About a year[2569] after limiting the power of the tribunes Sulla proceeded to regulate the other offices through his lex de magistratibus, 81. This statute, making use of the principle contained in the lex Villia annalis,[2570] prescribed (1) that no one could be consul before he had been praetor or praetor before he had been quaestor,[2571] (2) that a space of two years should intervene between the holding of consecutive offices.[2572] (3) The minimal age of the quaestor it fixed at thirty-seven.[2573] The fortieth year was therefore the age for the praetorship and the forty-third for the office of consul. The aedileship, while bringing the holder a positive advantage for his future career, was never an essential step to a higher place. But in case this office was taken, the biennial interval had to be observed.[2574] The quaestorship Sulla made the sole avenue to the senate, so as to dispense with the revision of the list by the censors.[2575] The statute of 151, forbidding reëlection to the consulship,[2576] he repealed, and substituted for it the article of the Genucian plebiscite of 442[2577] which fixed an interval of ten years between the expiration of any office and reëlection to the same.[2578] He increased the number of quaestors, at this time certainly more than eight,[2579] to twenty, with the object not only of supplying an administrative need but also of creating the required number of senators.[2580] It was necessary also to raise the number of praetors from six to eight in order to provide presidents for the new quaestiones perpetuae.[2581] The reforms above mentioned, together with the doubling of the number of senators to be considered below, naturally led to the enlargement of the chief sacerdotal colleges. The augurs and pontiffs were increased from nine to fifteen and the decemviri sacris faciundis were made quindecemviri.[2582] Another measure, which seems to have been an article of the same act, repealed the Domitian lex de sacerdotiis,[2583] and thus restored to these colleges, and at the same time to the epulones, their right of filling vacancies by coöptation,[2584] leaving to the people the function only of electing the head of the pontifical college from among the members.[2585] As the object of the first article was evidently to provide places for some of the new magistrates and senators,[2586] the coöptation doubtless immediately followed the enactment of the law.