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 relation to them as the two quaestors did to the consuls. Their functions were as undefined as those of the quaestors; but, when the powers of the tribunate were slightly better established, these delegates seem, like their prototypes, to have been concerned mainly with criminal jurisdiction and finance. They also kept the archives of the Plebs in the temple of Ceres, and it was thought that it was from this that their name aediles (possibly not their original title) was derived. They served the tribunes in the exercise of their coercitio, seizing the offender or inflicting the death penalty. We find them performing this function in the trial of Coriolanus. After the tribunes had gained criminal jurisdiction, they assisted them as delegates. Their original financial functions are somewhat indefinable; but such functions are suggested by their office at the temple of Ceres and the archives which they guarded there—functions which find exact parallels in those of the quaestors at the temple of Saturn. It may have been one of their duties to exercise some supervision over the forced labour (operae) of the Plebeians, and this may have led to an early connexion with the repair of roads and buildings. Their police functions, their supervision of the market, above all their maintenance of the state religion amongst the masses, can hardly be referred to this early period.

The aediles may originally have been nominated by their superiors; but election by the concilium of the Plebs, under the presidency of a tribune, is the only form of their appointment which is known to us. The office was legalised with the tribunate, and its holder possessed the same personal. So later in the trial of P. Scipio. Liv. xxix. 20; xxxviii. 52.]