In a previous video I spoke for only a few seconds about the office of the Quaestor,
before brushing past it to talk at greater length about the Cursus Honorum.
Now, it's time to delve deeper.
Let's talk about Quaestors.
You may already know that the Quaestorship was the first major step in a young man's
political career.
It was a crucial step though, because the office came with lifetime membership to the
Senate.
By the late Republic, becoming a Quaestor (and therefore a Senator) was actually an
attainable goal for many citizens.
Every year, twenty positions became available, which meant that every year there were 20
new inductees into the Senate.
This meant that any wealthy, or well connected, or popular aristocrats had a reasonable shot
at getting into the senate if they wanted to.
Hell, sometimes men from a lower class were able to sneak in.
This was a lot different from the early days of the Republic, when the richest and most
powerful families were able to monopolize the four open Quaestor positions year after
year.
So what exactly were Quaestors?
They were basically the elected representatives within the bureaucratic class.
They had no specific military powers, and very little political influence.
Broadly speaking, within a system of government that had almost no civil service, they functioned
as high level bureaucrats.
Let's get more specific.
What exactly did they do?
Of the 20 elected Quaestors for any given year, most of them were assigned by the Senate
to provincial governors, to function as their deputies.
Functionally this meant that they did things like serve as quartermasters for armies, collect
taxes, and oversee military recruitment.
Ultimately, they answered to their governor.
Under certain circumstances, the governor had the authority to delegating military command
or judicial authority to a Quaestor, but only in his name.
Being an elected official, a Quaestor had legitimacy and respect, but no power.
If the governor wanted to have his Quaestor oversee the harvest while he was off fighting
a military campaign, that was his right.
If he wanted his Quaestor to serve as his right hand man during a campaign and command
one of his flanks during battle, that was also his right.
Becoming a Quaestor in one of the provinces would place that person in the inner circle
of a governor doing some job that we would normally associate with a career civil servant.
A few of the elected Quaestors were singled out each year and given slightly different
tasks by the Senate.
Two were kept back in Rome and were assigned to the two consuls for a year.
This was undoubtedly a prestigious post, but honestly I would compare it to being appointed
as ambassador to Luxembourg.
A great honour, but you're not going to change the world.
You could never ever function as a Consul's second in command in Rome.
At any one time there would be dozens and dozens of Pro-Consuls and Pro-Praetors competing
for the Consul's attention, all of whom had the authority and experience to command legions.
To me it doesn't sound like a rewarding job.
Lastly, four Quaestors were appointed by the senate to an unusual task.
The administration of Rome's treasury.
Yes, the overseeing of the government's physical gold supply, which was kept inside the Temple
to Saturn.
These were called Urban Quaestors, obviously because they couldn't leave the city of Rome.
The temple also functioned as an archive, since it also housed the physical laws passed
by the Senate.
I honestly can't tell whether this was a prestigious posting or a dead-end job, and our sources
don't offer any hints one way or another.
I can only guess that since this offered absolutely no chance of even seeing a battle, the Romans
would have looked down their noses a bit at it.
Then again, the administration of the Temple to Saturn carries some religious significance
to it, so maybe it was respected as a stepping stone into the priesthood.
I'm not sure, but I do know that in my research I couldn't find one Great Historical Roman
who served as an Urban Quaestor.
Everyone of significance seems to have been assigned to be a provincial governor.
Cicero and Caesar both served as provincial Quaestors as young men, but they had remarkably
different experiences.
Cicero was assigned to Sicily, which at the time, was the breadbasket of the Republic.
The city of Rome was growing at an alarming rate, with new urban poor arriving in the
city in numbers that some contemporaries feared was unsustainable.
In response to this, Rome committed to an expensive social program where they would
supply the urban poor with free (or heavily subsidized) bread, which suddenly made agricultural
provinces like Sicily incredibly important.
When Cicero arrived in Sicily, he discovered that grain prices were rising sharply.
Cicero immediately gathered together all of the local landowners, and launched into negotiations.
By the end, the landowners agreed to sell to Rome for a reduced “normalized” rate.
In Sicily, it had become common practice for local politicians to skim a little off the
top of the grain shipments.
This always caused grumblings among the landowners since it cut into their profits.
When harvest season came during Cicero's tenure, he put an end to this practice.
Not only did he earn a reputation for himself as an honest broker, he earned the respect
and gratitude of the Sicilian landowners.
They stayed loyal, too.
For the rest of Cicero's political career, the Sicilian landowners remained staunch political
allies.
Every time he ran for election, wealthy Sicilians with Roman citizenship would make the trip
to Rome in order to cast their vote for their man.
Caesar had a radically different experience.
He was assigned to the province of Hyspania Ulterior, which is in northwestern Spain.
This region was a recent Roman conquest, with tough, barbarous mountain-people, who were
resistant to Roman attempts to “civilize” them.
Caesar's governor was forced to spend most of his time touring his province at the head
of a legion in order to keep the peace.
Out of necessity, Caesar had to step into his shoes.
His governor was spending all his time on the military, so Caesar had to take over the
governor's legal responsibilities.
He spent a lot of his time hearing petitions, adjudicating tribal disputes, and generally
trying to put out fires by imposing the Roman legal system on the native population.
Through our sources we get the impression that Caesar only had limited success in bringing
the rule of law to the people.
The natives were a tough bunch, they weren't having any of it.
Towards the end of his term he even made up some excuse and left the province early.
It must have been quite frustrating for such an ambitious young man.
Some years later when Caesar returned to Hyspiania Ulterior as governor, he used this prior knowledge
to his advantage.
He immediately set out to “civilize” the ungovernable regions of Spain at the head
of an army.
He knew which tribes and which villages simply ignored Rome's authority, and swiftly forced
them to submit under threat of force.
Some tribes rose up and fought, but all were defeated.
Eventually Hyspania Ulterior transformed from a barbarian-infested borderland into an extremely
profitable mining province.
This is partially due to Caesar's brutal intervention against the native population, which was directly
informed by his experience as a Quaestor.
In the next video we'll be moving a step up on on the Cursus Honorum and taking an in
depth look at Aediles.
Caesar made quite the name for himself as an Aedile, so there will be lots more about
him.
Thanks for watching.