A third statute disqualified plebeians from being elected to canonries or bishoprics.
The distinction, in truth, went on till the advantage turned to the side of the plebeians.
They separated themselves from the mass of the plebeians to form a single body with the surviving patricians.
But we see no sign of the growth of a body made up of patricians and leading plebeians who contrived to keep office to themselves by a social tradition only less strong than positive law.
The Catuli and Metelli, among the proudest nobles of Rome, were plebeians, and as such could not have been chosen to the purely patrician office of interrex, or of Jupiter.
