By the time of the middle and late Republic, there was considerable debate about the need for confirmation in imperium by the Curiate assembly. For example, "praetors" were not permitted to undertake judicial business without confirmation in the "imperium" and nor could "consuls" command troops or call the "comitia centuriata" to hold the election of his successor. Cicero's contemporaries argued that without confirmation in the imperium, a magistrate could not as a promagistrate, or without it, govern the province at his own expense and be ineligible for a triumph after a military victory. These rules would have prohibited magistrates from engaging in serious public business before confirmation, but for the fact they were widely ignored and legislation often included provisions stating that in the lack of a curiate law, they "be magistrates in as legal a sense as those who are elected according to the strictest forms of law". By 212 BC, the lack of such a law granting imperium to the propraetor of Spain, Lucius Marcius, was no issue for the senate, which refrained from declaring the election illegal. During the late Republic, by 54, the consul Appius Claudius insisted that he held imperium, due to statute passed by Sulla granting imperium to promagistrates until their return to the city without mention of the curiate grant of imperium, and also that he held the authority to call the Assembly to elect new magistrates. However, in the late Republic, with increasing conflict between the "optimates" and the "populares", it is likely that the senate, trying to increase its control over provincial governors, stressed the importance of this law, even as magistrates ignored their complaints.