Their policy in this, as in conquest, was "divide and
rule." It did not suit their ends to make any large part of the empire
conscious of a corporate existence. The unit of administration was,
therefore, a town and its district--a "community." In Gaul there were
about sixty such divisions, each roughly corresponding in size to a
modern French "department." Such a community had its own local council
and officials, who were ultimately responsible to the governor. So
long as they performed their municipal or communal functions correctly
and honestly they were not interfered with. The chief principle upon
which Rome insisted was that their local government should be
aristocratic, or rather that office should be based on wealth. The
governor, of course, stepped in when he felt it to be his duty. He was
required to suppress all secret societies or political unions. A
strike of the bakers in one city of Asia Minor was promptly put down
by the governor as interfering with social order and social needs.

The communities made their own by-laws, they collected the land-tax of
their own district and handed it over to the financial representative
of the Roman government. This was done by men of their own people,
often of a low class, known in the Gospels as the "publicans," who
were so commonly associated with sinners. St. Matthew had been one of
the minor agents for such collection in Galilee. Other taxes--those
which were indirect--might be collected by the great tax-farming
companies of Roman "knights," who offered a lump sum for them to the
government, and made what they could out of the bargain.

One incidental consequence of this systematic division into communes
was that there spread throughout the empire a strong municipal
patriotism, especially in the Greek world. This was followed by
liberal local expenditure on the part of rich provincials in
beautifying their centres with public buildings and works of art,
chiefly, no doubt, given for the sake of the local honours with which
they were repaid, but given nevertheless.

Most of the towns or communities throughout the empire were in the
position described. Some communities, however, such as Thessalonica,
though situated inside a province, were for some special service in
the past exempted from the interference of the governor, and were
allowed to exercise their own laws to the full, even upon Roman
citizens who might happen to reside there. These were called "free"
towns.