Another letter of Pliny's (Lib. X. Epist. xlii.) speaks of the villa of his friend Caninus Rufus, on the same lake, with its beautiful porticoes and baths, etc., and of the many other villas, palaces, temples, forums, etc., which embellished Como and its neighbourhood. Catullus lived here when the poet Cæcilius, whose works have now perished, invited him to leave the hills of Como, and the shores of Lario, to join him in Verona. Pliny seems to confirm the existence of guilds,[17] as he speaks of the institution of a _Collegium_ of iron-workers, who wished to be patented by the Emperor, but Trajan refused to form new guilds, for fear of the _Hetæriæ_ or factions which might infiltrate into them. Mommsen, in his work _De Collegiis et Sodalitiis Romanorum_, says that under the emperors no guild was allowed to hold meetings, except by special laws, yet though new companies were not to be formed, the existing ones of architects and artisans were permitted to continue after public liberty was lost. Several documents prove that the chief scope of these unions was to promote the interests of their art, to provide mutual assistance in the time of need, to succour the sick and poor, and to bury the dead. The trade guilds in London, the _Arti_ in Florence, and the town clubs kept up in England till lately, seem to be all survivals of these ancient classical societies. Besides the Builders' Society, Como had, in Roman times, a nautical guild. An inscription is extant, dedicated to C. Messius Fortunatus by the _Collegium nautarum Comensium_. This guild sent twenty ships of war to Venice in Barbarossa's time. But besides having privileged societies, Como and its Comacine islands were a privileged territory, and might almost have been called a republic. We have, it is true, no documentary evidence of this dating back to pre-Longobardic times, but as Otho in 962[18] confirmed the islands in all former privileges granted by his predecessors on the Imperial throne, we may fairly suppose the privileges dated from times far anterior to himself. This is an anglicized version of his decree, which was granted on the petition of the Empress Adelaide--