The assembly was merely exercising a long-recognized right[2089] in the institution of two new praetors in 227, for which we are warranted in assuming a legislative act.[2090] The same observation applies to the increase in the number of elective military tribunes from sixteen to twenty-four in 207,[2091] which was evidently a concession to the commons. As the senate generally attended to the prolongation of the imperium,[2092] the confirmation of a senatorial decree to that effect by an act of the people in 208[2093] was exceptional. Far more radical was the plebiscite of M. Metilius, 217, for equalizing the power of the dictator with that of the master of horse.[2094] This act and the resort to election for filling the office[2095] destroyed the value of the institution.[2096] A violent departure from usage was attempted in 209 by the rogation of C. Publicius Bibulus, tribune of the plebs, for abrogating the proconsular imperium of M. Claudius Marcellus. On this occasion not merely the plebs but all classes attended the assembly, which by an overwhelming vote rejected the proposition.[2097] Three quarters of a century were to pass before a law of the kind could actually carry.[2098] A plebiscite known to have been in force in the time of the second Punic war[2099] debarred from the tribunate and aedileship of the plebs any person during the lifetime of a father or grandfather who had filled a curule office. As the aim was to free the plebeian officials from the influence of the nobility, exercised through the patria potestas, that they might be in a better position to serve the interests of their constituents, we may reasonably suppose this measure to have passed in the time of Flaminius and under his influence. The tendency was to widen the breach then forming between the nobility and the commons.[2100] The right of the people to dispense from the law was acknowledged by the senate in 217, when, after the destruction of the army at Trasimene and the death of Flaminius, the patres authorized a plebiscite for dispensing the consulars for the remainder of the war from the Genucian plebiscite which forbade reëlection to the same office excepting after an interval of ten years.[2101]