Page:A history and description of Roman political institutions (IA historyanddescri00abbo).pdf/54

42 point of view of the magistracies, the senate, the people, and foreign affairs. The magistracies provided for under the constitution in 366 were those of consul, interrex, dictator, censor, praetor, quaestor, and curule aedile. With the magistracies the plebeian tribuneship and aedileship should be mentioned. Notwithstanding the fact that the law of 367 stipulated that one of the two consuls should be a plebeian, on seven occasions in the twenty-five years which followed both consuls were patricians. This state of things may not have been due, however, to the bad faith of the aristocracy. Probably the cleverest statesmen and generals were still those of patrician descent, and the plebeiens may well have put patriotism above class prejudice in foregoing their claim to one of the two positions. The right to hold the consulship naturally carried along with it eligibility to the offices of dictator and censor, and it is not surprising that a plebeian filled the former office in 356 and the latter in 351, without waiting for the formality of a law throwing those positions open to his class. However, the plebeians thought it wise to secure the passage of a law in 339, formulating their claim to one of the two censors. They won still another success two years later, when the great plebeian leader, Q. Publilius Philo, was elected to the praetorship, in violation of the bargain in accordance with which the patricians had conceded the consulship. The quaestorship had been thrown open to the plebeians in 421, when the number of quaestors was increased from two to four. By establishing the curule aedileship, which was not open to plebeians, and by granting the incumbents of that office special honors, the patricians hoped to securer an offset to the office of plebeian aedile, but they soon gave up their exclusive claim to the office, and a peculiar arrangement was adopted for it. In