We have seen the method of its institution and the singular religious basis on which its power rested,[1127] and we have observed the numbers of the holders of the office rising from two to four, and finally to ten.[1128] The right of eliciting resolutions from the Plebs and the coercive power and jurisdiction possessed by this office have also been described.[1129] We have further dwelt on the anomalous duality of the office, and seen how in a certain sense it is not a magistracy, the tribune lacking both the requisite _insignia_[1130] and the right of taking _auspicia impetrativa_,[1131] but how, on the other hand, it becomes practically a magistracy of the people, when functions originally purely plebeian come to be used in the interest of the whole state. The right of acting with the Plebs gave the tribunes the power of initiating legislation when _plebiscita_ had been raised to the level of _leges_;[1132] in their elective capacity they not only presided over the appointment of their successors and of the plebeian aediles, but through the Plebs they might not only create a minor magistracy such as the triumvirate _agris dandis assignandis_,[1133] but in the closing years of the Republic actually conducted the election of such officials.[1134] Their power of prohibition and their right of veto,[1135] limited for a moment by Sulla but soon restored in all its plenitude,[1136] became, when constitutionally employed, a guardianship of the whole state against the illegal or unconstitutional proceedings of other magistrates, and formed the chief basis of the Senate’s authority. Their association with the Senate, from being merely prohibitive, grew to be positive,[1137] and they finally shared the presidency of that body. Lastly, their powers of coercion and jurisdiction widened into a judicial control of the magistracy; they were the prosecutors of faulty officials, and, up to the time of the development of the _quaestiones_, represented the chief means which the state possessed of enforcing criminal responsibility on its executive.[1138] _The minor Magistrates_ Prominent amongst the minor magistrates (_minores magistratus_)[1139] stands a group known finally, and perhaps in Republican times, as the _viginti-sex-viri_.[1140] This group was merely a collection of small colleges and not itself a _collegium_. It is probable that most of its members were originally nominated by superior magistrates; in later times they were all elected in the _comitia tributa_, although doubtless a separate elective act was required for each college.