ABSTRACT
Services convenient for the population of a city (or other community) can be supplied by the state or the local authority or by private enterprise. Even in the last case there will always be some services that need control, whether for reasons of health or state security or the maintenance of order, and this control may be exercised by central or local government. A modern local authority spends considerable resources in licensing premises or trades, things such as pubs or taxi cabs. Other areas may be subject to state control, instead of, or as well as, local regulation. For example, in Britain agents of central government inspect the local authority schools and, until recently, also inspected those run by private persons, while in some European countries the selling of tobacco is a state monopoly. In Britain theatres are licensed, but for the Romans their link with religion meant that these were places extra patrimonium, not run for profit but rather an ostentatious example of ‘deficit spending’ in the public sphere.1 We license second-hand dealers but, while these must have existed in Rome2indeed, how else would bath thieves have made a living?—we hear nothing of any control over them. Controls are in fact better evidenced for the cities of the eastern part of the Empire, but there was certainly the power to regulate in Rome what could be regulated in other cities-even if not necessarily the inclination.
