Under imperial rule, the endless variety of relations among the allies, dependents, and subjects of Rome gradually changed into the one character of direct members of the Roman Empire. But the change was slow. Sovereign commonwealths sank into municipalities, and municipalities sank into something less than municipalities, by mere force of circumstances, without any formal act. It is often very hard to say when this or that free city finally lost its distinct being through absolute incorporation in the Roman Empire. It is certain that the memory of past freedom, as something that still was not wholly past, lived on for ages. Under the early Empire the commonwealths of Greece and Asia, whatever was their formal relation, were in practice, not only subject to the Roman Empire, but very much at the mercy of the governors of the provinces within which they geographically lay. But they still were commonwealths, though dependent or even subject commonwealths. Their senates, assemblies, or other ruling bodies, had practically sunk to the functions of town-councils, and they were open, in a way in which an English town-council is not, to the caprice of an external power. But they were town-councils which had been sovereign parliaments. Some of them were in theory sovereign parliaments still. And even those which were furthest from that character, the councils of those towns which were neither free and allied states, nor Roman colonies, nor in any way privileged above the general provincial relation, had not wholly lost their original character. Deep into the time of the Empire, the old character of the Roman dominion, that of a city ruling over other cities, still left its traces. In such a state of things the authority of the councils or assemblies of the subject states might practically be smaller than that of the town-council of an English borough. That is, the assembly might be afraid of acting in any matter of importance without the leave of the central power or its representative. It might practically confine its action to matters of routine and ceremony, at most to votes of honours and setting up of statues, because any bolder action would awaken Roman jealousy. That is to say, the free and allied state could in theory do everything, even the provincial town could in theory do many things, according to its own free will. But generations of submission to an irresistible neighbour had taught it not to exercise that free will except according to the higher will of the power which was supreme over all. If the rights of the subordinate state became formal or even null, it was because they were wide and indefinite; they were the powers of a community which still kept a distinct being, but which was placed under the irresistible influence, sometimes under the direct dominion, of a stronger community. This is a position altogether different from that of a town or district in a modern kingdom or commonwealth where every part of the land has equal rights.