Of course it was no mere accident, that this deficiency was not covered once for all by the creation of new praetorships.

According to the letter of the constitution all the supreme magistrates were to be nominated annually by the burgesses; according to the new order or rather disorder--under which the vacancies that arose were filled up mainly by prolonging the term of office, and a second year was as a rule added by the senate to the magistrates legally serving for one year, but might also at discretion be refused--the most important and most lucrative places in the state were filled up no longer by the burgesses, but by the senate out of a list of competitors formed by the burgess-elections.

Since among these positions the transmarine commands were especially sought after as being the most lucrative, it was usual to entrust a transmarine command on the expiry of their official year to those magistrates whom their office confined either in law or at any rate in fact to the capital, that is, to the two praetors administering justice in the city and frequently also to the consuls; a course which was compatible with the nature of prorogation, since the official authority of supreme magistrates acting in Rome and in the provinces respectively, although differently entered on, was not in strict state-law different in kind.
Regulation of Their Functions by Sulla Separation of the Political and Military Authority Cisalpine Gaul Erected into a Province Such was the state of things which Sulla found existing, and which formed the basis of his new arrangement.

Its main principles were, a complete separation between the political authority which governed in the burgess-districts and the military authority which governed in the non-burgess-districts, and an uniform extension of the duration of the supreme magistracy from one year to two, the first of which was devoted to civil, and the second to military affairs.

Locally the civil and the military authority had certainly been long separated by the constitution, and the former ended at the -pomerium-, where the latter began; but still the same man held the supreme political and the supreme military power united in his hand.