Both Nikomêdeia and Nikaia, and Diôn’s own city of Prusa, were only ordinary provincial towns with no special privilege. But there were spots in Bithynia which were more highly favoured. Here, as elsewhere, the Roman colony, the free and allied city, were locally in the province, but not of it. It is plain that even cities of this rank were used to a good deal of meddling on the part of the Roman officers; but they resented such treatment and appealed to their privileges. Apameia was no provincial town, but a Roman colony. Diôn, who claimed to be one of its citizens, made a speech before its senate, in which he sets forth the dignity of its colonial character.[33] Pliny, more busy than other proconsuls, claimed to look over the accounts of the colony. The colonists told him that he was welcome to do so, that it was their common wish that he should do so. But he should remember that it was a thing which no proconsul had ever asked before; their ancient privileges gave them the right of managing their own commonwealth as they thought good. Pliny asks for and receives a statement of their case in writing. He thinks much of the paper irrelevant; but he sends it to the Emperor to be guided by his judgement. In all this correspondence one somehow thinks of the correspondence of Augustine and Gregory; the superior is so clearly the wiser man of the two. Trajan writes back that the straightforward dealing of the men of Apameia is to be respected; the proconsul is to tell them that it is by the Emperor’s special request that he asks to look at their accounts; he is to do so without any prejudice to their privileges for the future.[34] We here see plainly enough the difference inherent in the position of a Roman colony as distinguished from that of an ordinary town of the province. Still an Emperor and a proconsul less scrupulous than Trajan and Pliny might have made short work of the liberties of Apameia. Under the men with whom the colonists had actually to deal, those liberties, when once established by sufficient evidence, were safe. [33] Oration xli. vol. ii. pp. 103, 105. [34] Plin. et Traj. Epist. 47, 48 (56, 57). The claim of the colony is “habuisse privilegium et vetustissimum morem arbitrio suo rem publicam administrare.” The Emperor’s answer is, “Remuneranda est igitur probitas eorum, et jam nunc sciant quod inspecturus es ex mea voluntate salvis, quæ habent privilegiis esse facturum.”