number who,
as designated or former consuls, ranked among the senators whose
opinion had to be asked before the rest; so far it was certainly
of great importance for the nobility to admit the plebeian only to
a consular office, and not to the consulate itself.

Opposition of the Patriciate

But notwithstanding these vexatious disabilities the privileges of the
clans, so far as they had a political value, were legally superseded
by the new institution; and, had the Roman nobility been worthy of its
name, it must now have given up the struggle. But it did not. Though
a rational and legal resistance was thenceforth impossible, spiteful
opposition still found a wide field of petty expedients, of chicanery
and intrigue; and, far from honourable or politically prudent as such
resistance was, it was still in a certain sense fruitful of results.
It certainly procured at length for the commons concessions which
could not easily have been wrung from the united Roman aristocracy;
but it also prolonged civil war for another century and enabled
the nobility, in defiance of those laws, practically to retain the
government in their exclusive possession for several generations
longer.

Their Expedients

The expedients of which the nobility availed themselves were as
various as political paltriness could suggest. Instead of deciding
at once the question as to the admission or exclusion of the plebeians
at the elections, they conceded what they were compelled to concede
only with reference to the elections immediately impending. The vain
struggle was thus annually renewed whether patrician consuls or
military tribunes from both orders with consular powers should be
nominated; and among the weapons of the aristocracy this mode of
conquering an opponent by wearying and annoying him proved by no
means the least effective.

Subdivision of the Magistracy--
Censorship

Moreover they broke up the supreme power which had hitherto been
undivided, in order to delay their inevitable defeat by multiplying
the points to be assailed. Thus the adjustment of the budget and of
the burgess--and taxation-rolls, which ordinarily took place every
fourth year and had hitherto been managed by the consuls, was
entrusted as early as the year 319 to two valuators (-censores-),
nominated by the centuries from among the nobles for a period, at
the most, of eighteen months. The new office gradually became the
palladium of the aristocratic party, not