But it was not merely the artisans of the empire that were included in any organization or reorganization of the _collegia_. Like all other corporate bodies the trade-guilds, if not wholly religious in form, possessed a common cult or ceremony, and this common possession made it easy to consider them as not essentially different from _collegia_ directly and solely religious—the Greek θίασοι for example. In these, the voluntary principle remained even after the compulsory guilds were fully developed, although in point of fact they were generally rigidly hereditary at all times. Here too, after Alexander Severus, there must have been a certain legal restriction placed upon arbitrary withdrawal from such cult-organizations, even if their ritual was openly and unmistakably foreign, such as that of the Jews, the orgies of Atthis, or the mysteries of Mithra. Some restriction would be necessary, because membership in these organizations, as far as they were tolerated by law, involved the payment of certain dues to the state, and the state could not see with equanimity the obligation to pay these dues discarded and no new ones assumed in its place. The dues to the state did not consist altogether, and soon not even principally, in the actual taxes levied upon a community, and portioned among its constituent members, whether individuals or corporations. Indeed these latter were paid to what seems to us a wholly disproportionate extent by a small and wealthy class in the community. The taxes, whether they consisted of ground-rent for state lands, harbor-dues, or taxes on certain sales, were principally paid by the large traders and investors, who were in every case the governing body of the local communes. In provinces where a poll-tax was levied, and where a tribute was imposed as on conquered territory, which the province really was, these direct taxes, when brutally executed on the peasant’s grain, were oppressive enough, but in many parts of the Roman world they were in effect λειτουργίαι, “liturgies,” _i.e._ the burdens assumed by or imposed upon private persons of making large contributions in service to the state in proportion to their means. The principle of the liturgy was common to most Greek states, and was capable of indefinite extension. And there was one state burden rapidly increasing in gravity, which was generally met on the principle of the liturgy, although the state too, as early as the time of Trajan,[392] was compelled to attempt it in part. That was the care of incompetents, by which term we may understand all free individuals who could not support themselves wholly by their personal efforts, _i.e._ widows and orphans, as well as destitute freemen. The proletariat of the empire not only had no share in its burdens, but itself formed the empire’s chief economic burden.