The growth of Rome’s provincial territory made the continuance of this clumsy and casual jurisdiction impossible. The creation of the standing criminal courts (_quaestiones perpetuae_), with their presidents and juries, was the reaction of the provinces on Rome. We shall speak elsewhere of the mixed character of these courts, which were formed of a fusion of ideas borrowed from the criminal and civil law. The earliest which were created supplied a readier redress and severer punishments for the delicts of magistrates than the civil courts could give. Others were based on the classification of political offences. The great codification of the criminal law effected by Sulla (81 B.C.) rendered the tribunician jurisdiction superfluous, although it still reappeared at intervals during the party struggles of the close of the Republic. We have now reviewed every important aspect of the magistracy in general; but before going on to describe the separate functions of the magistrates in administration, so far as these have not been already anticipated, it will be convenient to touch slightly on the formal conditions requisite for holding office at Rome. These conditions often illustrate the magistrate’s position in the state, and they sometimes create real limitations on his power. The qualifications for public office (_jus honorum petendorum_) were based on the general principle that for patrician magistracies any citizen was eligible,[804] for plebeian only those of plebeian birth.[805] But to this general rule there were certain limitations based partly on the idea of the dignity of office, partly on the view that experience of a certain kind was necessary for the fulfilment of such responsible functions. In the first place, citizenship had not its private-law connotation. Freedmen may not have been _de jure_ excluded from office;[806] but the lists of magistrates show that not only were the sons of freedmen ineligible, but that the magistracy was practically reserved to those who could boast a free grandfather.[807]