The arrangement came to have a certain sanctity attached to it, as though there was something in the connection warmer and closer than that of mere official life; so that a Quaestor has been called a Proconsul's son for the time, and was supposed to feel that reverence and attachment that a son entertains for his father.
But to Cicero, and to young Quaestors in general, the great attraction of the office consisted in the fact that the aspirant having once become a Quaestor was a Senator for the rest of his life, unless he should be degraded by misconduct.

Gradually it had come to pass that the Senate was replenished by the votes of the people, not directly, but by the admission into the Senate of the popularly elected magistrates.

There were in the time of Cicero between 500 and 600 members of this body.

The numbers down to the time of Sulla had been increased or made up by direct selection by the old Kings, or by the Censors, or by some Dictator, such as was Sulla; and the same thing was done afterward by Julius Caesar.

The years between Sulla's Dictatorship and that of Caesar were but thirty--from 79 to 49 B.C.These, however, were the years in which Cicero dreamed that the Republic could be re-established by means of an honest Senate, which Senate was then to be kept alive by the constant infusion of new blood, accruing to it from the entrance of magistrates who had been chosen by the people.