officers in the colony. Two of these inscriptions[238]
should be placed, I think, very early in the annals of the colony. They
show a list of municipal officers whose names, with a single exception,
which will be accounted for later, have only praenomen and nomen, a
way of writing names which was common to the earlier inhabitants of
Praeneste, and which seems to have made itself felt here in the names of
the colonists.[241] Again, from the fact that in the only place in the
inscriptions where the quinquennialship is mentioned, it is the simple
term, without the prefixed duoviri. In the later inscriptions from
imperial times,[80] both forms are found, while in the year 31 A.D. in
the municipal fasti of Nola[242] are found II vir(i) iter(um)
q(uinquennales), and in 29 B.C. in the fasti from Venusia,[243]
officials with the same title, duoviri quinquennales, which show that
the officers of the year in which the census was taken were given both
titles. Marquardt makes this a proof that the quinquennial title shows
nothing more than a function of the regular duovir.[244] It is certain
too that after the passage of the lex Iulia in 45 B.C., that the census
was taken in the Italian towns at the same time as in Rome, and the
reports sent to the censor in Rome.[245] This duty was performed by the
duovirs with quinquennial power, also often called censorial power.[246]
The inscriptions under consideration, then, would seem to date certainly
before 49 B.C.

Another reason for placing these inscriptions in the very early days of
the colony is derived from the use of names. In this list of
officials[247] there is a duovir by the name of P. Cornelius, and
another whose name is lost except for the cognomen, Dolabella, but he
can be no other than a Cornelius, for this cognomen belongs to that
family.[248] Early in the life of the colony, immediately after its
settlement, during the repairs and rebuilding of the city's
monuments,[249] while the soldiers from Sulla's army were the new
citizens of the town, would be the time to look for men in the city
offices whose election would have been due to Sulla, or would at least
appear to have been a compliment to him. Sulla was one of the most
famous of the family of the Cornelii, and men of the gens Cornelia might
well have expected preferment during the early years of the colony. That
such was the case is shown here by the recurrence of the name Cornelius
in the list of municipal officers in