Sodalitates for religious purposes are mentioned in the Twelve Tables,[1] and collegia opificum, or trade guilds, were believed to have been instituted by Numa Pompilius, which probably means that they were regulated by the jus divinum as being associated with particular cults.
The collegia opificum ascribed to Numa[2] include guilds of weavers, fullers, dyers, shoemakers, doctors, teachers, painters, and other occupations, as listed by Ovid in the Fasti.
The purpose of the guild in each case was no doubt to protect and advance the interests of the trade, but little information for them exists until the age of Cicero, when they reappear in the form of political clubs (collegia sodalicia or compitalicia) chiefly with the object of securing the election of candidates for magistracies.
The political collegia were suppressed by a senatus consultum in 64 BC, revived by Clodius six years later, and finally abolished by Julius Caesar, as dangerous to public order.
[4] Every kind of trade and business throughout the Empire seems to have had its collegium, as is shown by the inscriptions collected in the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum from any Roman municipal town.
Eventually, the trade associations supported the individual, lost as he was in the vast desert of the empire, some little society and enjoyment in life, and the certainty of funeral rites and a permanent memorial after death.
In 495 BC when the worship of Minerva was introduced, a collegium mercatorum was founded to maintain it, which held its feast on the dies natalis (dedication day) of the temple.
In 204 BC when the Magna Mater (Great Mother, or Cybele) was introduced from Pessinus, a sodalitas was instituted which, as Cicero notes,[8] used to feast together during the ludi Megalenses.
In the year 133 under Hadrian, the formation of collegia specifically for this purpose was recognized by law, preserved at the head of the regulations of a collegium instituted for the worship of Diana and Antinous at Lanuvium.
Each member paid an entrance fee and a monthly subscription, and a funeral grant was made to his heir upon death in order to bury him in the burying-place of the college, or if they were too poor to construct one of their own, to secure burial in a public columbarium.
[14] In addition to the works cited below, see Mommsen, De Collegiis et Sodaliciis (1843), which laid the foundation for all subsequent study of the subject; Marquardt, Staatsverwaltung, iii.