government; Sulla abolished the equestrian and
restored the senatorial courts. Gaius Gracchus or at any rate the
Gracchan period had conceded to the equites a special place at the
popular festivals, such as the senators had for long possessed;(10)
Sulla abolished it and relegated the equites to the plebeian benches.(11)
The equestrian order, created as such by Gaius Gracchus, was deprived
of its political existence by Sulla. The senate was to exercise
the supreme power in legislation, administration, and jurisdiction,
unconditionally, indivisibly, and permanently, and was to be
distinguished also by outward tokens not merely as a privileged,
but as the only privileged, order.

Reorganization of the Senate
Its Complement Filled Up by Extraordinary Election
Admission to the Senate through the Quaestorship
Abolition of the Censorial Supervision of the Senate

For this purpose the governing board had, first of all, to have its
ranks filled up and to be itself placed on a footing of independence.
The numbers of the senators had been fearfully reduced by the recent
crises. Sulla no doubt now gave to those who were exiled by the
equestrian courts liberty to return, for instance to the consular
Publius Rutilius Rufus,(12) who however made no use of the permission,
and to Gaius Cotta the friend of Drusus;(13) but this made only slight
amends for the gaps which the revolutionary and reactionary reigns
of terror had created in the ranks of the senate. Accordingly by
Sulla's directions the senate had its complement extraordinarily made
up by about 300 new senators, whom the assembly of the tribes had
to nominate from among men of equestrian census, and whom they
selected, as may be conceived, chiefly from the younger men of the
senatorial houses on the one hand, and from Sullan officers and
others brought into prominence by the last revolution on the other.
For the future also the mode of admission to the senate was
regulated anew and placed on an essentially different basis.
As the constitution had hitherto stood, men entered the senate
either through the summons of the censors, which was the proper and
ordinary way, or through the holding of one of the three curule
magistracies--the consulship, the praetorship, or the aedileship--
to which since the passing of the Ovinian law a seat and vote in
the senate had been de jure attached.(14) The holding of an inferior
magistracy, of the tribunate or the quaestorship, gave doub