149. The youth and inexperience of the quaestors, who entered
on that important office in their twenty-fifth year (Lips.
Excurs. ad Tacit. l. iii. D.), engaged Augustus to remove
them from the management of the treasury; and though they
were restored by Claudius, they seem to have been finally
dismissed by Nero. (Tacit. Annal. xiii. 29. Sueton. in Aug.
c. 36, in Claud. c. 24. Dion, p. 696 [1. liii. c. 2], 961
[1. lx. c. 24], etc. Plin. Epistol. x. 20, et alibi.) In
the provinces of the Imperial division the place of the
quaestors was more ably supplied by the procurators (Dion
Cas. p. 707 [1. liii. c. 15]; Tacit. in Vit. Agricol. c.
15); or, as they were afterwards called, rationales.
(Hist. August. p.130 [Lamprid. Alex. Sever. cc. 45, 46]).
But in the provinces of the senate we may still discover a
series of quaestors till the reign of Marcus Antoninus. (See
the Inscriptions of Gruter, the Epistles of Pliny, and a
decisive fact in the Augustan History, p. 64 [Spartian.
Sever. c. 2].) From Ulpian we may learn (Pandect. 1. i. tit.
13) that, under the government of the House of Severus,
their provincial administration was abolished; and in the
subsequent troubles the annual or triennial elections of
quaestors must have naturally ceased.