*The lex Canuleia.* The social stigma which rested upon the plebeians because they could not effect a legal marriage with the patricians, a disability that had been maintained by the law of the XII Tables, was removed by the Canuleian Law in 437. *The plebs and the magistracy.* The plebeians did not rest content with having spokesmen and defenders in the tribunes: they also demanded admission to the consulate and the Senate. In 421 plebeians were admitted to the quaestorship, and by that time the plebeian aediles could be looked upon as magistrates, but the patricians tenaciously maintained their monopoly of the _imperium_ until, in 396, a plebeian was elected a military tribune with consular power.(3) Perhaps the appearance of plebeian military tribunes at this time may be explained on the ground that the vicissitudes of the war with Veii forced the patricians to accept as magistrates the ablest available men in the state even if of plebeian origin. With the military tribunate the plebeians had held an office that conferred the right to the _imperium_. Consequently, when the consulship was definitely reëstablished in 362, they could not logically be excluded from it. In 362 the first plebeian consul was elected, but it was not until 340 that the practice became established that one consul must, and the other might, be a plebeian. After their admission to the consulship the plebeians were eligible to all the other magistracies. They gained the dictatorship in 356, the censorship in 351, and the praetorship in 337. Eventually, the curule aedileship also was opened to them, and was held by patricians and plebeians in alternate years. *The plebs and the Senate.* Since the custom was early established that ex-consuls, and later ex-praetors, should be enrolled in the Senate, with the opening of these offices to the plebs the latter began to have an ever-increasing representation in that body. As distinguished from the _patres_ or patrician senators, the plebeians were called _conscripti_, “the enrolled,” and this distinction was preserved in the official formula _patres conscripti_ used in addressing the Senate. In this fusion of the leading plebeians with the patricians in the Senate we have the origin of a new aristocracy in the Roman state: the so-called senatorial aristocracy or _nobilitas_. This consisted of a large group of influential patrician and plebeian families which, for some time at least, was continuously quickened and revivified by the accession of prominent plebeians who entered the Senate by way of the magistracies. Thus the Senate, by opening its ranks to the leaders of the plebs, contrived to emerge from the struggle with its prestige and influence increased rather than impaired.