The Ancient Corporations: Colleges of Builders in Rome 9and who built the fortified walls and camps and rebuilt, always better
than before, what the combatants had destroyed? Weren't the Roman
legions builders as much as they were soldiers? Servius Tullius himself
commanded two centuries of workers as men at arms under the title of
military companies.^8
Sometime between 67 B.C. and 64 B.C., the Julia Law abolished a
certain number of collegia and sodalita (associations founded on a sol-
idarity of interests) because of the abuses that had accompanied their
meddling with the comitia, namely the corruption of bureaucrats and
the purchase of votes. The Julia Law, however, did exempt the college
of tenuiores, or artisans who were purely professional. There were a
number of these for the tignarii. The collegia that survived were subject
to more rigorous regulation (one banquet a month at most and admin-
istrative oversight). Most important, they were made more subordinate
to the state, something that did not hinder their development. Quite the
contrary: Under Alexander Severus (208-235 B.C.), there were thirty-
two collegia.
By this time the collegia had become essential state institutions wed
to strong municipal organization. During the third century these insti-
tutions preserved their traditional importance but lost much of their
former independence. They became cogs in the imperial administration,
albeit the most important cogs, for they were in direct contact with the
population.
With the empire now an absolute monarchy, the governmental
authority was gradually assuming the task of assuring not only law
and order, but material prosperity as well. To do this, it set up a vast
system of social classes in such a way that all the services necessary to
survival and living had sufficient personnel. The utmost effort was
made to maintain the individual authority of each man in his duty or
profession, which is how the collegia happened to be called upon to
play a role of primary importance in this system. We will see how the
lesson of this absolute and centralizing administration based on
municipal organization and professional groups eventually inspired
European sovereigns in their fight against feudalism and in their quest
to strengthen their authority at the time of the Crusades, when they
found Roman social institutions still in place in the East.