379, but in all other years between 444 and 376 BC, every consul or military tribune with consular powers was a patrician. Beginning in 376, Gaius Licinius Calvus Stolo and Lucius Sextius Lateranus, tribunes of the plebs, used the veto power to prevent the election of any annual magistrates. Continuing in office each year, they frustrated the patricians, who, despite electing patrician military tribunes from 371 to 367, finally conceded the consulship, agreeing to the Licinian Rogations. Under this law, military tribunes with consular power were abolished, and one of the consuls elected each year was to be a plebeian. Although this law was occasionally violated by the election of two patrician consuls, Sextius himself was elected consul for 366, and Licinius in 364. At last, the plebeian tribunes had broken the patrician monopoly on the highest magistracies of the state. Following their victory in 367, the tribunes remained an important check on the power of the senate and the annual magistrates. In 287 BC, the senate formally recognized the plebiscita as laws with binding force. In 149 BC, men elected to the tribunate automatically entered the Senate. Erosion of the tribunician power at the end of the Republic However, in 81 BC, the dictator Sulla, who considered the tribunate a threat to his power, deprived the tribunes of their powers to initiate legislation, and to veto acts of the senate. He also prohibited former tribunes from holding any other office, effectively preventing the use of the tribunate as a stepping stone to higher office. Although the tribunes retained the power to intercede on behalf of individual citizens, most of their authority was lost under Sulla's reforms. Former tribunes were once again admitted to the annual magistracies beginning in 75 BC, and the tribunician authority was fully restored by the consuls Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus and Marcus Licinius Crassus in 70. The dignity of the office was further impaired when, in 59 BC, the patrician Publius Clodius Pulcher, who aspired to hold the tribunician power, had himself adopted by a plebeian youth, and renounced his patrician status, in order to be elected tribune for the following year. Although considered outrageous at the time, Clodius' scheme was allowed to proceed, and he embarked on a program of legislation designed to outlaw his political opponents and confiscate their property, while realizing a substantial gain from his actions. In 48 BC, the senate bestowed