ABSTRACT
WE know that at the end of the third century and during the fourth, when the State became weak and unreasonable in its demands, there was an increase in the number of associations of every kind. An outburst of syndicalism was then seen to affect every grade in the social scale. Administrative officials of all departments, soldiers and non-commissioned officers, artisans, workers in the national manufactures, devotees of the same cult, neigh-bouring proprietors, dwellers in the same ward or village, freedmen of the same patron, slaves of the Exchequer or of the same master, etc., formed associations in defence of their professional or social interests, their well-being and even their lives. In this inundation it is impossible to say how far the strict regulations of the earlier Empire concerning associations and collegia were respected and maintained by legal practice. The Digest and the Code prove that the statutes were not changed. At any rate we know that many collegia devoted to administrative and economic duties and incorporated by the State in its own administration or in those of the various cities had gradually absorbed the well-to-do population of the towns and submitted to the burdensome State-regulation which has been described above. 1
