*Egypt.* In Egypt under the Ptolemies the inhabitants of village communities were compelled to perform personal services to the state, including the cultivation of royal land not let out on contract, each within the boundaries of the community in which he was registered (his _idia_). With the introduction of Roman rule this theory of the _idia_ was given greater precision. All the land of each village had to be tilled by the residents thereof, either as owners or tenants. At times, indeed, the inhabitants of one village might be forced to cultivate vacant lands at a distance. During the seasons of sowing and harvest the presence of every villager was required in his _idia_. The crushing weight of taxation, added to the other obligations of the peasantry caused many of them to flee from their _idia_, and this led to an increasing amount of unleased state land. As a large number of private estates had developed, chiefly because of the encouragement extended to those who brought waste land under cultivation, the government forced the property holders to assume the contracts for the vacant public lands in their districts. With the introduction of the municipal councils in the course of the third century, these were made responsible for the collection of the taxes of each nome. To enable the councillors, who were property holders, to fulfill this obligation, their tenants were forbidden to leave their holdings. And so, as state or private tenants, the peasants came to be bound to the soil. The development in Asia Minor was similar. There the royal lands of the Seleucids became the public land of Rome, and out of this the Roman magnates of the later Republic developed vast estates which in turn were concentrated in the hands of Augustus. These imperial domains were cultivated by peasants, who lived in village communities and paid a yearly rental for the land they occupied. The rest of the land of Asia formed the territories dependent upon the Greek cities, and was occupied by a native population who were in part free peasants settled in villages. On the imperial domains the village came to be the _idia_ to which the peasant was permanently attached for the performance of his liturgies or obligatory services, while on the municipal territories the agricultural population was bound to the soil as tenants of the municipal landholders, the local senators, upon whom had been placed the responsibility for the payment of the taxes of their municipalities.