burgesses.(14) With a view to check simply the worst abuses in this respect and to prevent young men quite untried from holding these important posts, it became necessary to require, as a preliminary to the bestowal of staff appointments, evidence of a certain number of years of service.  Nevertheless, when once the military tribunate, the true pillar of the Roman military system, was laid down as the first stepping-stone in the political career of the young aristocrats, the obligation of service inevitably came to be frequently eluded, and the election of officers became liable to all the evils of democratic canvassing and of aristocratic exclusiveness.  It was a cutting commentary on the new institution, that in serious wars (as in 583) it was found necessary to suspend this democratic mode of electing officers, and to leave once more to the general the nomination of his staff.

Restrictions on the Election of Consuls and Censors

In the case of civil offices, the first and chief object was to limit re-election to the supreme magistracies.  This was certainly necessary, if the presidency of annual kings was not to be an empty name; and even in the preceding period reelection to the consulship was not permitted till after the lapse often years, while in the case if the censorship it was altogether forbidden.(15) No farther law was passed in the period before us; but an increased stringency in its application is obvious from the fact that, while the law as to the ten years’ interval was suspended in 537 during the continuance of the war in Italy, there was no farther dispensation from it afterwards, and indeed towards the close of this period re-election seldom occurred at all.  Moreover, towards the end of this epoch (574) a decree of the people was issued, binding the candidates for public magistracies to undertake them in a fixed order of succession, and to observe certain intervals between the offices, and certain limits of age.  Custom, indeed, had long prescribed both of these; but it was a sensibly felt restriction of the freedom of election, when the customary qualification was raised into a legal requirement, and the right of disregarding such requirements in extraordinary cases was withdrawn from the elective body.  In general, admission to the senate was thrown open to persons belonging to the ruling families without distinction as to ability, while not only were the poorer and humbler ranks of the population utterly precluded from access to the offices of government, but all Roman burgesses not belonging to the hereditary aristocracy were practically excluded, not indeed exactly from the senate, but from the two highest magistracies, the consulship and the censorship.  After Manius Curius and Gaius Fabricius,(16) no instance can be pointed out of a consul who did not belong to the social aristocracy, and probably no instance of the kind occurred at all.  But the number of the -gentes-, which appear for the first time in the lists of consuls