Aerarium, from aes (“bronze, money”) + -ārium (“place for”), was the name given in Ancient Rome to the public treasury, and in a secondary sense to the public finances. Aerarium populi Romani The main aerarium, that of the Roman people, was the aerarium Saturni located below the Temple of Saturn at the foot of the Capitoline hill. The Roman state stored here financial and non-financial state documents – including Roman laws and senatus consulta – along with the public treasury. Laws did not become valid until they were deposited there. It also held the standards of the Roman legions; during the Roman Republic, the urban quaestors managed it under the supervision and control of the Senate. By the classical republican period, the Senate had exclusive authority to disburse funds from it. Caesar replaced quaestorian administration with the administration of two aediles. In 28 BC, Augustus transferred the aerarium to two praefecti aerarii, chosen annually by the Senate from ex-praetors. In AD 23, these were replaced by two praetors (praetores aerarii or ad aerarium), selected by lot during their term of office. Claudius in 44 restored the quaestors, but had them nominated by the emperor for three years. In 56, Nero substituted two ex-praetors selected under the same conditions. By the time of the late republic, the provincial governors had their own provincial treasuries, called a (initially referring to a "money bag"). Over time, the governors' exchequers merged with that of the emperor into an imperial fiscus. However, after a time, as the power of the emperors further increased, this distinction between senatorially-administered and provincial treasuries became irrelevant. Revenues from the Senatorial provinces increasingly became transferred from the to the through the early Principate. By the reign of Honorius and the Theodosian code, any vestigial distinctions had fallen away. The extent to which records were centralised in the aerarium may be exaggerated. The various reforms done at previous times may imply negligent management, falsification, or loss of records. Even in the Republican period, Cicero lamented the extent to which the public records were managed and in later periods, the extent to which the public records were really used for reference is controversial: scholars, eg Mommsen, have argued that the sources of law in the later empire were not based on state records but rather those of private individuals, law schools, and provincial administrators. Aerarium sanctius In addition to the common treasury,