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The accession of Plebeians to the consulship had been the key of the position; it had broken down the last pretended religious scruple, and a few years saw the patrician defences of every office overthrown. The year 356 witnessed the first plebeian dictator;[467] no law appears to have been required to secure the Plebs admission to this office, the qualification for the consulship being considered ipso jure to open a passage to the dictatorship. In 351 a Plebeian was first admitted to the censorship;[468] but mere admissibility was not enough, and in 339 one of the laws passed by the plebeian dictator, Q. Publilius Philo, reserved one of the two places in the censorship for members of his order.[469] How difficult it would have been for the Plebs to secure this office, apart from such a regulation, is shown by the fact that the first exclusively plebeian censorship dates only from the year 131 B.C.[470] With respect to the occupation of both of the consular places by Plebeians, a doubt seems to have existed of its legality, which was removed in 342 by a plebiscitum passed into law which declared “uti liceret consules ambos plebeios creari.”[471] We have already noticed their capture of the praetorship in 337 B.C.

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