ere nominated quinquennales, always appointed praefects 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 Praeneste, 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 Praeneste has raised. It would be both tedious and unnecessary to
enumerate again the offices