These new officials, called censors, were to be two in number and were to be elected every five years. At first these officials held office until the time arrived for the election of their successors, but later their term of office was limited to one year and a half, there thus being three and one half years out of every five-year period when this office was in abeyance. The most important duty given to the censors at the outset seems to have been the authority of filling vacancies in the Senate as it became necessary to keep the number up to the required three hundred. Up to this time this power of appointing senators had been exercised by the consul. As time went on, however, the powers of this office rapidly increased until at length it became the highest post of honor at Rome, the men elected censors being almost invariably former consuls or military tribunes. The arbitrary power of inquisition over all the public affairs of Rome and the private conduct of the Roman citizens was so astonishingly great that we wonder how it could have existed without constant and gross abuses. In the later days of the republic the censors had the right to make a so-called "censorial note" of all Roman citizens, who, without having gone to the point of violating the criminal law, or at least without having been convicted of a crime, had been guilty of dishonorable or immoral conduct. All persons thus named suffered severe civic penalties. If the person were a senator he lost his seat in the Senate; if a knight, he lost the peculiar privileges belonging to this rank. In every case the person lost his membership in the association of his tribe and was subject to increased taxation. The exclusive right to serve as censors was one of the last exclusive privileges retained by the patricians, the plebeians not being made eligible to this office until 339 B.C. Although Rome was in an almost constant state of warfare during the fifth century before Christ, the conflicts were neither on a large scale nor decisive in their results. The chief enemies of Rome were the neighboring Latin and Etruscan cities, with one or another of whom Rome was almost constantly engaged in hostilities. At the beginning of the fourth century before Christ Rome was attacked by a new and more terrible enemy from the north, who very nearly changed the whole course of the world's history by wiping the city of Rome out of existence before its career of greatness had begun.