location
A distinctive Roman procedure for the letting of contracts. This needs some stressing because it always remained one of the main governmental activities of Roman administrators, and because it was through this that so much of the civil engineering which is so eloquent a testimony of Roman rule was carried on. It was also for a very long period the principal mode, through tax-farming, of collecting public revenues, that basic activity of ancient governments. Moreover it was unique to Rome in its developed form, and appeared to Polybius (6. 117) one of the most striking and effective aspects of Roman state activity, embracing all activities from the contract for feeding the sacred geese of Juno (always let first) to the taxes of the provinces or the resurfacing of main roads. Polybius saw this practice as a democratic aspect of Roman public life, no doubt because it involved in state business some prominent plebeians. For our purposes it is doubly important. First it encouraged the formation of semi-public corporate organizations, collegia and societates, the spirit of which contributed to Roman notions of how to form administrative institutions-and indeed it is from this world that the important late-Roman official title magister derives. Second, and even more importantly, we see again here the unwillingness of Roman magistrates to undertake themselves the direct overseeing of the activities which they sponsored. The wish to limit the public sphere and privatize official actions is again apparent. (Boardman, 1986)