<P> According to tradition, the consulship was initially reserved for patricians and only in 367 BC did plebeians win the right to stand for this supreme office, when the Lex Licinia Sextia provided that at least one consul each year should be plebeian . The first plebeian consul, Lucius Sextius, was elected the following year . Nevertheless, the office remained largely in the hands of a few families as, according to Gelzer, only fifteen novi homines - "new men" with no consular background - were elected to the consulship until the election of Cicero in 63 BC . Modern historians have questioned the traditional account of plebeian emancipation during the early Republic (see Conflict of the Orders), noting for instance that about thirty percent of the consuls prior to Sextius had plebeian, not patrician, names . It is possible that only the chronology has been distorted, but it seems that one of the first consuls, Lucius Junius Brutus, came from a plebeian family . Another possible explanation is that during the 5th century social struggles, the office of consul was gradually monopolized by a patrician elite . </P> <P> During times of war, the primary qualification for consul was military skill and reputation, but at all times the selection was politically charged . With the passage of time, the consulship became the normal endpoint of the cursus honorum, the sequence of offices pursued by the ambitious Roman who chose to pursue political power and influence . When Lucius Cornelius Sulla regulated the cursus by law, the minimum age of election to consul became, in effect, 41 years of age . </P> <P> Beginning in the late Republic, after finishing a consular year, a former consul would usually serve a lucrative term as a proconsul, the Roman Governor of one of the (senatorial) provinces . The most commonly chosen province for the proconsulship was Cisalpine Gaul . </P> <P> Although throughout the early years of the Principate, the consuls were still formally elected by the Comitia Centuriata, they were in fact nominated by the princeps . As the years progressed, the distinction between the Comitia Centuriata and the Comitia Tributa (which elected the lower magisterial positions) appears to have disappeared, and so for the purposes of the consular elections, there came to be just a single "an assembly of the people" which elected all the magisterial positions of the state, while the consuls continued to be nominated by the princeps . </P>

What did a consul do in ancient rome