Whenever the kings were in the field, their place at Rome was filled by the first senator, who, like them, decided cases concerning property and occupancy, and provided against sudden emergencies. Even those times of national glory cannot have been exempt from reverses; and when any danger threatened from within or without, the deputy was beyond all question authorized to raise men and to arm them, to convoke the senate, and to put measures to the vote before the curies: all this must have been included by Tacitus under his expression of providing against sudden emergencies. Of course whatever could be deferred was reserved for the king's return. In the accounts of the original nature and the changes of the constitution it was recorded that, when as yet the senate consisted only of a hundred men, one of the Ten First was chosen chief of the whole body by the king, and entrusted with the wardenship of the city: so that he not only belonged of necessity to the decury of the interrexes, but the custos urbis, as the deputy was called, was the first in that decury. Hence Sp. Lucretius, who filled that office, held the comitia for electing the first consuls as interrex.