First, of the political condition of these innumerable towns we may say that it shows diversity in unity. There were several grades of privilege among them. Some were nominally independent of the Roman government, and in alliance with it, but these were few; Athens is the most famous example. Others were communities of Roman citizens; and many had the Latin right, _i.e._ inferior privilege. Lastly, there were great numbers of cities—a majority of the whole number—whose inhabitants were not Roman citizens at all, but directly under the control of the governor of their province, who was limited in his authority over the more privileged and independent towns. So much for diversity.
But all the cities were in reality governed and organised in much the same way. In each there was a constitution closely resembling that of Rome, and in most instances modelled directly upon it. As at Rome, they had yearly elected magistrates, who, after holding office, passed into a senate of advisers and councillors; and these magistrates were elected by the _populus_, or the whole body of citizens. Here was plenty of useful work to do, as we can guess from our own experience of local self-government. Plutarch, writing in this period of his own little town of Chæronea in Greece, realises this to the full, and urges that the work of the magistrate is honourable work, and the more so as it is combined with the sense of citizenship in a great empire.
There was, however, a tendency in these provincial towns, as in the city of Rome itself, for the magistrate, who must be a man of substance, to undertake the expense of amusing the people; a tendency to make the people dependent on the rich for their comforts rather than on their own industry and exertion. The magistrate, besides paying a large fee on his accession to office, was expected to give public games, to feast the people, or to give them a present of money all round. And he would wish, too, to distinguish his magistracy by erecting some public buildings—a bath, aqueduct, or theatre; or to endow a school. So it came to pass in course of time that his burdens were heavier than he could bear, and that the whole class to which he belonged, the senatorial one, was involved in the same difficulties. This class could not be recruited from the common people, who rarely had the means, or, indeed, the energy, to rise to affluence; and the tendency as time went on was to draw the line ever more sharply between the dignity of the various classes. But the ruin of the senatorial class, or _curiales_, lies outside our limits.