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The praetorship, if it ever was a patrician preserve, did not long remain such. Thirty years after its institution (337 B.C.) a Plebeian, Q. Publilius Philo, successfully contested the post. The objections of the presiding magistrate, whether based on law or custom, were overruled and Plebeians declared eligible for the office.[463]

The appointment, simultaneously with the praetor, of two additional aediles, secured nothing for the Patricians, but a great deal for the state. The military duties which prevented the consul from administering justice and attending to registration, also hindered him from devoting himself to the minutiae of police and market regulations. It was an anomaly that these duties, so far as they fell to the lot of any special officials, should be in the hands of two plebeian assistants of the tribune.[464] It was from them that the two new magistrates borrowed their names, and the similarity of title and functions had the happy result of fusing into one corporation the plebeian officials and the new magistrates of the community. The latter were known in later times as aediles curules, from the curule chair which they had in common with the magistrates vested with the imperium. The Patriciate is said to have been the original condition of eligibility to the office;[465] but this was very soon abandoned in favour of the practice that the curule aediles should be chosen in alternate years from Patricians and Plebeians.[466] Later still—at what period is uncertain—the magistracy was annually accessible to members of both orders.