The ''quaesitor'' () was a Late Roman/

Byzantine The Byzantine Empire, also known as the Eastern Roman Empire, was the continuation of the Roman Empire centred on Constantinople during late antiquity and the Middle Ages. Having survived the events that caused the fall of the Western Roman E ...

police official of

Constantinople Constantinople (#Names of Constantinople, see other names) was a historical city located on the Bosporus that served as the capital of the Roman Empire, Roman, Byzantine Empire, Byzantine, Latin Empire, Latin, and Ottoman Empire, Ottoman empire ...

, specifically a

magistrate The term magistrate is used in a variety of systems of governments and laws to refer to a civilian officer who administers the law. In ancient Rome, a '' magistratus'' was one of the highest ranking government officers, and possessed both judi ...

, responsible for controlling the flow of legal and illegal

immigration Immigration is the international movement of people to a destination country of which they are not usual residents or where they do not possess nationality in order to settle as Permanent residency, permanent residents. Commuting, Commuter ...

into the

capital city A capital city, or just capital, is the municipality holding primary status in a country, state (polity), state, province, department (administrative division), department, or other administrative division, subnational division, usually as its ...

of Byzantium.; . The office of the ''quaesitor'' was first established in 539 through the ''

Novella A novella is a narrative prose fiction whose length is shorter than most novels, but longer than most novelettes and short stories. The English word ''novella'' derives from the Italian meaning a short story related to true (or apparently so) ...

'' 80 of

Emperor The word ''emperor'' (from , via ) can mean the male ruler of an empire. ''Empress'', the female equivalent, may indicate an emperor's wife (empress consort), mother/grandmother (empress dowager/grand empress dowager), or a woman who rules ...

Justinian I Justinian I (, ; 48214 November 565), also known as Justinian the Great, was Roman emperor from 527 to 565. His reign was marked by the ambitious but only partly realized ''renovatio imperii'', or "restoration of the Empire". This ambition was ...

(r. 527–565), designed to deal with the arrival of unemployed people to Constantinople living as

criminals In ordinary language, a crime is an unlawful act punishable by a state or other authority. The term ''crime'' does not, in modern criminal law, have any simple and universally accepted definition,Farmer, Lindsay: "Crime, definitions of", in Cane ...

or beggars. One of his functions was to investigate people passing through Constantinople by determining their names, origins, and reasons for being in the city. 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 A bakery is an establishment that produces and sells flour-based baked goods made in an oven such as bread, cookies, cakes, doughnuts, bagels, Pastry, pastries, and pies. Some retail bakeries are also categorized as Coffeehouse, cafés, servi ...

(if an unemployed person refused to work, he would be expelled from Constantinople). The ''quaesitor'' was also granted judicial functions whereby his

court A court is an institution, often a government entity, with the authority to adjudicate legal disputes between Party (law), parties and Administration of justice, administer justice in Civil law (common law), civil, Criminal law, criminal, an ...

dealt with certain types of crimes such as

forgery Forgery is a white-collar crime that generally consists of the false making or material alteration of a legal instrument with the specific mens rea, intent to wikt:defraud#English, defraud. Tampering with a certain legal instrument may be fo ...

References

Sources

* * {{refend, 2 Byzantine officials Administration of Constantinople Justinian I