The Regulations About Officials
The question now arises whether the new colonists had better rights legally than the old citizens, and whether they had the majority of votes and elected city officers from their own number. The inscriptions with which we have to deal are both fragments of lists of city officers, and in the longer of the two, one gives the officers for four years, the corresponding column for two years and part of a third. A Dolabella, who belongs to the gens Cornelia, as we have seen, heads the list as duovir. The ædile for the same year is a certain Rotanius.253 This name is not found in the sepulchral inscriptions of the city of Rome, nor in the inscriptions of Præneste except in this one instance. This man is certainly one of the new colonists, and probably a soldier from North Italy.254 Both the quæstors of the same year are given. They are M. Samiarius and Q. Flavius. Samiarius is one of the famous old names of Præneste.255 In the same way, the duovirs of the next year, C. Messienus and P. Cornelius, belong, the one to Præneste, the other to the colonists,256 and just such an arrangement is also found in the ædiles, Sex. Cæsius being a Prænestine257, L. Nassius a colonist. Q. Caleius and C. Sertorius, the quæstors of the same year, do not appear in the inscriptions of Præneste except here, and it is impossible to say more than that Sertorius is a good Roman name, and Caleius a good north Italian one.258 C. Salvius and T. Lucretius, duovirs for the next year, the recurrence of Salvius in another inscription,259 L. Curtius and C. Vibius, the ædiles,—Statiolenus and C. Cassius, the quæstors, show the same phenomenon, for it seems quite possible from other inscriptional evidence to claim Salvius, Vibius,260 and Statiolenus261 as men from the old families of Præneste. The quinquennalis for the next year, M. Petronius, has a name too widely prevalent to allow any certainty as to his native place, but the nomen Petronia and Ptronia is an old name in Præneste.262 In the second column of the inscription, although the majority of the names there seem to belong to the new colonists, as those in the first column do to the old settlers, there are two names, Q. Arrasidius and T. Apponius, which do not make for the argument either way.263 In the smaller fragment there are but six names: M. Decumius and L. Ferlidius, C. Paccius and C. Ninn(ius), C. Albinius and Sex. Capivas, but from these one gets only good probabilities. The nomen Decumia is well attested in Præneste before the time of Sulla.264 In fact the same name, M. Decumius, is among the old pigne inscriptions.265 Paccia has been found this past year in Prænestine territory, and may well be an old Prænestine name, for the inscriptions of a family of the name Paccia have come to light at Gallicano.266 Capivas is at least not a Roman name,267 but from its scarcity in other places can as well be one of the names that are so frequent in Præneste, which show Etruscan or Sabine formation, and which prove that before Sulla’s time the city had a great many inhabitants who had come from Etruria and from back in the Sabine mountains. Ninnius268 is a name not found elsewhere in the Latian towns, but the name belonged to the nobility near Capua,269 and is found also in Pompeii270 and Puteoli.271 It seems a fair supposition to make at the outset, as we have seen that various writers on Præneste have done, that the new colonists would try to keep the highest office to themselves, at any rate, particularly the duovirate. But a study of the names, as has been the case with the less important officers, fails even to bear this out.272 These lists of municipal officers show a number of names that belong with certainty to the older families of Præneste, and thus warrant the statement that the colonists did not have better rights than the old settlers, and that not even in the duovirate, which held an effective check (maior potestas)273 on the ædiles and quæstors, can the names of the new colonists be shown to outnumber or take the place of the old settlers.