included an article of the kind for the decemviri agris adsignandis to be elected under it. But as the title to an office was impaired by any informality in the elective process, and as Servilius foresaw that the lex curiata might be prevented by tribunician intercession or other cause, he inserted in his bill a further provision, referred to above,[1113] that the decemviri might be officials optima lege[1114] even without the curiate sanction. From what is here said it is clear that the condition of iustus or optima lege was not obtained for a magistrate by the passing of the curiate act alone, but rather by due attention to all formalities,[1115] which were brought to completion by that act. The formula for the curiate law, in addition to its resemblance to that for elections, must have contained some reference to the imperium, as we may infer from the frequent designation of the law as a lex de imperio by Cicero. From this phrase modern writers infer that the curiate act conferred the imperium upon newly elected magistrates. The question whether it granted to a magistrate powers which he did not already possess will be considered below. For the present it is enough to state that in no instance do the ancients speak of “conferring” the imperium by the curiate law or of deriving the imperium from that law by any process whatsoever. But mention is made of conferring the imperium by a decree of the senate or by the suffrages of the people in the centuriate or tribal assembly[1116] and of _confirming_ it by the curiate law.[1117] The consuls and the praetor were elected by the centuries, and their imperium was sanctioned by the curiae. The dictator, too, was obliged to carry a curiate law.[1118] But the quaestors, the curule aediles, and other inferior magistrates, after their election by the tribes, did not themselves convoke the curiae for sanctioning their election; the lex was proposed in their behalf by a higher magistrate.[1119] As the origin of this custom we may suppose that the kings, and after them the higher magistrates of the early republic, used to ask the people for a pledge of loyalty not only to themselves but also to their assistants, and that this custom continued even after they had come to be elective magistrates. To functionaries who lacked the imperium the expression lex de imperio could not apply; lex de potestate, though not occurring in our sources, would be the appropriate phrase.