There are several unanswered questions which arise at this point. What was the distribution of offices in the colony after its foundation; what regulation, if any, was there as to the proportion of officials to the new make up of the population; and what and who were the quinquennial duovirs? From the proportionately large fragments of municipal fasti left from Praeneste it will be possible to reach some conclusions that may be of future value. THE DISTRIBUTION OF OFFICES. The beginning of this question comes from a passage in Cicero,[231] which says that the Sullan colonists in Pompeii were preferred in the offices, and had a status of citizenship better than that of the old inhabitants of the city. Such a state of affairs might also seem natural in a colony which had just been deprived of one third of its land, and had had forced upon it as citizens a troop of soldiers who naturally would desire to keep the city offices as far as possible in their own control.[232] Dessau thinks that because this unequal state of citizenship was found in Pompeii, which was a colony of Sulla's, it must have been found also in Praeneste, another of his colonies.[233] Before entering into the question of whether or not this can be proved, it will be well to mention three probable reasons why Dessau is wrong in his contention. The first, an argumentum ex silentio, is that if there was trouble in Pompeii between the old inhabitants and the new colonists then the same would have been true in Praeneste! As it was so close to Rome, however, the trouble would have been much better known, and certainly Cicero would not have lost a chance to bring the state of affairs at Praeneste also into a comparison. Second, the great pains Sulla took to rebuild the walls of Praeneste, to lay out a new forum, and especially to make such an extensive enlargement and so many repairs of the temple of Fortuna Primigenia, show that his efforts were not entirely to please his new colonists, but just as much to try to defer to the wishes and civic pride of the old settlers. Third, the fact that a great many of the old inhabitants were left, despite the great slaughter at the capture of the city, is shown by the frequent recurrence in later inscriptions of the ancient names of the city, and by the fact that within twenty years the property of the soldier colonists had been bought up,[234] and the soldiers had died, or had moved to town, or reenlisted for foreign service. Had there been much trouble between the colonists and the old inhabitants, or had the colonists taken all the offices, in either case they would not have been so ready to part with their land, which was a sort of patent to citizenship.