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 subsequently find a tenure of but four or two months. Those appointed for 1st January were ordinarii, the others suffecti, and the whole year was dated by the names of the former.

The number of the varied under Augustus and his successors from ten to eighteen. Twelve, fourteen, fifteen, and sixteen are found at various times, and the final limit of eighteen was still maintaining itself in the time of Hadrian. The reason for this expansion of their numbers was their utility for the enlarged jurisdiction of the period. The Republican functions of the praetor urbanus and the praetor peregrinus continued, until those of the latter became extinct, perhaps soon after the conferment of citizenship on the whole Roman world by Caracalla (212 ); while other praetors, were guides of the quaestiones perpetuae, until the disappearance of these commissions towards the close of the second century. But new spheres of extraordinary jurisdiction claimed the attention of others. Thus Claudius instituted two praetors for adjudication on trusts (fidei commissarii), Nerva one for the decision of cases arising between the fiscus and private individuals (fiscalis), and Marcus Aurelius another for the granting, and perhaps for the control, of guardians (tutelaris). For a short time the administration of the aerarium was also in the hands of praetors.

Most of the specific functions, which the had exercised during the Republic, now passed to other hands or were shorn of their importance. The history of the later Republic had shown how incompetent these officials were to exercise an adequate control of the market, and the cura annonae passed to the Princeps and to the praefecture established by him. Their police functions were to a large extent absorbed by the praefecture of the city, but they still destroyed books condemned by the