44 THE ROMAN EMPIRE
Superior and Dalmatia had a history of this kind.^25 Such communities may
never have acquired the outward form of cities or become centres of
administration or social activity, partly no doubt because the councillors,
who were intended to be the mainstay of the new foundations, preferred to
live in their villages or on their estates. They had the name and status of
cities but otherwise were not distinguishable from the independent villages
that commonly prevailed where city life was underdeveloped, as in the
interior of Syria or in central Asia Minor.^26
Social and cultural considerations, therefore, played their part in
infl uencing the success or failure of a city. But the inscriptions suggest
that the decision of a Roman emperor as to the status of a community was
closely related to his assessment of the adequacy of its economic and
demographic base.
Nevertheless such criteria were not applied throughout the empire or in
all periods. There were villages within the substantial territory of Trier
in Gaul that were larger than the smaller cities of Italy or Britain.^27 Similarly
in Greece a number of cities retained their status because propped up by
Leagues, if they were not saved from downgrading by their past fame.^28
Thebes in Boeotia was one of the latter, in Strabo’s view not even a signifi cant
village: it was underpopulated, its buildings were dilapidated or in ruins, its
economy was weak and its culture in decay (402). That it was offi cially a
city is indicated by Strabo’s own account, which contains scattered references
to settlements and geographical features incorporated in its territory. When
Pausanias saw Thebes in the mid- second century it had a few hundred
inhabitants who had retired to the Cadmeia, but was still a city (8.33.2). The
same writer knew that Panopeus in Phocis was a city but was doubtful
whether it deserved the title. It did have a territory and magistrates, or at
least personages who represented the city in the Phocian assembly; on the
other side, it lacked magistrates’ offi ces, a gymnasium, an agora, fountains
and respectable housing (10.4.1ff.).
The political division between city and village was conspicuously out of
tune with economic and cultural realities in Egypt. The capitals of the
administrative districts, or nomes, were only late given municipal institutions,
limited self- government, and jurisdiction of a sort over their hinterlands by
Septimius Severus at the beginning of the third century. Alexandria, one of
the largest centres of population in the whole empire, lacked a local council
until this time. The explanation can only be political and fi scal. Alexandria
had a very bad record for civil disturbance involving the Jewish and Greek
populations. Moreover, the Romans had inherited from the Ptolemies a
complicated and oppressive bureaucratic structure, unique to Egypt, that it
suited them to perpetuate because of the enormous agricultural resources of
the province. Municipal or quasi- municipal government came to Egypt only
when the Severans saw the advantage to themselves of spreading more
widely the burdens of administration among the better- off members of the
subject population.^29