The quaestiones perpetuae, although added to, refurbished and furnished with a definitive procedural code by Augustus, did not fare very well in the Principate or in the sources. Our view is constantly obscured by the senate and the emperor’s court, and by the praefectus urbi whenever he chooses to put in an appearance. The broad outlines are reasonably clear: Augustus sent down to the Principate a fully-formed and fully-functioning system of jury-courts, but by some time in the third century the whole system had collapsed and the bulk of the jurisdiction previously exercised by the quaestiones perpetuae was in the hands of the praefectus urbi, with a small but politically important minority of trials continuing to be brought in the senate or in the emperor’s court, as hitherto. So much for the general picture. There is less certainty about the various stages in the decline. It is clear that the problem cannot be considered as an organic whole, for different courts undoubtedly decayed at different times. Some courts, notably the quaestio maiestatis and the quaestio repetundarum, were not called upon to handle a large volume of day-to-day work at any time, and least of all when the senate and the emperor began making inroads into their spheres of competence. There is therefore no reason to assume a long currency for either of these courts, and the same can be said of the quaestio de ambitu, the quaestio de annona and the quaestio de plagiariis.