also provided for the creation of a new and elected magistracy (office of state), the praetorship, as Livy wrote that in 367 BC "the plebs gave way to the nobility on the appointment of a praetor"; that is, the plebeians agreed that the praetor should be a patrician. The praetors were chief justices who presided over criminal trials and could appoint judges for civil cases. Later they issued edicts for amendments of existing laws. They also held imperium; that is, they could command an army. Forty years later, in 337 BC, the plebeians gained access to the praetorship, when the first plebeian praetor, Quintus Publius Philo, was elected. Law proposed at the beginning of the tenth tribunate Lex de Decemviri Sacris Faciundis This provided for the abolition of the Duumviri (two men) Sacris Faciundis, who were two patrician priests who were the custodians of the sacred Sibylline Books and consulted and interpreted them at times, especially when there were natural disasters, pestilence, famine or military difficulties. These were the books of the Sibylline oracles, who were Greek oracles who resided in various places in the Greek world. Tarquinius Superbus, the seventh and last king of Rome, was said to have bought these books from a Sybil from Cumae, a Greek city in southern Italy (near Naples, 120 miles south of Rome) in the late seventh century BC. The law provided for the creation of a college of ten priests (decemviri) as a replacement of the duumviri, known as the Decemviri sacris faciundis. Five of them were to be patricians and five were to be plebeians. This would break the patrician monopoly of the priesthood for the first time and constituted a step towards the plebeians sharing power, as the priesthoods played an important role in Roman society. Later, other priesthoods were opened up to the plebeians. The patricians retained exclusivity in some of the oldest priesthoods. Modern evaluation Livy's account of the struggles of Gaius Licinius and Lucius Sextius and their legislation on the consulship has been analysed by T.J. Cornell. He thinks that very little of Livy's narrative can be accepted. However, its institutional changes are "reasonably certain." He argues that the significance of the law on the consulship is unclear and its background is "extremely puzzling" due to obscurity around the military tribunes with consular power. Livy wrote that they had been instituted because it was decided that