We have seen promagistrates whose election to their respective offices had not been sanctioned by the curiae governing provinces and holding military commands; we have seen consuls who lacked the curiate sanction attending with less inconvenience to all their official duties. The same looseness characterized the application of the law to minor officials. The want of the sanction legally involved curule aediles, quaestors, and all other officials who lacked the right to convoke the curiae; and yet it is impossible that in 54, for instance, when the consuls failed to pass the law, the curule aediles and the quaestors should have remained inactive through the entire year without leaving in our sources some trace of the disturbance caused by the suspension of their administrative functions. Dio Cassius states that no judicial process could be undertaken before the enactment of the law; nevertheless Clodius as aedile in 56 prosecuted Milo before the people prior to the vote on the sanctioning act.[1155] The quaestors entered office regularly on December 5;[1156] and as the curiate law was carried for them by the consuls, they were necessarily in official duty for some time every year before their election could be sanctioned. It seems clear that ordinarily one curiate law was passed each year, under the joint presidency of the consuls and praetors, for all the officials who required it.[1157] If that is true, a postponement of the law, or a failure to pass it, affected all the magistrates of the year.