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 antiquity is contested by other writers.]

[Footnote 146: Tacitus (Annal. xi. 22) seems to consider twenty as the
highest number of quaestors; and Dion (l. xliii. p 374) insinuates, that
if the dictator Caesar once created forty, it was only to facilitate the
payment of an immense debt of gratitude. Yet the augmentation which he
made of praetors subsisted under the succeeding reigns.]

[Footnote 147: Sueton. in August. c. 65, and Torrent. ad loc. Dion. Cas.
p. 755.]

[Footnote 148: The youth and inexperience of the quaestors, who entered
on that important office in their twenty-fifth year, (Lips. Excurs. ad
Tacit. l. 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. xiii. 29. Sueton. in
Aug. c. 36, in Claud. c. 24. Dion, p. 696, 961, &c. Plin. Epistol. x.
20, et alibi.) 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,
rationales. (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 Epistles of Pliny, and a
decisive fact in the Augustan History, p. 64.) From Ulpian we may learn,
(Pandect. l. 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 quaestors must
have naturally ceased.]

[Footnote 149: Cum patris nomine et epistolas ipse dictaret, et edicta
conscrib eret, orationesque in senatu recitaret, etiam quaestoris vice.
Sueton, in Tit. c. 6. The office must have acquired new dignity, which
was occasionally executed by the heir apparent of the empire. Trajan
intrusted the same care to Hadrian, his quaestor and cousin. See
Dodwell, Praelection. Cambden, x. xi. p. 362-394.]

[Footnote 150: Terris edicta daturus; Supplicibus responsa.--Oracula
regis Eloquio crevere tuo; nec dignius unquam Majestas meminit sese
Romana locutam.----Claudian in Consulat. Mall. Theodor. 33. See likewise
Symmachus (Epistol. i. 17) and Cassiodorus. (Variar. iv. 5.)]

[Footn