Page:Roman Constitutional History, 753-44 B.C..djvu/74

60 patrician father and a plebeian mother could hold the highest offices in the state, a man of pure plebeian blood might hope that he would be able to attain the same distinction. Moreover, such patricians as wished to marry outside their order could, if intermarriage was conceded; marry plebeians in place of members of the Latin nobility, and thus contribute to the unity of the state. In any case the class spirit of the patrician order seemed fully equal to the task of preventing any very important social or political results. Under these circumstances the right of intermarriage between patricians and plebeians was without much difficulty established by the Canuleian plebiscite in 445.

The Consular Tribunate. — In the course of the same year a number of tribunes proposed that plebeians also should be eligible to the consulship. As usual, the patricians did not agree to the proposition and effected a compromise. The patricians alone remained eligible to the consulship, but a new office, the consular tribunate, was created. It was modeled to a slight extent on the military tribunate, to which the plebeians had for a long time been eligible. The number of consular tribunes (tribuni militares consulari potestate or imperio) seems to have been normally six, but it varied from three to six. They were elected by the assembly of centuries, and might be either plebeians or patricians; still neither class was entitled to a definite number of places in the college. They were to serve for one year and exercise consular authority.

These tribunes were denied certain honorary rights connected with the consulship. They were, for example, not permitted to celebrate a triumph, and probably the plebeian ex-tribunes did not enjoy in the senate the precedence accorded to ex-consuls. Moreover, while the descendants of a consul were allowed to place a painted wax mask of him in the family hall and on certain occasions to exhibit it in