police and market regulations. It was an anomaly that these duties, so far as they fell to the lot of any special officials, should be in the hands of two plebeian assistants of the tribune.[1] It was from them that the two new magistrates borrowed their names, and the similarity of title and functions had the happy result of fusing into one corporation the plebeian officials and the new magistrates of the community. The latter were known in later times as aediles curules, from the curule chair which they had in common with the magistrates vested with the imperium. The Patriciate is said to have been the original condition of eligibility to the office;[2] but this was very soon abandoned in favour of the practice that the curule aediles should be chosen in alternate years from Patricians and Plebeians.[3] Later still—at what period is uncertain—the magistracy was annually accessible to members of both orders.
The accession of Plebeians to the consulship had been the key of the position; it had broken down the last pretended religious scruple, and a few years saw the patrician defences of every office overthrown. The year 356 witnessed the first plebeian dictator;[4] no law appears to have been required to secure the Plebs admission to this office, the qualification for the consulship being considered ipso jure to open a passage to the dictatorship. In 351 a Plebeian was first admitted to the censorship;[5] but mere admissibility was not enough, and in 339 one of the laws passed by the plebeian dictator, Q. Publilius Philo, reserved one of the two places in the censorship for members of his order.[6] How difficult it would have been for the Plebs to secure this office, apart from such a regulation, is shown by the fact that the first exclusively plebeian censorship dates only from the year 131 B.C.[7] With respect to the occupa-*. postea promiscuum fuit" [Mommsen (Staatsr. ii. p. 482) thinks as late as the last century of the Republic].]
- ↑ p. 98.
- ↑ Liv. vi. 42 "Factum senatus consultum, ut duo viros aediles ex patribus dictator populum rogaret."
- ↑ ib. vii. 1 (366 B.C.) "verecundia inde imposita est senatui ex patribus jubendi aediles curules creari. primo, ut alternis annis ex plebe fierent, convenerat; [this was the rule in 213 (Polyb. x. 4)
- ↑ ib. 17 "dictator C. Marcius Rutilus primus de plebe dictus"; he appointed a plebeian master of the horse.
- ↑ ib. 22. The same C. Marcius Rutilus "professus censuram se petere" was elected.
- ↑ ib. viii. 12 "ut alter utique ex plebe . . . censor crearetur."
- ↑ ib. Ep. 59 "Q. Pompeius et Q. Metellus, tunc primum utrique ex plebe facti, censores lustrum condiderunt."
