The right to public auspices belonged primarily to patrician magistracies[594]—those which in the early republic were filled only by patricians, but which continued to be called patrician after they were open to plebeians. All elections and appointments to such offices were auspicated;[595] and their incumbents were expected to seek the previous approval of Jupiter for every important act of their administration.[596] The king, interrex, dictator, consuls, praetors, and censors had the auspicia maxima; the others the minora.[597] The praetor, as colleague of the consuls, was elected under the same auspices with them, that is, in the same meeting of the assembly, whereas the censors, not being colleagues of the consuls, were elected under different auspices. Between magistrates who were not colleagues there could be no collision in the auspicia impetrativa; those of the censors neither strengthened nor vitiated those of the consuls or praetors, nor were strengthened or vitiated by them. In case of a conflict between colleagues, the greater auspices annulled the lesser, and equal auspices annulled each other.[598] For the exercise of a function properly belonging to a magistracy, the incumbent performed the ceremony at his own will and pleasure, unless expressly forbidden by a superior;[599] but one who undertook a deputed duty had to ask the auspicium of a magistrate who was competent to perform the duty in his own right. Thus the quaestor, who was not qualified by right of his office to call the comitia centuriata, found it necessary to do so in his capital prosecutions. In such a case he asked of the praetor or consul the right to hold auspices for summoning this assembly.[600] Whether the pontifex maximus held auspices in his own name, or was obliged, like the quaestor, to apply for them to a higher secular official, is unknown; at all events it was necessary for him to auspicate the comitia calata, over which he presided.[601] It seems probable that the tribunes originally did not have the right as they were not magistrates; but when they came to be so considered, they acquired the auspicium. All magistrates—necessarily including the tribunes—who convoked the senate had previously to perform the ceremony;[602] Cicero[603] seems to include the tribunes among the magistrates who had the auspicium; and as further proof the very expression “patriciorum (magistratuum) auspicia”[604] used by Messala implies the existence of “plebeiorum magistratuum auspicia.” It was not the custom of the tribunes, however, to auspicate their assemblies of the plebs.[605]