The fact that the lex Iulia in 45 B.C. compelled the census to be taken everywhere else in the same year as in Rome shows at all events that the census had been taken in certain places at other times, whether with an implied supervision from Rome or not, and the later positive evidence that the emperors and members of the imperial family, and consuls, who were nominated quinquennales, always appointed praefects in their places, who with but an exception or two were not city officials previously, certainly tends to show that at some time the quinquennial office had been influenced in some way from Rome.  The appointment of outside men as an honor would then be a survival of the custom of having outsiders for quinquennales, in many places doubtless a revival of a custom which had been in abeyance, to honor the imperial family.

In Praeneste, as in other colonies, it seems reasonable that Rome would want to keep her hand on affairs to some extent.  Rome imposed on the colonies their new kind of officials, and in the fixing of duties and rights, what is more likely than that Rome would reserve a voice in the choice of those officials who were to turn in the lists on which Rome had to depend for the census?

Rome always made different treaties and understandings with her allies; according to circumstances, she made different arrangements with different colonies; even Sulla’s own colonies show a vast difference in the treatment accorded them, for the plan was to conciliate the old inhabitants if they were still numerous enough to make it worth while, and the gradual change is most clearly shown by its crystallization in the lex Iulia of 45 B.C.

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.

Such are some of the questions which a study of the municipal officers of Praeneste has raised.  It would be both tedious and unnecessary to enumerate again the offices which were held in Praeneste during her history, but an attempt to place such a list in a tabular way is made in the following pages.