OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 279 granted to every proconsul, and to every pretor, who CHAP. exercised a military or provincial command : with the L extent of conquest the two quaestors were gradually " multiplied to the number of four, of eight, of twenty, and, for a short time, perhaps of forty *"; and the no- blest citizens ambitiously solicited an office which gave them a seat in the senate, and a just hope of obtaining the honours of the republic. Whilst Augustus af- fected to maintain the freedom of election, he consented to accept the annual privilege of recommending, or ra- ther indeed of nominating, a certain proportion of candi- dates ; and it was his custom to select one of these distinguished youths to read his orations or epistles in the assemblies of the senate'. The practice of Au- gustus was imitated by succeeding princes ; the oc- casional commission was established as a permanent office; and the favoured quajstor, assuming a new and more illustrious character, alone survived the suppres- sion of his ancient and useless colleagues. As the orations, which he composed in the name of the em- peror', acquired the force, and at length the form, of of opinion that they had, long before that period, been annually appointed by the consuls, and even by the kings. But this obscure point of anti- quity is contested by other writers. •• Tacitus (Annal. xi. 22.) seems to consider twenty as the highest num- ber of qucBstors; and JJion(l. xliii. p. 374.) insinuates, that if the dictator Caesar once created forty, it was only to facilitate the payment of an im- mense debt of gratitude. Yet the augmentation which he made of pretors subsisted under the succeeding reigns. ' Sueton. in August, c. 65, and Torrent, ad loc. ; Dion. Cas. p. 755. ^ The youth and inexperience of the quaestors, who entered on that im- portant office in their twenty-fifth year, (Lips. Excurs. ad Tacit. I. iii. D.) engaged Augustus to remove them from the management of the treasury ; and though they were restored by Claudius, they seem to have been finally dismissed by Nero. Tacit. Annal. xxii. 29; Sueton. in Aug. c. 36, in Claud, c. 24; Dion. p. 696. 9R1, etc.; Plin. Epistol. x. 20. et alib. In the provinces of the imperial division, the place of the quaestors was more ably supplied by the procurators, (Dion. Cas. p. 707; Tacit, in Vit. Agricol. c. 15.) or, as they were afterwards called, raiionales. Hist. August, p. 130. But in the provinces of the senate we may still discover a series of quaestors till the reign of Marcus Antoninus. See the inscriptions of Gruter, the epistlfs of Pliny, and a decisive fact in the Augustan History, p. 64. From Ulpian we may learn, (Pandect. I.i. tit. 13.) that under the government of the house of Severus, their provincial administration was abolished ; and in the subsequent troubles, the annual or triennial elections of quasstors must have naturally ceased. ' Cum pairis nomine et epistolas ipse dictaret, et edicta conscriberet, orationesque in senatu recilaret, eliam quaestoris vice. Sueton. in Tit. c. 6. The office must have acquired new dignity, which was occasionally executed
