this, "it was arranged to take the curule aediles from the plebs in alternate years: later the election was thrown open without distinction". Modern evaluation of the law regarding the consulship Some modern historians have pointed out that there is lack of clarity regarding the law which provided that one consul should be a plebeian. Livy saw this law as a breakthrough in the political advancement of the plebeians. T.J. Cornell notes that, according to Livy and his sources, the regular and unbroken sharing of the consulship stemmed from the Lex Genucia proposed by the plebeian tribune Lucius Genucius in 342 BC which, it is claimed, allowed plebeians to hold both consulships. However, the Fasti consulares (a chronicle of yearly events in which the years are denoted by their consuls) suggest that this law made it obligatory for one consulship to be held by a plebeian. Cornell suggests that it might be that it was the Lex Genucia which truly introduced power-sharing between patricians and plebeians (by providing that there should be one consul from each social order) and that the Lex Licinia Sextia may simply have been an administrative adjustment which transferred plebeian access to the highest office from the military tribunes with consular power to the consulship and, thus, Lucius Sextius becoming the first plebeian consul "becomes rather less impressive." K. von Fritz and Sordi also think that the law on the consuls and the praetors was an administrative reform. Livy wrote that in the military tribunes with consular power were instituted in 444 BC because it was decided to that in some years the consulship should be replaced by the consular tribunes (whose numbers varied from three to six), that this office would be open to plebeians and that it had been created as a concession to the plebeians who wanted access to the consulship. However, from 444 BC to 401 BC, only two such tribunes, out of a total of 100, were plebeians. For the 400-376 BC period, only in 400, 399 and 396 BC were the majority of these tribunes plebeians (4, 5, and 5 out of 6) and in 379 BC there were three plebeians of six. For Cornell, this raises some questions: Why from 444 to 401 BC were there only two plebeians? Why, given the presence of plebeians in the subsequent period, which shows their eligibility to the highest office, was plebeian