As early as the time of Trajan the imperial government found it necessary to appoint officials called curators to reorganize the financial conditions in one or more municipalities, sometimes those of a whole province. At first these were irregular officials, senators or equestrians, but by the third century they had become a fixture in municipal administration and were chosen from among the local _decuriones_. Another evidence of the same conditions is the change which took place in the position of the local magistracies. In the second century these offices were still an honor for which candidates voluntarily presented themselves, although there were unmistakable signs that in some districts they were coming to be regarded as a burden. In the third century the magistracies had become an obligation resting upon the local senatorial order, and to which appointments were made by the _curia_. The _decurionate_ also had become a burden which all who possessed a definite census rating must assume. To assure itself of its revenues in view of the declining prosperity of the communities the imperial government had hit upon the expedient of making the local decurions responsible for collecting the taxes, and consequently had been forced to make the decurionate an obligatory status. The _curia_ and municipal magistracies had ended by becoming unwilling cogs in the imperial financial administration. This loss of municipal independence was accompanied by the conversion of the voluntary professional colleges into compulsory public service corporations. From the opening of the principate the government had depended largely upon private initiative for the performance of many necessary services in connection with the provisioning of the city of Rome, a task which became increasingly complicated when the state undertook the distribution of oil under Septimius Severus, of bread in place of grain and of cheap wine under Aurelian. Therefore such colleges as the shipowners (_navicularii_), bakers (_pistores_), pork merchants (_suarii_), wine merchants (_vinarii_), and oil merchants (_olerarii_) received official encouragement. Their members individually assumed public contracts and in course of time came to receive certain privileges because it was recognized that they were performing services necessary to the public welfare. Marcus Aurelius, Severus and Caracalla were among the emperors who thus fostered the professional guilds. Gradually the idea developed that these services were public duties (_munera_) to which the several colleges were obligated, and hence Severus Alexander took the initiative in founding new colleges until all the city trades were thus organized. The same princeps appointed judicial representatives from each guild and placed them under the jurisdiction of definite courts. The colleges from this time onward operated under governmental supervision and really formed a part of the machinery of the administration, although they