ate associations, but in 64 B. C. all such
unions in Rome had been abolished because of the disorders occasioned by
political clubs. In 58 B. C. complete freedom of association was restored,
only to be revoked again by Julius Caesar who permitted only the old and
reputable professional and religious colleges to remain in existence.
Under Augustus a law was passed which regulated for the future the
character, organization and activities of these associations. New colleges
could only be established in Italy or the provinces if sanctioned by a
decree of the Senate or edict of the princeps, and membership in an
unauthorized college was a treasonable offence. Trajan authorized the
unrestricted formation of funerary colleges (_collegia tenuiorum_) in
Rome, and Septimius Severus extended this privilege to Italy and the
provinces. Under Marcus Aurelius the colleges were recognized as juristic
persons, with power to manumit slaves and receive legacies. Not only
persons of free birth but also freedmen and slaves, and in many cases
women as well as men, were freely admitted to membership in the colleges.

*The decline of the municipalities.* The prosperity of the empire depended
upon the prosperity of the municipalities and it is in the latter that the
first symptoms of internal decay are noticeable. These symptoms were
economic decline and the consequent loss of local autonomy. The reasons
for the economic decline are hard to trace. Among them we may perhaps
place the ruin of many of the wealthier families by the requirements of
office-holding, the withdrawal of others who were eligible for the
imperial service with its salaried offices; overtaxation, bad management
of local finances, and the disappearance of a free peasantry in the
surrounding rural districts who had furnished a market for the
manufacturers and merchants of the towns. The devastating wars of the
third century with the resultant general paralysis of trade and commerce,
plus the depopulation caused by plague and barbarian invasions, struck the
municipalities a crushing blow from which they never recovered.

As early as the time of Trajan the imperial government found it necessary
to appoint officials called curators to reorganize the financial
conditions in one or more municipalities, sometimes those of a whole
province. At first these were irregular officials, senators or
equestrians, but by the third century they had become a fixture in
municipal administration