Every young community sought a rich patron willing to give a plot of land or the funds necessary for the building of a club-room, promising in return certain anniversary banquets in his honour, or commemorative reunions to keep his memory green after death. Each corporation placed itself under the protection of a god whose name it adopted, and as its wealth and importance increased, by members' testamentary bequests or by gifts from patrons, the club premises were increased, and shrines and chapels were built in honour of the titular deity. Some of the corporations rose to such a position of importance that senatorial and consular families sprang from them; they supported colleges of doctors sculptors and painters of their own, they contributed to the building of public monuments and made loans to the State, while on special occasions the emperor's retinue was increased by a hundred standards and five hundred lances contributed by the trade colleges of Rome from amongst their own retainers. Although democratic in constitution, in so far as every member, however humble, could serve as one of its officers, the college was founded on the civic pattern, with president, curators, fiscal officer and all the grades of rank down to its slave members. Thus each unit represented in miniature the Roman commune and contributed to its consolidation. Unlike some of the guilds of the North however which became the nurseries of civic freedom, the Roman Colleges were too ready to subject their individuality to the spirit of civil discipline which was characteristic of Roman organisations and we find them submitting to one Imperial decree after another, losing one after another of their rights until they fell altogether under State patronage and became a mere portion of State machinery, a petrifying slavery being thus imposed upon their members whose liberties they were founded to safeguard. As an integral portion of the administrative life of the State, they proved of the greatest use, not only as adding to its stability and prosperity but as affording a sort of scaffolding upon which to build its complicated daily life. To them was given the collection of taxes, the superintendence of public buildings, the development of the military system, the clothing of the militia, the provisioning of the citizens and the supplying of all their daily necessities. [Illustration: SILVERSMITHS' ARCH IN THE VELABRUM This arch stands against the Arch of Janus, and was erected to the Emperor Septimius Severus, his wife Julia Pia, and his sons, by the guilds of silversmiths and cattle merchants. When Caracalla murdered his brother the name of the murdered prince was removed from the inscription. The arch, as the inscription proves, is on the site of the _Forum Boarium_.]