It has generally been assumed that the curiate law bestowed a power in addition to that received through election.[1120] Something can in fact be said in favor of this view. We are told that the newly elected magistrate could attend to no serious public business till he had secured the passage of the act:[1121] till then the praetor could not undertake judicial business; the consul could have nothing to do with military affairs[1122] or hold comitia for the election of his successor.[1123] Some of Cicero’s contemporaries asserted that a magistrate who failed to pass the law could not as promagistrate govern a province.[1124] Or if without a curiate law he made the attempt, he would be obliged to conduct the administration at his own expense;[1125] and if as promagistrate he gained a victory in war, he was denied a triumph.[1126] Under such conditions it might well be said that a magistrate could engage in no serious public business before he had carried for himself the sanctioning law. But practice diverged widely from these rules. An act containing a provision for the election of functionaries might include a dispensing clause to the effect that the persons elected shall, in the lack of a curiate law, “be magistrates in as legal a sense as those who are elected according to the strictest forms of law.”[1127] Yet even without this special provision the magistrate regularly attended to much business before passing the law. The first public act of the consul, praetor, or other magistrate was to take the auspices, to determine whether his magistracy was acceptable to the gods;[1128] and another auspication was held for the meeting of the curiae.[1129] It was customary, too, for the consul to make his vows to the Capitoline Jupiter and to hold a session of the senate, both of which acts had to be auspicated.[1130] These facts disprove the theory that the curiate law conferred the auspicium. In the first session of the senate here mentioned not only religious affairs but civil and military matters of great importance were discussed and finally arranged, all of which business was regularly managed without a curiate law.[1131] As to other administrative acts it is probable that the want of a lex curiata never hindered the performance of necessary business civil or military. In case of danger to the state the interrex, who wholly lacked the curiate law, or the consul before passing the law could doubtless take command of the army;[1132] and it is significant that the unlimited imperium and iudicium were granted the magistrates not by the curiae but by the senate.[1133] The law was indeed considered indispensable to the dictator in 310.[1134] It is generally assumed by the moderns that C. Flaminius, consul in 217, lacked the law;[1135] their reason is the statement of Livy[1136] that he entered upon his office not at Rome but at Ariminum. The fact, however, that in this year he carried