Page:Roman Constitutional History, 753-44 B.C..djvu/217

Rh Qualifications for Office. — For the benefit of the oligarchy, Sulla increased the qualifications for office and required that no one should hold the quaestorship before the age of thirty-seven, the praetorship before the fortieth, or the consulship before the forty-third year (pp. 139-140). It seems, however, that those who declared their intention to canvass for the tribunate or an aedileship were allowed to fill the quaestorship at the age of thirty. Only ex-quaestors were to be eligible to the praetorship, and, as formerly, ex-praetors alone were eligible to the consulship. Sulla thus retained the two years' interval between these two offices, but permitted reëlection to the same office after the lapse of ten years.

Consuls and Praetors Confined to Italy. — In addition to these shackles on individual activity and ambition, Sulla restricted the consuls and praetors in the exercise of their respective powers. While in former times the consuls had regularly had charge of important wars in the provinces and elsewhere, and usually the majority of the six praetors had down to the time of Gaius Gracchus been governors of provinces, Sulla established the rule that all these magistrates should remain in the city during their year of office, the consuls devoting themselves to legislative and administrative affairs, and the praetors to the administration of justice. In former times the sacred city limit (pomerium, pp. 24-25) had in general separated the civil sphere (domi) from the military (militiae); now, all Italy proper, whose northern boundary was perhaps at this time changed from the Aesis to the Rubicon, was to be civil territory, where as a rule no commanding general and no troops were to be found. Thus the consuls, and the praetors as well, practically lost their military powers, their importance was reduced, and the dangerous combination of supreme authority in political, as well as in military, affairs was avoided.