DISPENSA´TOR
DISPENSA´TOR a steward in the urbana familia, who
had the charge of the accounts and made the payments. (
Cic. Att. 11.1; Cic. ap. Non. p. 193; Fest. p.
72, M.;
Juv. 1.91,
7.219;
Mart. 5.42;
Macr. 2.4,
31;
Suet. Aug. 67,
Galb. 12,
Vesp. 22.) The dispensator was usually, perhaps always, a
slave; though under the empire, Orelli maintains, he was sometimes ingenuus
(Orelli,
Inscr. 4002). If there was a procurator in the
house, the dispensator was under him, and acted simply as cashier. Thus we
read in Petronius (30) that the procurator
rationes
accipiebat, while the dispensator paid out the golden money in
the atrium. If there was a dispensator on the country estate, he was nearly
the same as the villicus (
Dig. 50,
16,
166). The imperial
procuratores discharged important duties not only at the court, but in Rome
and the provinces (cf.
Plin. Nat. 7.129).
How valuable was the appointment may be seen from the fact that Otho
extorted a million of sesterces from a slave whom he had recommended to
Galba for the office of dispensator (Suet.
Oth. 5). A slave
of Claudius, who was dispensator in Nearer Spain, had a silver dish 500
pounds in weight, and many of his companions had similar dishes, but of less
weight (
Plin. Nat. 33.145; Tertull.
de Pall. 5). In a columbarium on the Appian way is an
inscription respecting an imperial dispensator in Gallia Lugdunensis,
erected by sixteen of his slaves (
vicarii), who
had accompanied him to Rome, where he died (Orelli-Henzen,
Inscr. 6651). (Becker-Göll,
Gallus, ii. p. 136; Friedländer,
Sittengesch.
Roms, i. p. 97 ; Marquardt,
Privatl. d.
Römer, p. 152.)
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