nnual 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disregarding such requirements in extraordinary cases was withdrawn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 and censors in the half-century from the beginning of
the war with Hannibal to the close of that with Perseus, is extremely
limited; and by far the most of these, such as the Flaminii, Terentii,
Porcii, Acilii, and Laelii, may be referred to elections by the
opposition, or are traceable to special aristocratic connections.
The election of Gaius Laelius in 564, for instance, was evidently
due to the Scipios. The exclusion of the poorer classes from the
government was, no doubt, required by the altered circumstances of the
case. Now that Rome had ceased to be a