In sketching the invasion of office and honours by the plebeian nobles we have ventured to anticipate somewhat the chronological sequence of events. The commons, too, had during this period their share of political emancipation. Thirty-nine years before the Ogulnian law something had been done by legislation to increase the independence of the Plebs as a corporation, and to free the assemblies of the Populus from the legal control of the Patricians. In 339 B.C. a plebeian dictator, Q. Publilius Philo, carried a law making _plebiscita_ binding on the people (_ut plebiscita omnes Quirites tenerent_).[479] The meaning of this law was clearly not understood by our authority. Its pretended wording is almost identical with that of the Valerio-Horatian measures;[480] but what was done on that occasion did not need repetition, and the object of the Publilian law must have been to secure more immediate legal validity to such measures passed by the Plebs as did not refer to that corporation alone—to make, in fact, the stages of transition from _plebiscitum_ to _lex_ a matter of formal and not of real importance.[481] Another law passed by the same dictator had reference to the _patrum auctoritas_. We have seen what this power had become, probably from the dawn of the Republic.[482] It was a claim by the patrician members of the Senate to accept or reject any measure of the Populus, when assembled by curies or by centuries. It never affected _plebiscita_, and we know too little of the _comitia tributa_ to say whether the measures of that body were submitted to it or not;[483] the hampering of the _comitia curiata_ was by this time of no importance, and the _lex Publilia_ confined itself to the application of the _auctoritas_ to the centuries. By this law it was enacted that the consent to laws passed by the _comitia centuriata_ should be given before the voting commenced.[484] This provision was shortly afterwards (perhaps in 338 B.C.) extended by a _lex Maenia_ to elections.[485] It is evident that neither of these provisions could have made the _auctoritas_ nugatory, for it was not more difficult for a section of the Senate to decline to submit a question to the people than to reject it when passed. The provisions may, however, be a sign that the _auctoritas_ was becoming a mere form; but its formal character was due to the rapidly increasing preponderance of Plebeians in the Senate.