Most of these cities were very old; the greater number flourished in at least equal splendour in the time of the Roman Empire; some, such as Milan, Verona, Bologna, Capua, were so considerable as to present an image of Rome, with their circus, their amphitheatre, their tumultuous and idle population, their riches and their poverty. Their administration was nearly republican, most commonly composed, after the example of Rome, of a curia, or municipal senate elected by the people, and of duumvirs, or annual consuls. In all these towns, among the first class of inhabitants were to be found the proprietors of the neighbouring land, lodged in palaces with their slaves and freedmen; secondly, the artisans and shopkeepers whom their necessities established around them; lastly, a crowd of idle people, who had preserved just enough of land to supply, with the strictest economy, the means of existence. It does not appear that there was any prosperous manufactory in Italy. All manual labour, as well in towns as in the country, was executed by slaves. Objects of luxury, for the most part, came from Asia. War had for a long time been the only occupation of the Italians; for a long period, too, the legions had been levied partly among the Romans, and partly among their allies in Italy: but, under the emperors, the distrust of the master seconded the luxurious effeminacy of the subject, the Italians finally renounced even war, and the legions were recruited only in Pannonia, Gaul, and the other provinces bordering on the Rhine and the Danube. At a later period, the barbarians who menaced Rome were seduced by liberal pay to engage in its defence; and in the Roman armies the enemies of Rome almost entirely replaced the Romans. The country could not, as in modern states, supply the place of cities in recruiting the armies with a class of men accustomed to the inclemencies of the weather and inured to toil. The only labourers to be found were an oppressed foreign race, who took no interest in public affairs. The Romans cultivated their land either by slaves purchased from the barbarians and forced by corporal punishment to labour, or by _coloni partiarii_, to whom was given a small share in the harvest as wages; but, in order to oblige these last to content themselves with the least possible share, they were attached to the land, and nearly as much oppressed as slaves themselves. The proprietors of land varied as between these two systems, according as the price of slaves varied, or the _colons_ (peasants, labourers) were more or less numerous; no cultivator of the land had any property in it.