attendance in the provinces dates from Antoninus Pius, who required the towns of Asia to have a certain number of physicians among their salaried officers.(1252) The title _Archiater_, which in the Theodosian Code designates an official class in the provinces as well as at Rome, is found in inscriptions of Beneventum and Pisaurum belonging to an earlier date.(1253) But these departments of municipal expenditure were hardly yet fully organised in the age of the Antonines, and were probably not burdensome. The great field of expenditure lay in the basilicas, temples, amphitheatres, baths, and pavements, whose vanishing remains give us a glimpse of one of the most brilliant ages in history. The municipal towns relied largely on the voluntary munificence of their wealthy members for great works of public utility or splendour. But we have many records of such enterprises carried out at the common expense, and the name of a special magistracy (_curator operum publicorum_) to superintend them meets us often in the inscriptions.(1254) These undertakings were frequently on a great scale. The famous bridge of Alcantara was erected in the reign of Trajan by the combined efforts of eleven municipalities in Portugal.(1255) In Bithynia the finances of some of the great towns had been so seriously disorganised by expensive and ill-managed undertakings that the younger Pliny was in the year 111 A.D. sent as imperial legate by Trajan to repair the misgovernment of the province.(1256) Pliny’s correspondence throws a flood of light on many points of municipal administration, and foreshadows its coming decay. The cities appear to have ample funds, but they are grossly mismanaged. There is plenty of public money seeking investment, but borrowers cannot be found at the current rate of 12 per cent. Pliny would have been inclined to compel the decurions to become debtors of the state, but Trajan orders the rate of interest to be put low enough to attract voluntary borrowers.(1257) Apamea, although it had the ancient privilege of managing its own affairs, requested Pliny to examine the public accounts.(1258) He did the same for Prusa, and found many signs of loose and reckless finance, and probable malversation.(1259) Nicaea had spent £80,000 on a theatre, which, from some faults either in the materials or the foundation, was settling, with great fissures in the walls.(1260) The city had also expended a large sum in rebuilding its gymnasium on a sumptuous scale, but the fabric had been condemned by a new architect for radical defects of structure. Nicomedia has squandered £40,000 on two aqueducts which have either fallen or been abandoned.(1261) In authorising the construction of a third the emperor might well emphatically order the responsibility for such blunders to be fastened on the proper persons.(1262) In the same city, when a fire of a most devastating kind had recently occurred, there was no engine, not even a bucket ready, and