ABSTRACT
In the Roman Empire the cities constituted, from the first, the very basis of the State. The political organization was essentially municipal. The country was merely the territory attaching to the city; it had no independent existence; it produced only for the city and was ruled by the city. Wherever the Roman State was established it founded cities and set them up as administrative centres, In the Roman Empire the provinces were so intimately related to the cities on which they were dependent that the same word, civitas, was employed to denote the city and the province. And this state of affairs continued until the end of the Byzantine Empire.
