Dictionary
AERARIUM	100.00%
The state-treasury of Rome, into which flowed the revenues ordinary and extraordinary, and out of which the needful expenses were defrayed. It was kept in the basement of the temple of Saturn, under the charge of the gumstors. A special reserve fund was the Aerarium sanctius, in which the proceeds of receipts from the manumission-tax (one twentieth of the freed slave's value) were deposited in gold ingots. When Augustus divided the provinces into senatorial and imperatorial, there were two chief treasuries. The senatorial treasury, which was still kept in the temple of Saturn, was left under the control of the senate, but only as a matter of formal right. Practically it passed into the hands of the emperors, who also brought the management of the treasuries under their own eye by appointing, instead of the quaestors, two praefecti aerarii taken from those who had served as praetors. Besides, they diverted into their own Fiscus all the larger revenues, even those that legally belonged to the Aerarium. When in course of time the returns from all the provinces flowed into the imperial treasury, the senatorial Aerarium continued to exist as the city treasury. The Aerarium militare was a pension-fund founded by Augustus in A.D. 6, for disabled soldiers. Its management was entrusted to three praeefecti aerarii militaris. It was maintained out of the interest on a considerable fund, and the proceeds of the heritage and sale duties.
FISCUS	50.13%
The emperor's private purse, as distinguished from the public treasury (aerarium). It was instituted by Augustus, and was under the exclusive control of the emperor. The chief sources from which it was replenished were the entire revenues of the imperial provinces, the produce of unclaimed estates, and of confiscations. The main items of fiscal expenditure were the army, the fleet, and war material, the salaries of officials, the provision of corn for Rome, postal communication, and the public buildings. For the officials who administered the fiscus, see PROCURATOR.
LUSTRUM	35.33%
among the Romans, was the purification, or absolution from sin, of the entire people. It took place at the close of each census (q.v.), commonly in May of the year following the censors' accession to office. The host of the people, horse and foot, in their newly constituted classes, was drawn up in full armour on the Campus Martius under the leadership of the censor to whom this duty fell by lot. The Suovetaurilia, a pig, ram, and bull, was carried three times round the whole army, and thereupon sacrificed to Mars, accompanied by a prayer of the censor in which he besought that the power of the Roman people might be increased and magnified, or as it ran later, might be maintained entirely undiminished. The censor then led the army under his banner to the city gate, where he dismissed them, while he himself, as a token of the completed lustrum, drove a nail into the wall of a temple and deposited the new roll of citizens in the Aerarium (or Treasury) of the people.
SACRAMENTUM	27.02%
QUAESTORS	22.60%
The Latin term originally given to two officials chosen by the king; they had to track any one suspected of a capital offence. In the time of the Republic they performed the same office for the consuls, by whom they were chosen every year. When the administration of justice in criminal cases came into the hands of the comitia centuriata, the quoestors received, in addition to their old privilege of pleading by the mandate of the consuls, which they lost later, the management of the State treasury (aerarium) in the temple of Saturn. They became recognised officials when they were elected at the comitia tributa under the presidency of the consuls (probably about 447 B.C.). The quaestors had no regular badges of office. In 421 their number was doubled, and the plebeians were granted the right of appointing to the office of quaestor, though they did not exercise it till twelve years later. The four quaestors shared their duties, so that two of them acted as masters of the treasury (quaestores aerarii) and remained in the city (hence their name quoestores urbani), while the other two accompanied the consuls on campaigns in order to administer the military chest. It was part of the duty of the two former to collect the regular revenues of State (taxes and custom-dues) and the extraordinary revenues (fines, levies for war, and money produced by the sale of booty); further, to make payments, which might not be made to the consuls except by special permission of the Senate; to control the accounts of income and expenditure, which were managed under their responsibility by a special class of officials (scriboe); to make arrangements for public burials, for the erecting of monuments, for the entertainment of foreign ambassadors, etc., at the expense of the treasury. Further, they preserved at their place of business--the temple of Saturn--the military standards, also the laws, the decrees of the Senate, and the plebiscita, and kept a register of the swearing in of the officials, which took place there. After the subjection of Italy, four more quaestors were appointed, in 267 B.C. They were stationed in different parts of Italy, at first at Ostia and Ariminum, probably to supervise the building of fleets. Sulla increased their number to twenty, ten of whom were appointed, in the place of the previous two, to accompany the proconsuls and propraetors to the provinces, two to help the consul who remained in the city, and two to help the other two original quaestors at their work in the city. The quaestors employed in the provinces (Sicily alone had two of these, stationed at Syracuse and Lilybaeum respectively) were principally occupied with finance; they managed the provincial treasury, and defrayed out of it the expenses of the army, the governor, and his retinue; any surplus they had to pay in to the State treasury at Rome, and to furnish an exact statement of accounts. The governor might appoint them his deputies, and if he died they assumed the command; in both of these cases they acted pro proetore, i.e. as propraetors (q.v.). Caesar raised their number to forty, in order to be able to reward a greater number of his adherents; for the office gave admittance to the Senate, and the position of quaestor was looked upon as the first step in the official career. The age defined by law was from twenty-seven to thirty years. When the beginning of the magisterial year was fixed for January 1st, the quaestors assumed office on December 5th, on which day the quaestors in the aerarium decided by lot what the work of each should be. Even under the Empire, when the normal number of quaestors was increased to twenty and the age reduced to twenty-five, the office of quaestor remained the first step to higher positions in the State. But the power of the quaestors grew more limited as the management of the treasury was entrusted to special proefecti oerarii, so that the city quaestors had only charge of the archives, to which the supervision of the paving of streets was added. After the division of the provinces between the emperor and the Senate, quaestors were only employed in the senatorial provinces, and were not abolished till the constitution of the provinces in general was altered by Diocletian. Four quaestors were told off for service to the consuls. The two quoestores principis, or Augusti, were a new creation: they were officers assigned to the emperors, if the latter were not consuls, in which case they would already be entitled to two quaestors. As secretaries to the emperor, they had to read his decrees to the Senate at its sittings. From these quaestors was developed, in the time of Constantine, the quoestor sacri palatii, the chancellor of the Empire.
ROADS	13.58%
PRAEFECTUS	11.53%
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SENATE	5.53%