*II. The aerarium.* Augustus had left to the Senate the control of the public treasury, the _aerarium_, which was maintained by revenues from the senatorial provinces and Italy. But when the princeps came to assume control of those branches of the administration the expense of which was defrayed by the _aerarium_, it was inevitable that the treasury itself should pass in some degree under his supervision. And so in 44 A. D. the princeps began to designate two quaestors to be in charge of the treasury for a three-year period. Under Nero the place of these quaestors was taken by two prefects appointed in the same manner but from among the ex-praetors. The importance of the _aerarium_ declined in proportion as its revenues passed into the hands of the ministers of the princeps, until in the period between Septimius Severus and Diocletian it sank to the position of a municipal chest for the city of Rome. *III. The senatorial provinces.* In the early principate the senatorial provinces were administered by appointees of the Senate, all of whom now bore the title of proconsul, assisted as in former days by quaestors. However, only the proconsul of Africa was at the same time commander of a provincial garrison, and his command was transferred to the imperial governor of Numidia by Caligula. Even in the time of Augustus the imperial procurators had appeared in the senatorial provinces in charge of the revenues which were at the disposal of the princeps, and, before the close of the third century they were in complete control of the financial administration of these provinces. But long before this, by the opening of the second century, the princeps had usurped the Senate’s privilege of appointing the proconsuls. The result was that by the close of the principate all the provinces without distinction were equally under imperial control. *Restriction of Senate’s elective powers.* It was Tiberius who transferred to the Senate the electoral functions of the Assembly but he, as Augustus before him, limited the Senate’s freedom of action by the recommendation of imperial candidates for the lower magistracies. From the time of Nero the consulship also was regularly filled by nominees of the emperors. The custom of appointing several successive consular pairs in the course of each year, each pair functioning for two or four months, greatly weakened the influence of the consulate, while it enabled the emperors to gratify the ambitions of a larger number of candidates for that office.