not only elected the plebeian tribunes and
aediles, but soon chose the quaestors also. Furthermore, the patrician
magistrates, finding this Assembly in many ways more convenient for the
transaction of public business than the Assembly of the Centuries which
met in the Campus Martius outside the _pomerium_ and required more time to
register its opinion because of the greater number of voting units, began
to convene it to approve measures, which, if previously sanctioned by a
decree of the Senate, became law. The tribunes likewise presented
resolutions to the Assembly of the Tribes, and these, too, if sanctioned
by the Senate, were binding on the whole community. Such laws were called
plebiscites (_plebi scita_) in contrast with the _leges_ passed by an
assembly presided over by a magistrate with _imperium_. It became the
ambition of the tribunes to obtain for their plebiscites the force of law
without regard to the Senate's approval.

*The lex Canuleia.* The social stigma which rested upon the plebeians
because they could not effect a legal marriage with the patricians, a
disability that had been maintained by the law of the XII Tables, was
removed by the Canuleian Law in 437.

*The plebs and the magistracy.* The plebeians did not rest content with
having spokesmen and defenders in the tribunes: they also demanded
admission to the consulate and the Senate. In 421 plebeians were admitted
to the quaestorship, and by that time the plebeian aediles could be looked
upon as magistrates, but the patricians tenaciously maintained their
monopoly of the _imperium_ until, in 396, a plebeian was elected a
military tribune with consular power.(3)

Perhaps the appearance of plebeian military tribunes at this time may be
explained on the ground that the vicissitudes of the war with Veii forced
the patricians to accept as magistrates the ablest available men in the
state even if of plebeian origin.

With the military tribunate the plebeians had held an office that
conferred the right to the _imperium_. Consequently, when the consulship
was definitely reestablished in 362, they could not logically be excluded
from it. In 362 the first plebeian consul was elected, but it was not
until 340 that the practice became established that one consul must, and
the other might, be a plebeian.

After their admission to the consulship the plebeians were eligible to all
the other magistracies. They gained the dictatorship in 356, the
censorship i