or Sabine formation, and which prove that before Sulla's time the city had a great many inhabitants who had come from Etruria and from back in the Sabine mountains. Ninnius[268] is a name not found elsewhere in the Latian towns, but the name belonged to the nobility near Capua,[269] and is found also in Pompeii[270] and Puteoli.[271] It seems a fair supposition to make at the outset, as we have seen that various writers on Praeneste have done, that the new colonists would try to keep the highest office to themselves, at any rate, particularly the duovirate. But a study of the names, as has been the case with the less important officers, fails even to bear this out.[272] These lists of municipal officers show a number of names that belong with certainty to the older families of Praeneste, and thus warrant the statement that the colonists did not have better rights than the old settlers, and that not even in the duovirate, which held an effective check (maior potestas)[273] on the aediles and quaestors, can the names of the new colonists be shown to outnumber or take the place of the old settlers. THE QUINQUENNALES. There remains yet the question in regard to the men who filled the quinquennial office. We know that whether the officials of the municipal governments were praetors, aediles, duovirs, or quattuorvirs, at intervals of five years their titles either were quinquennales,[274] or had that added to them, and that this title implied censorial duties.[275] It has also been shown that after 46 B.C. the lex Iulia compelled the census in the various Roman towns to be taken by the proper officers in the same year that it was done in Rome. This implies that the taking of the census had been so well established a custom that it was a long time before Rome itself had cared to enact a law which changed the year of census taking in those towns which had not of their own volition made their census contemporaneous with that in Rome. That the duration of the quinquennial office was one year is certain,[276] that it was eponymous is also sure,[277] but whether the officers who performed these duties every five years did so in addition to holding the highest office of the year, or in place of that honor, is a question not at all satisfactorily answered. That is, were the men who held the quinquennial office the men who would in all probability have stood for the duovirate in the regular succession of advance in the round of offices (cursus honorum), or did the government at Rome in some way, either directly or indirectly, name the men for the highest office in that particular year when the census was to be taken? That is, again, were quinquennales elected as the other city officials were, or were they appointed by Rome, or were they merely designated by Rome, and then elected in the proper and regular way by the citizens of the towns?