of Ariminum, is known to have been an act of the centuries.[1419] Probably all his other laws were ratified by the tribes.[1420] C. Julius Caesar preferably used the tribes, although it is possible that his lex de provinciis and his lex iudiciaria came before the comitia centuriata.[1421] Sulla’s constitutional legislation curtailed the powers of the plebeian tribunes and of their assembly, proportionally increasing the importance of the centuries; and although his form of government was of short duration, the optimates thereafter naturally preferred the comitia centuriata for the ratification of senatorial resolutions.[1422] To this assembly accordingly belong the leges Vibiae of the consul C. Vibius Pansa, 43, which confirmed the acts of Caesar, and took the place of Antony’s leges de coloniis deducendis and of his lex de dictatura tollenda.[1423] On the institution of the censorship, and by the law which called the office into being, it was enacted that elections of censors should be ratified, not by the curiae as in the case of other magistrates, but by the centuries themselves.[1424] Before this date the principle was already established that the people should vote twice in the election of every magistrate in order that if they repented of their choice, they might recall it by a second vote.[1425] As the primary function of the censors was the periodical reconstitution of the comitia centuriata, it was doubtless thought appropriate that this assembly alone should be concerned with the election. The lex centuriata de potestate censoria, evidently passed under consular presidency, remained, like the curiate law in confirmation of elections to other offices, a mere form. It was of too little practical significance ever to be noticed by the historians; in fact no individual instance of the passing of this act is mentioned by any extant writer. Characteristically the lex Aemilia, 433, which is alleged to have cut down the term of censorship to eighteen months,[1426] and the lex Publilia Philonis, 339, which provided that at least one censor must be a plebeian,[1427] were centuriate, whereas the Licinian-Sextian law, 367, which provided that one consul must be a plebeian,[1428] and the Genucian law, 342, permitting both to be,[1429] were plebiscites.