Custom had determined with equal care the method by which opinions should be elicited from the unofficial and advising members of the house. The question “what is your advice?” (_quid censes?_) was put by the president to each senator in an order corresponding to his official rank. In the days of the activity of the censorship, it was this magistracy which had determined the president’s first selection; the censors had placed at the head of their list the name of some distinguished man (often himself an ex-censor), and it was this “chief of the Senate” (_princeps senatus_) whose opinion was first sought. But, after Sulla’s reform in the constitution of the order, there is, in spite of the occasional revival of the censorship, no certain evidence of the perpetuation of this dignity. Henceforth a body of _consulates_ holds the first place, and from these the presiding magistrate—at least the consul who opens the business of the house—chooses his first adviser, according to no settled rules, but with due regard to seniority or personal distinction.[1313] The only exception to this practice was to be found in the latter half of the year, when the consuls elect, either in virtue of their quasi-magisterial position or because they might themselves have to carry out the decrees which were being discussed, took precedence of the consulars.[1314] From the latter the question passed down through the _praetorii_ to the men of aedilician or tribunician rank, and so finally to the lowest grade of all—the ex-quaestors; and it is probable that, in every grade, the rule of consulting a designated magistrate before an ex-magistrate was observed. It is obvious that this procedure, when rigidly adhered to, left the non-curule members of the Senate only an infinitesimal chance of a share in the debate. These had always been known as _pedarii_, in contradistinction to the _curules_; originally nominees of the censors, they included after the time of Sulla the former tribunes and plebeian aediles, and the members of quaestorian rank. As they were rarely reached in the debate, they seldom had the opportunity of expressing an opinion, and hence arose the erroneous notion of some antiquarians that the _pedarii_ were given the right of voting but not the power of debate.[1315] But restrictions of this kind, arising from practice and not from law, were never pressed by the Romans. The repute of a man who had not reached curule rank might exceed that of all the other senators; the principle that would open the lips of a Bibulus and close those of a Cato was recognised as mischievous in certain emergencies, and it was the latter who as tribune elect—that is, as a _pedarius_—moved the resolution which condemned the Catilinarian conspirators to death.[1316]