Quaestor

QUAESTOR (Lat. quaerere, to investigate), a Roman magis trate whose functions, in the later times of the republic, were principally financial, although he was originally concerned with criminal jurisdiction. The quaestorship was probably instituted in 509 B.C. simultaneously with the consulship. The number of quaestors, originally two, was successively increased until Julius Caesar raised it to 40 (45 B.c.) Augustus reduced it to 20, which remained the regular number under the empire. When the number was raised from two to four in 421 B.C., the office was thrown open to the plebeians.

The quaestorship was the lowest of the great offices of State, and hence it was the first sought by aspirants to a political career (curses honorum). The candidate was bound to have completed his 30th year before he entered office, but Augustus lowered the age to 25. Quaestors were elected by the cornitia tribute (see CommA) under the presidency of a consul or another of the higher magistrates. They held office for one year, but, like the consuls and praetors, they were often continued in office. Indeed, it was a rule that the quaestor attached to a higher magistrate should hold office as long as his superior; hence, when a consul presided over the city for one year and afterwards as proconspl governed a province for another year, his quaestor also held office for two years. A peculiar burden laid on the quaestors, as a sort of fee exacted from all who entered on the political career, was the paving of the high roads, for which the Emperor Claudius substituted the exhibition of gladiatorial games.

Various classes of quaestors may be distinguished:— The Urban Quaestors.—Originally the duties of the quaestors, like those of the consuls, were undefined; the consuls were the superior magistrates of the republic, the quaestors their assistants. From a very early time, however, the quaestors possessed criminal jurisdiction; political crimes only seem to have been excepted. The criminal jurisdiction of the quaestors appears to have ter minated only when trial by permanent courts (quaestiones perpetuae) was extended to criminal cases.

The quaestors had also charge of the public Treasury (aera rium, q.v.) in the temple of Saturn, and this was in later times their most important function. They kept the keys of the

Treasury and had charge of its contents, the coin and bullion, the military standards, and a large number of public documents, which comprised all the laws as well as the decrees of the senate. Their functions as keepers of the Treasury were withdrawn from urban quaestors by Augustus and transferred to other magistrates.

The Military Quaestors.

These were instituted in 421 B.C. and were clearly distinguished from the urban quaestors by the fact that a non-urban quaestor was assigned as an assistant or adjutant to every general in command, whose name or title the quaestor usually added to his own. Originally they were the adjutants of the consuls only, afterwards of the provincial prae tors, and still later of the proconsuls and proprietors. The gov ernor of Sicily had two quaestors ; all other governors and corn manders had but one. Between the quaestor and his superior, a close personal relation existed, and was not severed when their official connexion ceased. The duties of the military quaestor, like those of the Treasury quaestor, were primarily financial. Moneys due to a provincial governor from the State Treasury were often, perhaps regularly, received and disbursed by the quaestor ; the magazines seem to have been under his charge; he coined money, on which not infrequently his name appears alone. But, though his duties were primarily financial, the quaestor was the chief assistant or adjutant of his superior in command, and invested with a certain degree of military power. When the general left his province before the arrival of his suc cessor, he usually committed it to the care of his quaestor, and, if he died or was incapacitated from naming his successor, the quaestor acted as his representative.

The Italian Quaestors.

The subjugation of Italy occasioned the institution (267 B.c.) of four new quaestors, who appear to have been called quaestores classici because they were originally intended to superintend the building of the fleet (classis) ; their functions, however, are very imperfectly known.

See Mommsen, Staatsrecht; A. H. J. Greenidge, Roman Public Life (1901) ; J. E. Sandys, Companion to Latin Studies (1921) ; W. E. Heitland, The Roman Republic (1923).