In order to lessen the evil effects of a simultaneous exercise of their prerogatives, the consuls agreed to take in campaign the command alternately day by day, and at Rome each to have the fasces during a month; but this innovation had also vexatious consequences.[97] It was even thought necessary, nine years after the fall of the kings, to have recourse to the dictatorship; and this absolute authority, limited to six months, that is, to the longest duration of a campaign, only remedied temporarily, and under extraordinary circumstances, the want of power concentrated in a single individual. This dualism and instability of the supreme authority were not, therefore, an element of strength; the unity and fixity of direction necessary among a people always at war had disappeared; but the evil would have been more serious if the conformity of interests and views of individuals belonging to the same caste had not been there to lessen it. The man was worth more than the institutions which had formed him. The creation of tribunes of the people, whose part became subsequently so important, was, in 260, a new cause of discord; the plebeians, who composed the greater part of the army, claimed to have their military chiefs for magistrates;[98] the authority of the tribunes was at first limited: we may convince ourselves of this by the following terms of the law which established the office:[99]-- “Nobody shall constrain a tribune of the people, like a man of the commonalty, to do anything against his will; it shall not be permitted either to strike him, or to cause him to be maltreated by another, or to slay him or cause him to be slain.”[100] We may judge by this the degree of inferiority to which the plebeians were reduced. The veto of the tribunes could nevertheless put a stop to the proposal of a law, prevent the decisions of the consuls and Senate, arrest the levies of troops, prorogue the convocation of the comitia, and hinder the election of magistrates.[101] From the year 297, their number was raised to ten, that is, two for each of the five classes specially subject to the recruitment;[102] but the plebeians profited little by this measure; the more the number of tribunes was augmented, the easier it became for the aristocracy to find among them an instrument for its designs. Gradually their influence increased; in 298, they laid claim to the right of convoking the Senate, and yet it was still a long time before they formed part of that body.[103]