From the point of view of the Roman historians the centuriate assembly,[1181] planned by Servius Tullius, came into existence at the beginning of the republic; its earliest act in their opinion was the election of the first consuls[1182] and its earliest statute the Valerian law of appeal.[1183] Though they could not know precisely when it voted for the first time, they were right in understanding it to have been the basal comitia of the republic during the patrician supremacy. It may not have been instituted till some time after the downfall of the kingship,[1184] and it certainly did not reach its full complement of a hundred and ninety-three centuries till more than a hundred years after that event. Through the early republic Rome was engaged in an almost unceasing struggle for existence. The army was constantly in the field; and the consuls from the praetorium issued their commands for the protection and the government of the city. Their measures, after discussion in the council of war, they must often have submitted to the approval of the army. The military contio was sometimes summoned for exhorting the men,[1185] for promising the reward of spoil in case of victory,[1186] for reprimanding as well as for encouraging.[1187] On one occasion the master of horse, calling a contio of soldiers, appealed to them for protection from the dictator,[1188] and they replied with a shout that they would allow no harm to befall him.[1189] Thereupon the dictator summoned another contio to witness the court-martial of the rebellious officer.[1190] On another occasion the consuls asked the soldiers to decide a question by acclamation, and they obeyed.[1191] We hear of the adjournment of a meeting on the motion of a military tribune.[1192] After a victory, honors and rewards were granted by vote of the soldiers.[1193] For acclamation, the regular form of voting,[1194] was sometimes substituted a division of the army to right and left for the sake of silence.[1195] A military assembly, meeting at Veii, decided upon the appointment of Camillus, then in exile, to the dictatorship, and despatched the resolution to Rome.[1196] In the year 357 the consul Cn. Manlius held a tribal assembly of his troops at Sutrium, and passed in it a law which imposed a tax of five per cent on the manumission of slaves.[1197] Long afterward the army in Spain elected a propraetor.[1198] It may be that much other political business was decided by the army in the troublous times which followed the overthrow of the kings. Although such acts were valid, they were always of an exceptional nature, and they ran counter to the spirit of the constitution, which granted to all the citizens, not to those merely who chanced to be on military duty, a voice in the decision of such public affairs as came before the people.