Early imperial arrangements must have been to some extent based on late Republican practice. I will therefore first set out the financial machinery of the last half-century of the Republic, as revealed in Cicero's speeches and correspondence, supplemented by secondary sources. The Aerarium at Rome was the central repository of the moneys of the Roman People. It was managed by the two urban quaestors, or rather by a body of scribae quaestorii under their nominal direction. Normally the Polybian rule that no payment might be made save under the authority of a senatusconsultum seems to have held: it does not appear that the old right of a consul to draw of his own initiative still survived. Magistrates proceeding to a province were voted a block grant to cover their estimated expenses: ornare provinciam is the technical term. On leaving his province a magistrate was obliged to account to the Aerarium for this sum. These accounts seem to have been somewhat summary. Those which Verres sent in on laying down his quaestorship were no doubt unusually brief, but if it was possible for a proconsul to distribute the unexpended balance of his grant among his staff—and Cicero's refusal to follow this practice was resented by his subordinates —auditing cannot have been very exact.