For the purposes of jurisdiction the territorial divisions according to towns are reunited to form larger parishes of jurisdiction _conventus_, διοικήσεις, in the chief places of which the governor goes through the regular days of jurisdiction (assizes). Finally the religious festivals, associations in which the inhabitants of the provinces unite from time to time, take place in the favoured towns to which we allude. In provinces that were poor in towns instead of town dioceses we have country circuits. Here a policy was observed of breaking asunder the original connections of one people with another, so far as was found necessary, by dissolution of the existing state unities and by an arbitrary division and grouping of neighbourhoods; in some cases it was even found well to abolish the commercium between the single states, which had the effect of making it more difficult for the provincials to alienate their real estate and caused Roman landholders to emigrate into the province and concentrate in their hands large landed estates. Favoured towns had their area widened by the incorporation of towns and spots which thereby lost their separate existence; in this way the communes entrusted to the Romans were raised and enlarged and the rebellions completely annihilated. Mountainous and desert lands which yielded nothing valuable and were difficult to administer were left in the midst of the province under their native despots until, often after a long time, it was held safe to place these parts, too, directly under the governor. The boundaries of the territories once established, the next step was to regulate their political and financial position. Towns conquered by force of arms were destroyed, their lands included in Roman domains and leased out to men of private enterprise by the censors at Rome in exchange for a proportion of the produce raised. Where royal domains were found, as in Syracuse, Macedonia, Pergamus, Bithynia, and Cyrene, they were taken possession of as _ager publicus Romani_ in the same way, and their working population was united into village communities in the manner used for the district of Capua after 211 B.C. Such communes, on the other hand, as had submitted by surrender without offering extreme resistance certainly yielded to the unbounded power of the victor (as was embodied in the terms of surrender), town and country, men, women and children, rivers, ports, and their holy possessions; but as a rule the citizens and their families were allowed to remain in possession of their liberty and their private fortunes and to the town was left its territory and its town rights. In return for this on all the farm lands whether of private persons or of the town was laid a natural impost (vectigal) or else a hard and fast tax (tributum, stipendium) and where advantageous, also a Roman toll (portorium).