in the burying-place of the
college, or if they were too poor to construct one of their own, to
secure burial in a public _columbarium_. The instinct of the Roman for
organization is well illustrated in the government of these colleges.
They were organized on exactly the same lines as the municipal towns of
the empire; their officers were elected, usually for a year, or in the
case of honorary distinctions, for life; as in a municipal town, they
were called quinquennales, _curatores_, _praefecti_, &c., and quaestors
superintended the finances of the association. Their place of meeting, if
they were rich enough to have one, was called _schola_ and answered the
purpose of a club-house; the site or the building was often given them by
some rich patron, who was pleased to see his name engraved over its
doorway. Here we come upon one of those defects in the society of the
empire which seem gradually to have sapped the virility of the
population--the desire to get others to do for you what you are unwilling
or unable to do for yourself. The _patroni_ increased in number, and more
and more the colleges acquired the habit of depending on their
benefactions, while at the same time it would seem that the primary
object of burial became subordinate to the claims of the common weal. It
may also be asserted with confidence, as of the Greek clubs, that these
_collegia_ rarely or never did the work of our benefit clubs, by
assisting sick or infirm members; such objects at any rate do not appear
in the inscriptions. The only exceptions seem to be the military
_collegia_, which, though strictly forbidden as dangerous to discipline,
continued to increase in number in spite of the law. The great legionary
camps of the Roman province of Africa (Cagnat, _L'Armee romaine_, 457
foll.) have left us inscriptions which show not only the existence of
these clubs, but the way in which their funds were spent; and it appears
that they were applied to useful purposes in the life of a member as well
as for his burial, e.g. to travelling expenses, or to his support after
his discharge (see especially _C.I.L._ viii. 2552 foll.).

As the Roman empire became gradually impoverished and depopulated, and
as the difficulty of defending its frontiers increased, these
associations must have been slowly extinguished, and the living and the
dead citizen alike ceased to be the object of care and contribution. The
sudden invasion of Dacia by barbarians in A.D. 166 w