably concerned with the water supply of the capital. It is uncertain whether this function was attached to one of the Italian quaestorships.[1013]

The Censors

We have already described the institution of the censorship in 443 B.C.,[1014] and have seen that patrician rank was originally a necessary qualification for the post. The first mention of a plebeian censor is in 351 B.C.[1015] One of the Publilian laws of 339 B.C. is said to have extended to the censorship the provision of the Licinian law about the consulship, and to have enacted that one censor must be a Plebeian;[1016] but it is not until the year 131 B.C. that we find two plebeian censors.[1017]

The election to this office, like that to the other higher magistracies, took place in the comitia centuriata[1018] under presidency of the consul. The election was then ratified, not, as in the case of other magistrates, by a lex curiata, but by a lex centuriata,[1019] a form of statutory approval which marks the censors as peculiarly the officials concerned with the organisation of the exercitus.

In rank the censor occupies an anomalous position. Although lacking the imperium and the right of summoning people and Senate, he is reckoned amongst the majores magistratus, he has the “highest auspicia,”[1020] he sits in the curule chair, wears the purple-striped toga, and (an honour accorded to no other magistrate) is buried in the full purple of the king.[1021] Politically the censorship was the apex of a career. Often held in its earlier period by ex-consuls, it became practically confined to the consular, and its enormous powers, its lofty ethical significance, and its comparative infrequency made it the goal of those who had already attained the chief titular dignity of the state.

Four attributes of the office are very important in determining its character. The first gave it the necessary authority, the others created a healthful limitation of its powers.

(1) The censorship was an irresponsible office.[1022] Its holders could not be called to account for any act done in connexion with the census, any act that was an outcome of the censoria potestas ratified by the lex centuriata; and although the lectio senatus was a later addition to their functions, this power seems to have been included in the indemnity. This principle of immunity was stated in a decree of the Senate of the year 204 B.C.,[1023] and, although often challenged by the tribunes, was maintained until the close of the Republic. One of the effects of the Clodian plebiscitum of 58 B.C., which limited the discretionary power of the censors in the regimen morum,[1024] would have been to make them judicially responsible for a breach of its provisions; but this law was soon repealed. The censors were also free from the usual limitation created by the tribunician intercession; it was clearly invalid against the particular potestas exercised at the census,[1025] although the obnuntiatio could be employed against the summons of the people to the census and the lustrum, as against any other contio.[1026]