SOCIAL RELATIONS 181with the rich, because they were thought to have nothing to contribute to a
reciprocal exchange relationship or because they wished to avoid the
humiliation of dependence.
Upper- class writers show little interest in vertical links between the high
and the low, but have even less to say about horizontal bonds between the
latter. A plethora of informal relationships between individual neighbours
and work associates have gone largely unrecorded. However, one institutional
manifestation of these relationships, the collegium , is well known from
numerous inscriptions and some largely hostile references in the literary
sources.^19
Collegia , made up of a few score or few hundred urban residents, were
essentially mutual aid societies formed to meet basic needs of their members.
Organized around cults to patron deities or by occupation, these associations
provided for decent burial of the dead as well as periodic festive dinners for
the living. Unable to rely on family, many Romans took the precaution of
arranging burial before their death by joining a collegium and paying small
monthly dues. In a long inscription detailing the rules of a collegium in the
small Italian town of Lanuvium, the membership fee was specifi ed as 100
sesterces, with dues of slightly more than one sesterce per month, which
guaranteed a funeral attended by club members.^20 These fees were meant for
modestly prosperous men, as were the club dinners with a menu of good
wine, two asses worth of bread and four sardines per member. Lower down
in the social hierarchy was another stratum, the impoverished who could
not afford club membership and whose bodies, consequently, were dumped
unceremoniously into mass graves.
Though these collegia were associations of humble men, they still exhibit
some of the hierarchical features so characteristic of Roman society. Like the
larger community, collegia were often patronized by the wealthy.^21 In the
case of the association in Lanuvium, Caesennius Rufus provided an
endowment of 15,000 sesterces to fi nance club dinners honouring the
birthdays of himself and his family. Further, the club rules show a typically
Roman appreciation for rank and the authority of offi ce: the chief magistrate
of the club, the quinquennalis (the title taken from municipal offi ce), received
double portions at the banquets and was protected from ‘insolent language’
by a special fi ne of twenty sesterces.
Despite the conservative attitudes implied by such rules, the authorities
were always suspicious of these associations and fearful lest they become
sources of unrest. In the late Republic, demagogic tribunes like P. Clodius
had made use of the collegia in their campaigns to undermine the authority
of the Roman magistrates by violence. Under the Principate, those collegia
that had achieved respectability because of their long histories and the
special public services they were held to perform (apparently in the area of
fi re fi ghting, building construction and religious ceremonial) were allowed a
continuous and even a privileged existence.^22 Religious and burial clubs
were also authorized. But the emperors remained suspicious of plebeian