CONCILIABULA, CANABAE, ETC.
the civitas the political and social unit. It had dealt administratively with the individual through the magistrates or decurions of his community. The coloni on an imperial estate had no political organization, or at most only a rudimentary one. They were, therefore, brought into direct relations with the emperor or his personal representative. In carrying out this plan of government for the domains located in a given region, a method was adopted not unlike that which had been followed in the case of a newly acquired province. Just as a senatorial commission under the republic had drawn up a lex provinciae to fix the relations of the civitates to the central government and the form of government for the province within which they lay, or just as emperors granted charters to municipalities, so representatives of the emperor drew up a statute for the domains of a given district. The earliest of these statutes to which we have any reference is the lex Manciana[1], which was probably not a system of regulations drawn up by the owner of a privae estate, as is commonly supposed[2], but was rather the work of an imperial legate, perhaps of the Emperor Vespasian[3] The lex Manciana continued in force in Africa until it was supplanted by the lex Hadriana, to which reference is made in a document of the time of Commodus[4] and in another of a later date[5]. From a study of these documents, supplemented by information to be had from other inscriptions, it is possible to determine the administrative system which was introduced into the imperial domains. Each estate, or saltus, was in charge of a procurator saltus, who was usually a freedman, and all the procurators of a given region were under a procurator tractus, of equestrian
[ 17 ]
