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 (the year of the first consular tribunes) to 401 BC there were only two plebeian consular tribunes (out of a total of 100). For the 400-376 BC period, in 400, 399 and 396 BC the majority of these tribunes were plebeians (4, 5, and 5 out of 6, respectively) and in 379 BC there were three plebeians of six. 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 access to the consulship considered such a landmark for the political promotion of the plebeians? Why was there such resistance to this? The sources seem to see the law as a breakthrough not just because it provided access to the consulship, but because it required that one of the two consuls each year be a patrician. However, during one twelve-year period after the passage of the laws, from 355 to 343 BC, both consuls were patricians and the consulship became an unbroken line of shared office only after that. 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. This most probably explains why the first instance of plebeians holding both consulships was in 173 BC despite Livy's interpretation. It might be that it was the Lex Genucia which truly introduced power-sharing between patricians and plebeians and that the Lex Licinia Sextia may simply have been an administrative adjustment which transferred plebeian access to the highest office from the consular tribunes to the consulship and, thus, Lucius Sextius becoming the first plebeian consul "becomes rather less impressive." Von Fritz and Sordi also think that the Lex Licinia Sextia on the consuls