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20As for the matter of eligibility for office, now, we should put men on the roll of knights when they are eighteen years old, for at that age their physical soundness and their mental fitness can best be discerned; but we should not enrol them in the senate until they are twenty-five years old. For is it not disgraceful, and indeed hazardous, to entrust the public business to men younger than this, when we never commit our private affairs to any one before he has reached this age? 2After they have served as quaestors and aediles or tribunes, let them be praetors when they reach the age of thirty. For it is my opinion that these offices, and that of consul, are the only ones at home which you ought to fill by election, and these merely out of regard for the institutions of our fathers and to avoid the appearance of making a complete change in the constitution. 3But make all the appointments yourself and do not any longer commit the filling of one or another of these offices either to the plebs or to the people, for they will quarrel over them, or to the senate, for the senators will use them to further their private ambitions. And do not maintain the traditional powers of these offices, either, for fear history may repeat itself, but preserve the honour attaching to them, at the same time abating their influence to such an extent that, although you will be depriving the office of none of its prestige, you will still be giving no opportunity to those who may desire to stir up a rebellion. 4Now this will be accomplished if you assign them on appointment chiefly to home affairs and do not permit any of them to have armed forces during their term of office or immediately afterward, but only after the lapse of some time, as much as you think sufficient in each instance. In this way they will never be put in command of legions while still enjoying the prestige of their official titles and thus be led to stir up rebellions, and after they have been private citizens for a time they will be of milder disposition. 5Let these magistrates conduct such of the festivals as naturally belong to their office, and let them all severally sit as judges in all kinds of cases except homicide during their tenure of office in Rome. Courts should be established, to be sure, with the other senators and knights as members, but final authority should rest with these magistrates.
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