In the second place, certain careers were considered as a necessary preliminary to, others as a necessary disqualification from, the magistracy. In a military city like Rome one is not surprised to find that a certain amount of military service was demanded of one who might have to lead the armies of the state, and that during the greater part of the Republic the _capite censi_ were wholly excluded from the magistracy. The length of service required from the infantry soldier is unknown; from the _eques equo publico_ it was ten years’ service “in the camp or the province,”[808] as late as the time of C. Gracchus (124 B.C.).[809] This military qualification gives us a minimum age of twenty-eight as being necessary for the holding of the quaestorship. In the Ciceronian period, on the other hand, the age was thirty,[810] and the military qualification, although it still partially survived in municipal law,[811] seems to have been abolished for Rome. Conversely, the exercise of any trade or profession for which payment was received was a disqualification for office, as long as the trade or profession was exercised.[812] This was, to some extent, an outcome of the prejudice against βαναυσία found amongst all military peoples;[813] but, as offices at Rome were unpaid, it was also a necessary provision for securing due attention to the discharge of the duties of the magistracy. Thirdly, access to the magistracy might be hindered by the past moral delinquencies of an individual or his criminal condemnation. It is a mistake to suppose that there was a definite class of _infames_ excluded from office at Rome. Certain criminal laws made temporary or permanent exclusion from the magistracy one of their sanctions. Exclusion on kindred grounds—notorious moral lapses of the candidate, his previous condemnation in a disgraceful civil suit, the fact that a prosecution for a crime was at that moment hanging over his head—was entirely the work of the magistrate who presided over the elections. He acted entirely on his own discretion, although naturally on the advice of a _consilium_ of experienced men, in declining to receive the name of such a candidate.[814] This remarkable power was the outcome of the still surviving theory that the magistrate nominated his successor, and that the election by the people was only a complementary act. Other limitations to the attainment of magistracy were determined by the previous holding of office. The magistrate who presided over the filling up of a vacancy in the regular magistracies might not return himself as elected;[815] and two laws further provided that, if a new office was established by statute, neither the _rogator_ of the measure nor his colleagues or relatives should be eligible to the post.[816]