Is There a Senior and a Junior Consul?

The romans heavily depended on this kind of mentoring system. So cicero had lots of mentes that he worked with to supposedly make them good orators, good politicians. We do know that women went out and spoke in public, but again, it's a big knowledge gap because we don't have men talking about it very much. They can potentially be involved in bribery. And they will, of course, support members of their family, usually. And they can sway people. The degree to which this is happening is very difficult to judge - i think we get swayed by what the t v shows we watch.