A stage in the development of the plutocracy and of its control over the plebeian tribunate is marked by the enactment of the lex annalis of L. Villius, tribune of the plebs in 180. This statute not only fixed the ages at which men might sue for and hold the various patrician magistracies,[2129] but also, developing a custom already in existence, established an interval, evidently of two years,[2130] between consecutive magistracies. The stated object was to curb the greed for office which the young nobles were manifesting[2131] as well as the eagerness of the people to favor such ambitious persons, and for that reason it received the support of Cato.[2132] While it prevented the Scipios and the Flaminini from creating a dynastic oligarchy, by checking the growth of exceptional talent and by subjecting statesmen to a fixed routine of honors and functions it subordinated the individual to the class, and in this way aided the consolidation of the senatorial plutocracy.[2133] To the same period, at all events after 194,[2134] belong the Licinian and Aebutian plebiscites, which prohibited the presiding magistrate from offering as candidates for any extraordinary office himself, his colleagues, and his relations by blood or marriage. This measure, too, was to prevent the formation of governing cliques and dynasties. In 151, the year after the third consulship of M. Claudius Marcellus,[2135] to check the further aggrandizement of this man as well as the rise of similar personalities, a law, supported by Cato,[2136] absolutely forbade reëlection to the consulship.[2137] Cato’s idea may have been to expedite the advancement of novi homines; but so far from accomplishing this object, the measure contributed to the further subordination of the individual to the plutocratic machine.[2138] It may well have been in the same partisan spirit rather than in the interest of political morality that P. Cornelius and M. Baebius Tamphilus, consuls in 181, carried a law ex auctoritate senatus for the prosecution of bribery. It disqualified for office for ten years any person found guilty of influencing an election through bribery or other illegal means.[2139] Probably through this measure the nobles aimed to curb the greed of office in the more ambitious and unscrupulous of their number; but it accomplished nothing, and was followed in 159 by another consular lex de ambitu of Cn. Cornelius Dolabella and M. Fulvius Nobilior, which increased the penalty to death.[2140] Practically the punishment was exile. This law had no more effect than the earlier; and the conduct of the nobles both before and after its enactment proves that they did not intend by it to open the consulship to the competition of novi homines.