ation
was ruled by imperial officials following the Ptolemaic practice. The rest
of the population of the country lived in villages throughout the Nile
Valley, which was divided for administrative purposes into thirty-six
districts called nomes (_nomoi_). The bulk of the land of Egypt was
imperial or public domain land, and the great majority of the Egyptian
population were tenants on the imperial domain. For the collection of the
land tax, poll tax, professional and other taxes, for the supervision of
irrigation, and for the maintenance of the public records of the
cultivated acreage and the population (for which a census was taken every
fourteen years) there had been developed a highly organized bureaucracy
with central offices at Alexandria and agents in each of the nomes. This
system of government was maintained by the Romans, and profoundly
influenced the organization of the imperial civil service. At the head of
the administration of Egypt stood the prefect, an equestrian because of
his position as a personal employee of the princeps, and because the power
concentrated in his hands would have proved a dangerous temptation to a
senator. The chief burden laid upon Egypt was to supply one third of the
grain consumed at Rome, or about 5,000,000 bushels annually. This amount
was drawn partly from the land tax which was paid in kind and partly from
grain purchased by the government.

The first step towards spreading municipal government throughout all Egypt
was taken in 202 A. D., when Septimius Severus organized a _boule_, or
senate of the Greek type, in Alexandria and in the metropolis or seat of
administration of each nome. His object was to create in each metropolis a
body which could be made to assume definite responsibilities in connection
with the administration. However, it was not until after Diocletian that
these villages received a full municipal organization.

The principate's greatest service to the provinces was the gift of two and
a half centuries of orderly government, which led in many quarters to a
material development unequalled in these regions before or since. It is in
these centuries that the history of Rome becomes the history of the
provinces. At the opening of the period the Italians occupied a privileged
position within the empire, at its close they and their one-time subjects
were on the same level. The army and the senatorial and equestrian orders
had been thoroughly provincialized, and the e