of _publicani_ engaged in collecting the customs dues began to
be superseded by individual contractors (_conductores_), who like the
companies received a definite proportion of the amount raised. About the
time of Commodus the system of direct collection by public officials was
introduced and the contractors gave way to imperial procurators. In the
same way, the five percent taxes on inheritances and manumissions were at
first farmed out, but later (under Hadrian in the case of the former)
collected directly by agents of the state.

*The municipalities.* Each province was an aggregate of communes
(_civitates_), some of which were organized towns, while others were
tribal or village communities. From the opening of the principate it
became a fixed principle of imperial policy to convert the rural
communities into organized municipalities, which would assume the burden
of local administration. Under the Republic the provincial communities had
been grouped into the three classes, free and federate (_liberae et
foederatae_), free and immune (_liberae et immunes_), and tributary
(_stipendiariae_). In addition to these native communities there had begun
to appear in the provinces Roman and Latin colonies. Towards the close of
the Republic and in the early principate the majority of the free
communities lost their immunity from taxation and became tributary. Some
of them exchanged the status of federate allies of Rome for that of Roman
colonies. During the same period the number of colonies of both types was
greatly increased by the founding of new settlements or the planting of
colonists in provincial towns. Some of the latter also acquired the status
of Roman municipalities. Thus arose a great variety of provincial
communities, which is well illustrated by conditions in the Spanish
province of Baetica (Farther Spain) under Vespasian. At that time this
province contained nine colonies and eight municipalities of Roman
citizens; twenty-nine Latin towns; six free, three federate, and one
hundred and twenty tributary communities.

We have already mentioned the policy of transforming rural communities
into organized municipalities. How rapidly this transformation took place
may be gathered from the fact that in Tarraconesis (Hither Spain) the
number of rural districts sunk from one hundred and fourteen to
twenty-seven between the time of Vespasian and that of Hadrian. A parallel
movement was the conversion of the native towns int