censor
not to erase from the list any senator or knight without specifying in
writing the grounds for his decision, or, in other words, adopting, as
a rule, a quasi-judicial procedure.

Remodelling of the Constitution According to the Views of the Nobility
Inadequate Number of Magistrates

In this political position--mainly based on the senate, the equites,
and the censorship--the nobility not only usurped in substance the
government, but also remodelled the constitution according to their
own views. It was part of their policy, with a view to keep up the
appreciation of the public magistracies, to add to the number of these
as little as possible, and to keep it far below what was required by
the extension of territory and the increase of business. Only the
most urgent exigencies were barely met by the division of the judicial
functions hitherto discharged by a single praetor between two judges
--one of whom tried the lawsuits between Roman burgesses, and the
other those that arose between non-burgesses or between burgess and
non-burgess--in 511, and by the nomination of four auxiliary consuls
for the four transmarine provinces of Sicily (527), Sardinia including
Corsica (527), and Hither and Further Spain (557). The far too
summary mode of initialing processes in Rome, as well as the
increasing influence of the official staff, are doubtless traceable
in great measure to the practically inadequate numbers of the
Roman magistracy.

Election of Officers in the Comitia

Among the innovations originated by the government--which were none
the less innovations, that almost uniformly they changed not the
letter, but merely the practice of the existing constitution--the most
prominent were the measures by which the filling up of officers' posts
as well as of civil magistracies was made to depend not, as the letter
of the constitution allowed and its spirit required, simply on merit
and ability, but more and more on birth and seniority. As regards the
nomination of staff-officers this was done not in form, but all the
more in substance. It had already, in the course of the previous
period, been in great part transferred from the general to the
burgesses;(13) in this period came the further step, that the whole
staff-officers of the regular yearly levy--the twenty-four military
tribunes of the four ordinary legions--were nominated in the -comitia
tributa-. Thus a line of demarcation more and more insurmountable was
dr