Assemblies of the people were organized in curiae by the pontiffs for the religious purposes mentioned above, while political measures, so far as submitted to the people, continued for a time, we may suppose, to be decided by din in contiones. But when a desire for a more precise vote began to be felt, the curiate organization naturally offered itself as most convenient for the purpose. The contention that in primitive Rome, as among other early peoples,[884] the assembly expressed its feeling or opinion by noisy demonstration finds strong support in the most probable derivation of suffragium, “vote,” which connects it with frangere, fragor, “a breaking,” “crash,” “din,” “applause,”[885] the prefix sub- expressing the dependence of the action upon the proposal of the speaker, as in the military succlamare, succlamatio.[886] We may well believe that even after the organization of the assembly as comitia—that is, in curiate, centuriate, or tribal divisions[887]—the voting within the component groups continued for a time to be by din, as is suggested by the phrase sex suffragia, applied to the six oldest groups of knights in the comitia centuriata.[888] Voting by heads in large gatherings is in fact a slow, cumbersome process, the product of a well-developed political life. In all probability it originated in the centuriate assembly—in which the military array facilitated the taking of individual opinion[889]—and afterward extended to the other comitia. This line of reasoning suggests that when in the regal period a desire began to be felt for a more precise vote, and the curiate organization readily offered itself for the purpose, the expedient was adopted of taking the vote of each curia in order by din and then of deciding the question at issue by a majority of the thirty curial votes.[890] There can be little doubt that this step also was first taken by the pontiffs.