The already-mentioned augmentation of the number of quaestors by Sulla to twenty was likewise connected with this arrangement.( 28) Better Arrangement of Business Increase of the Power of the Senate By this plan, in the first instance, a clear and fixed rule was substituted for the irregular mode of distributing offices hitherto adopted, a mode which invited all manner of vile manoeuvres and intrigues; and, secondly, the excesses of magisterial authority were as far as possible obviated and the influence of the supreme governing board was materially increased.

According to the previous arrangement the only legal distinction in the empire was that drawn between the city which was surrounded by the ring-wall, and the country beyond the -pomerium-; the new arrangement substituted for the city the new Italy henceforth, as in perpetual peace, withdrawn from the regular -imperium-,( 29) and placed in contrast to it the continental and transmarine territories, which were, on the other hand, necessarily placed under military commandants--the provinces as they were henceforth called.

According to the former arrangement the same man had very frequently remained two, and often more years in the same office.

The new arrangement restricted the magistracies of the capital as well as the governorships throughout to one year; and the special enactment that every governor should without fail leave his province within thirty days after his successor's arrival there, shows very clearly--particularly if we take along with it the formerly-mentioned prohibition of the immediate re-election of the late magistrate to the same or another public office--what the tendency of these arrangements was.

It was the time-honoured maxim by which the senate had at one time made the monarchy subject to it, that the limitation of the magistracy in point of function was favourable to democracy, and its limitation in point of time favourable to oligarchy.