te was
one. The misfortunes that befell Praeneste, because she seemed doomed to
be on the losing side in quarrels, were never more disastrously
exemplified than in the punishment inflicted upon her by Sulla, because
she had taken the side of Marius. Thousands of her citizens were killed
(see note 63), her fortifications were thrown down, a great part of her
territory was taken and given to Sulla's soldiers, who were the settlers
of his new-made colony. At once the city government of Praeneste
changed. Instead of a senate, there was now a decuria (decuriones,
ordo); instead of praetors, duovirs with judicial powers (iure dicundo),
in short, the regular governmental officialdom for a Roman colony. The
city offices were filled partly by the new colonists, and the new
government which was forced upon her was so thoroughly established, that
Praeneste remained a colony as long as her history can be traced in the
inscriptions. As has been said, in the time of Tiberius she got back an
empty title, that of municipium, but it had been nearly forgotten again
by Hadrian's time.

There are several unanswered questions which arise at this point. What
was the distribution of offices in the colony after its foundation; what
regulation, if any, was there as to the proportion of officials to the
new make up of the population; and what and who were the quinquennial
duovirs? From the proportionately large fragments of municipal fasti
left from Praeneste it will be possible to reach some conclusions that
may be of future value.

THE DISTRIBUTION OF OFFICES.

The beginning of this question comes from a passage in Cicero,[231]
which says that the Sullan colonists in Pompeii were preferred in the
offices, and had a status of citizenship better than that of the old
inhabitants of the city. Such a state of affairs might also seem natural
in a colony which had just been deprived of one third of its land, and
had had forced upon it as citizens a troop of soldiers who naturally
would desire to keep the city offices as far as possible in their own
control.[232] Dessau thinks that because this unequal state of
citizenship was found in Pompeii, which was a colony of Sulla's, it
must have been found also in Praeneste, another of his colonies.[233]
Before entering into the question of whether or not this can be proved,
it will be well to mention three probable reasons why Dessau is wrong in
his contention. The first, an argumentum ex silentio, is t