How long was a senators term of office in the late republic.

[drsrob]

Rob wrote:

The senate was never a patrician institution, unless perhaps in the very beginning. You're confusing patrician status with nobility. Anyone who entered the senate became a member of the nobility (nobilis meaning "well known").

In fact, I think a senator needed to become consul before achieving noble status - the nobility were those families who had produced a consul, and whose members had continued to occupy curule magistracies. Within the senate there were various grades, depending on the highest office occupied - since a man needed to be elected quaestor to enter the senate in the first place, the lowest grade was quaestorian - after that were the praetorian and consular ranks, which classed as curule.

[...]
- Nathan

I stand corrected on that point :oops: