In addition to the fact that the emperors were sometimes chosen quinquennales, the consuls were too. M'. Acilius Glabrio, consul ordinarius of 152 A.D., was made patron of Tibur and quinquennalis designatus.[[314]]
On the other hand, against this array of facts, are others just as certain, if not so cogent or so numerous. From the inscriptions painted on the walls in Pompeii, we know that in the first century A.D. men were recommended as quinquennales to the voters. But although there seems to be a large list of such inscriptions, they narrow down a great deal, and in comparison with the number of duovirs, they are considerably under the proportion one would expect, for instead of being as 1 to 4, they are really only as 1 to 19.[[315]] What makes the candidacy for quinquennialship seem a new and unaccustomed thing is the fact that the appeals for votes which are painted here and there on the walls are almost all recommendations for just two men.[[316]]
There are quinquennales who were made patrons of the towns in which they held the office, but who held no other offices there (1); some who were both quæstors and ædiles or prætors (2); quinquennales of both classes again who were not made patrons (3, 4); præfects with quinquennial power (5); quinquennales who go in regular order through the quattuorviral offices (6); those who go direct to the quinquennial rank from the tribunate of the soldiers (7); and (8) a VERY FEW who have what seems to be the regular order of lower offices first, quæstor, ædile or prætor, duovir, and then quinquennalis.[[317]]
The sum of the facts collected is as follows: the quinquennales are proved to have been elective officers in Pompeii. The date, however, is the third quarter of the first century A.D., and the office may have been but recently thrown open to election, as has been shown. Quinquennales who have held other city offices are very, very few, and they appear in inscriptions of fairly late date.
On the other hand, many quinquennales are found who hold that office and no other in the city, men who certainly belong to other towns, many who from their nomination as patrons of the colony or municipium, are clearly seen to have held the quinquennial power also as an honor given to an outsider. In what municipal fasti we have, we find no quinquennalis whose name appears at all previously in the list of city officials.
The fact that the lex Iulia in 45 B.C. compelled the census to be taken everywhere else in the same year as in Rome shows at all events that the census had been taken in certain places at other times, whether with an implied supervision from Rome or not, and the later positive evidence that the emperors and members of the imperial family, and consuls, who were nominated quinquennales, always appointed præfects in their places, who with but an exception or two were not city officials previously, certainly tends to show that at some time the quinquennial office had been influenced in some way from Rome. The appointment of outside men as an honor would then be a survival of the custom of having outsiders for quinquennales, in many places doubtless a revival of a custom which had been in abeyance, to honor the imperial family.
In Præneste, as in other colonies, it seems reasonable that Rome would want to keep her hand on affairs to some extent. Rome imposed on the colonies their new kind of officials, and in the fixing of duties and rights, what is more likely than that Rome would reserve a voice in the choice of those officials who were to turn in the lists on which Rome had to depend for the census?
Rome always made different treaties and understandings with her allies; according to circumstances, she made different arrangements with different colonies; even Sulla's own colonies show a vast difference in the treatment accorded them, for the plan was to conciliate the old inhabitants if they were still numerous enough to make it worth while, and the gradual change is most clearly shown by its crystallization in the lex Iulia of 45 B.C.
The evidence seems to warrant the following conclusions in regard to the quinquennales: From the first they were the most important city officials; they were elected by the people from the first, but were men who had been recommended in some way, or had been indorsed beforehand by the central government in Rome; they were not necessarily men who had held office previously in the city to which they were elected quinquennales; with the spread of the feeling of real Roman citizenship the necessity for indorsement from Rome fell into abeyance; magistrates were elected who had every expectation of going through the series of municipal offices in the regular way to the quinquennialship; and the later election of emperors and others to the quinquennial office was a survival of the habitual realization that this most honorable of city offices had some connection with the central authority, whatever that happened to be, and was not an integral part of municipal self government.
Such are some of the questions which a study of the municipal officers of Præneste has raised. It would be both tedious and unnecessary to enumerate again the offices which were held in Præneste during her history, but an attempt to place such a list in a tabular way is made in the following pages.