Quaesitor

The quaesitor (Greek: κοιαισίτωρ, κυαισίτωρ) was a Late Roman/Byzantine police official of Constantinople, specifically a magistrate, responsible for controlling the flow of legal and illegal immigration into the capital city of Byzantium.[1] The office of the quaesitor was first established in 539 through the Novella 80 of Emperor Justinian I (r. 527–565), designed to deal with the arrival of unemployed people to Constantinople living as criminals or beggars.[1] One of his functions was to investigate people passing through Constantinople by determining their names, origins, and reasons for being in the city.[1] Furthermore, the quaesitor had the authority to deal with unemployed persons by forcing the physically fit among the unemployed to work in a public industry such as a bakery (if an unemployed person refused to work, he would be expelled from Constantinople).[1] The quaesitor was also granted judicial functions whereby his court dealt with certain types of crimes such as forgery.[2]

References
  1. Bury 1958, p. 337; Moatti 2013, p. 87.
  2. Bury 1958, p. 337.

Sources
  • Bury, John Bagnell (1958). History of the Later Roman Empire: From the Death of Theodosius I to the Death of Justinian, Volume 2. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, Inc. ISBN 0-486-20399-9.
  • Moatti, Claudia (2013). "Immigration and Cosmopolitanization". In Erdkamp, Paul (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Rome. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. pp. 77–92. ISBN 978-0-52-189629-0.
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