he
colleges from this time onward operated under governmental supervision and
really formed a part of the machinery of the administration, although they
had not yet become compulsory and hereditary organizations.

The history of the colleges in the municipalities paralleled that of the
Roman guilds, although it cannot be traced so clearly in detail. The best
known of the municipal colleges are those of the artificers (_fabri_), the
makers of rag cloths (_centonarii_), and the wood cutters (_dendrophori_).
The organization of these colleges was everywhere encouraged because their
members had the obligation of acting as a local fire brigade, but in the
exercise of their trades they were not in the service of their respective
communities.

It was in the latter part of the third century, when the whole fabric of
society seemed threatened with destruction, that the state, with the
object of maintaining organized industry and commerce, placed upon the
properties of the members of the various colleges in Rome and in the
municipalities the burden of maintaining the work of these corporations; a
burden which soon came also to be laid upon the individual members
thereof. In this way the plebeian class throughout the empire sank to the
status of laborers in the service of the state.

VI. THE COLONATE OR SERFDOM

While the municipal decurions, and the Roman and municipal plebs had thus
sunk to the position of fiscally exploited classes, the bulk of the
agricultural population of the empire had fallen into a species of serfdom
known to the Romans as the colonate, from the use of the word _colonus_ to
denote a tenant farmer. This condition arose under varying circumstances
in the different parts of the empire, but its development in Italy and the
West was much influenced by the situation in some of the eastern
provinces, where the peasantry were in a state of quasi-serfdom prior to
the Roman conquest.

*Egypt.* In Egypt under the Ptolemies the inhabitants of village
communities were compelled to perform personal services to the state,
including the cultivation of royal land not let out on contract, each
within the boundaries of the community in which he was registered (his
_idia_). With the introduction of Roman rule this theory of the _idia_ was
given greater precision. All the land of each village had to be tilled by
the residents thereof, either as owners or tenants. At times, indeed, the
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