on Praeneste 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 Praeneste, 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 aediles and quaestors, can the names of the new colonists be shown
to outnumber or take the place of the old settlers.


THE QUINQUENNALES.

There remains yet the question in regard to the men who filled the
quinquennial office. We know that whether the officials of the municipal
governments were praetors, aediles, duovirs, or quattuorvirs, at
intervals of five years their titles either were quinquennales,[274] or
had that added to them, and that this title implied censorial
duties.[275] It has also been shown that after 46 B.C. the lex Iulia
compelled the census in the various Roman towns to be taken by the
proper officers in the same year that it was done in Rome. This implies
that the taking of the census had been so well established a custom that
it was a long time before Rome itself had cared to enact a law which
changed the year of census taking in those towns which had not of their
own volition made their census contemporaneous with that in Rome.

That the duration of the quinquennial office was one year is
certain,[276] that it was eponymous is also sure,[277] but whether the
officers who performed these duties every five years did so in