The first step in the cursus honorum was quaestor. Each year the Assembly elected ten quaestors who were tasked with the Republic’s finances, accounting, and record keeping. Usually acting as an assistant to a senior magistrate, the quaestors spent their year in office learning the ropes of Roman administration. Election to quaestorship also qualified a man to be enrolled in the Senate—though as junior officers in their early thirties they were typically seen and not heard during great senatorial debates.
