Bret Devereaux

I swear not a day goes by I do not learn some stupidly obvious thing I probably ought to have known years ago. Today's edition: Pro-quaestores, probably a thing. I always wondered because pre-Sulla it never seemed like there'd be enough quaestors. Well, there you go, I guess.

Can you briefly sketch how this would have looked?

So each Roman magistrate or pro-magistrate with imperium (so Consuls, pro-consuls, praetors and pro-praetors) seems to get a quaestor assigned to them to handle the financial side of their commands (pay soldiers, buy supplies, etc). 2 more managed the main treasury in Rome

As the number of provinces increases, you end up with more imperium-havers than quaestors. What it seems like is happening, pre-Sulla, is that when a magistrate is prorogued (extended in command) his quaestor is as well.

So, Gaius Gracchus, for instance, serves two years as a quaestor in Spain. Sulla was Marius' quaestor for at least three years 107, 106 and 105.

We must assume - though I do not think we are told - that the Senate decided which quaestors to prorogue and which to replace with the new quaestors of the year, though Polo and Fernandez note that it seems like quaestors don't really ever serve longer than their imperium-havers.

Would it actually have been necessary to make this decision? Prorogued officials did not reduce the number of officials elected that year - correct? - so wouldn't the newly-elected quaestors be spoken for in the usual way?

Exciting questions to which we do not know the answer. Polo and Fernandez imagine quaestors as being assigned to magistrates (by lot), so presumably the system would run more or less automatically in most years.