FROM THE DECEMVIRATE TO THE CAPTURE OF ROME BY THE GAULS. B.C. 448-390. The efforts of the leaders of the Plebeians were now directed to two subjects, the removal of the prohibition of intermarriage between the two orders, and the opening of the Consulship to their own order. They attained the first object four years after the Decemvirate by the Lex Canuleia, proposed by Canuleius, one of the Tribunes (B.C. 445). But they did not carry this law without a third secession, in which they occupied the Janiculum. At the same time a compromise was effected with respect to the Consulship. The Patricians agreed that the supreme power in the state should be intrusted to new officers bearing the title of _Military Tribunes with Consular Power_, who might be chosen equally from Patricians and Plebeians. Their number varied in different years from three to six. In B.C. 444 three Military Tribunes were nominated for the first time. In the following year (443) two new magistrates, called _Censors_, were appointed. They were always to be chosen from the Patricians; and the reason of the institution clearly was to deprive the Military Tribunes of some of the most important functions, which had been formerly discharged by the Consuls. The Censors originally held office for a period of five years, which was called a _lustrum_; but their tenure was limited to eighteen months, as early as ten years after its institution (B.C. 443), by a law of the Dictator Mamercus AEmilius, though they continued to be appointed only once in five years.[18] Though the Military Tribunes could from their first institution be chosen from either order, yet such was the influence of the Patricians in the Comitia of the Centuries that it was not till B.C. 400, or nearly forty years afterward, that any Plebeians were actually elected. In B.C. 421 the Quaestorship was also thrown open to them. The Quaestors were the paymasters of the state; and as the Censors had to fill up vacancies in the Senate from those who had held the office of Quaestor, the Plebeians thus became eligible for the Senate.