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Fortunately, enough examples can be identified as Roman to serve our purpose. Some of these occur in the Lombardy plain where, both under the Republic and at the outset of the Empire, many 'coloniae' were planted full-grown and where town-life on the Roman model was otherwise developed.
But in the case of Britain it notes the municipal rank of the various coloniae, and it further appends tribal names to nine or ten town-names, which are thus distinguished from all other British place-names. The towns thus specially marked out are just those towns which are also declared by their actual remains to have been the chief country towns of Roman Britain.
In the period of the dying Republic and nascent Empire fewer 'coloniae' were planted here than in the north, while in much of southern Italy towns have in all ages been comparatively rare. Beloch, Campanien, p. 252. In the towns just noted we can trace many, though not all, of the original house-blocks.
It is worth noting, in this connexion, that when chess-board planning came into common use in the Roman Empire, many perhaps most of the towns to which it was applied were 'coloniae' manned by time-expired soldiers.
In the ancient burial place at Salem may still be seen the tomb of the old man who had known over sixty years of public service. Armiger, exordine Senatoris, in colonia Massachusettensi ab anno 1630, usque ad anum 1673. Deinde ad anum 1679, Vice-Gubernator. Denique ad anum 1686, ejusdem coloniae, communi et constanti populi suffragio, Gubernator.
Nec quidquam ultra formidinis: vacua castella, senum coloniae, inter male parentes et injuste imperantes aegra municipia et discordantia: hic dux, hic exercitus: ibi tributa et metalla et ceterae servientium poenae: quas in aeternum perferre aut statim ulcisci in hoc campo est. Proinde ituri in aciem et majores vestros et posteros cogitate."
In denoting the object or purpose, Z. 314: he coveted no appointment for the sake of display; he declined none through fear. Anxius and intentus qualify agere like adverbs cf. R. Exc. 23, 1. He conducted himself both with prudence and with energy. Exercitatior==agitatior. So Cic. Som. Scip. 4: agitatus et exercitatus animus; and Hor. Epod. 9, 31: Syrtes Noto exercitatas. Incensae coloniae.
Another reason for the establishment of 'coloniae' may be found in the history of the dying Republic and nascent Empire. During the civil wars of Sulla, of Caesar and of Octavian, huge armies were brought into the field by the rival military chiefs. As each conflict ended, huge masses of soldiery had to be discharged almost at once.
Coloniae served as instruments of repression as well as of culture, at least in the first century of the Empire. When Cicero describes a colonia, founded under the Republic in southern Gaul, as 'a watch-tower of the Roman people and an outpost planted to confront the Gaulish tribes', he states an aspect of such a town which obtained during the earlier Empire no less than in the Republican age.
After the tribunes and the centurions came a cloud of officials called agrimensores, surveyors, charged with the duty of parcelling out the soil among the new comers. Then followed a hierarchy of civil officers, religious, judicial, administrative, all under the direction of an administrator-general, who was entitled curator coloniae.
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