Today, historians agree in regarding the prerogative century and
its selection by lot as an institution that promoted unity and
agreement within the comitia. Some of them place the emphasis on
the way it contributed towards maintaining political cohesion
among the centuries at the top of the census hierarchy; others
highlight its unifying effect on the assemblies as a whole. Given
the order in which voting took place and the respective numbers of
votes of the different census classes, the unifying effect probably
operated in two distinct and successive ways. First of all, for the
centuries of the first class, the vote of the prerogative century
constituted a focal point that enabled them to coordinate how they
would vote. The existence of a rallying point made salient by
religion reinforced the predominance of the propertied classes in the
centuriate assembly: if the centuries of the first class (and eight
centuries of the second) followed the lead of the prerogative
century, the final decision remained in the hands of the upper
classes, for the centuries that came after them in the hierarchy
would not be called upon to vote, a majority having already been
attained. Dispersed voting among the first centuries, on the other
hand, would have shifted the decisive votes down the census
ladder. Thus the use of lot, together with the religious value it
conferred on the prerogative century's vote, averted or mitigated
any dissensions or rivalries that elections might have given rise to among the propertied classes and thereby weakened them. The
neutrality of the lot (in addition to its religious significance) further
enhanced the efficacy of the rallying point: the first centuries were
less reluctant to follow the path laid down by the initial vote
because it appeared to have been traced, at least in part, by something
external, neutral, and impartial.