CONSUL (ὕπατος), the title of the two chief officers or magistrates of the Roman republic. The word is probably composed of _con_ and _sul_, which contains the same root as the verb _salio_, so that consules signifies “those who come together,” just as _praesul_ means “one who goes before,” and _exsul_, “one who goes out.” The consulship is said to have been instituted upon the expulsion of the kings in B.C. 509, when the kingly power was transferred to two magistrates, whose office lasted only for one year, that it might not degenerate into tyranny by being vested longer in the same persons; and for the same reason two were appointed instead of one king, as neither could undertake anything unless it was sanctioned and approved by his colleague. Their original title was _praetores_, or commanders of the armies, but this was changed into that of _consules_ in B.C. 449, and the latter title remained in use until the latest periods of the Roman empire.--The consuls were at first elected from the patricians exclusively. Their office was suspended in B.C. 451, and its functions were performed by ten high commissioners (_decemviri_), appointed to frame a code of laws. On the re-establishment of the consulship in B.C. 449, the tribunes proposed that one of the consuls should be chosen from the plebeians, but this was strenuously resisted by the patricians, and a compromise effected by suspending the consular office, and creating in its stead military tribunes (_tribuni militum_) with consular power, who might be elected indifferently both from the patricians and plebeians. They were first appointed in B.C. 444. The plebeians, however, were not satisfied with this concession, and still endeavoured to attain the higher dignity of the consulship. At length, after a serious and long-protracted struggle between the two orders, it was enacted by the Licinian law, in B.C. 367, that henceforth the consulship should be divided between the patricians and plebeians, and that one of the consuls should always be a plebeian. Accordingly, in B.C. 366 L. Sextius was elected the first plebeian consul. This law, however, was not always observed, and it still frequently happened that both consuls were patricians, until, in later times, when the difference between the two orders had entirely ceased, and the plebeians were on a footing of perfect equality with the patricians, the consuls were elected from both orders indiscriminately.--During the later periods of the republic it was customary for persons to pass through several subordinate magistracies before they were elected consuls, though this rule was departed from in many particular cases. The age at which a person was eligible to the consulship was fixed in B.C. 180, by the lex annalis [LEX ANNALIS], at 43.--The election of the consuls always took place in the comitia of the centuries, some time before the expiration of the official year of the actual consuls, and