If Marula can be coopted as a Consul while in office are you so sure about Caesar  McCullough manages to postulate a way around the restrictions in her books on the period and it is also valuable to take into account the high degree of change that the society was being subjected to at that time Of interest also is the question of the marriage to the Flaminica  why should her death render the Flamen out of his office  Graves in his book The White Goddess postulates that the reason for this is because the office was originally matrilinearlly bestowed by virtue of a propoerly constructed marriage to the heiress that bore the title  If that were the case then one could presume that by  historical times with the advent of patriarchal structures the form merely remained with no connection anymore to the original reason