Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 8, 2025
They were not always inhabitants of the city to the office of which they had been nominated, as has been shown in the cases of Drusus and Germanicus Caesar, and Nero and Drusus the sons of Germanicus, nominated or elected quinquennales at Praeneste, and represented in both cases by praefects appointed by them.
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.
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.
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. The sum of the facts collected is as follows: the quinquennales are proved to have been elective officers in Pompeii.
Also it has been shown that in two cases men who had been quaestors were made praefects, that is, appointees of people who had been nominated quinquennales as an honor, and who had at once appointed praefects to carry out their duties. Another question of importance rises here. Who were the quinquennales?
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.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking