or consul, with quaestor as the lowest office. After Sulla's reforms, the cursus honorum was cemented, with the added requirement that to stand for the quaestorship, one first needed to have been one of the vigintiviri and have held the military tribunate. Quaestors were elected last in the electoral comitia, as they were of the lowest rank. They came into office during the late Republic, however, before their more senior colleagues, on 5 December rather than 1 January (and also earlier than the tribunes of the plebs, who came into office on 10 December). Responsibilities After election, they were assigned – usually by lot on their first day in office – to their tasks. Very rarely were quaestors directly assigned to a specific task without lot (i.e., extra sortem), likely with the approval of the senate to a magistrate's request. Some quaestors were assigned to specific tasks (the management of the treasury or of the grain supply in Ostia), but most were assigned to assist a higher magistrate. Those assigned to the treasury were supervised by the Senate (usually with the consuls as intermediaries), while those assigned to a higher magistrate were supervised by their superior. Quaestors could be dismissed by their superiors, but this appears rare; there is only one known case thereof, when then-proconsul Marcus Aurelius Cotta dismissed his quaestor Publius Oppius in 73 BC. In the early Republic, one quaestor was attached to each consul, both when the consul was in Rome for civic duties and on military campaign. By 227 BC, every magistrate with imperium (consuls and praetors) left the city accompanied by a quaestor. This close cooperation led these provincial quaestors to take a more active role in assisting their superiors with military – even assuming command at times – and administrative tasks. The expanding use of prorogation also affected quaestors, who were regularly prorogued with their superiors pro quaestore; more frustratingly, ancient sources did not always differentiate between quaestors and their proquaestorian counterparts, regularly calling both quaestors. Quaestors in the provinces generally remained in the same province as their superiors for the duration of the superior's term, but this was not obligatory, as the quaestorian careers of Gaius Gracchus, Julius Caesar, and the rotating names of quaestors serving under Gaius Verres attest. Terms in the provinces usually lasted one or two years. Quaestors acted militarily solely under the auspices and imperium of their commanders,