Functioning
Collegia could function as guilds, social clubs, or burial societies; in practice, in ancient Rome, they sometimes became organized bodies of local businessmen and even criminals, who ran the mercantile/criminal activities in a given urban region, or rione. The organization of a collegium was often modeled on that of civic governing bodies, the Senate of Rome being the epitome. The meeting hall was often known as the curia, the same term as that applied to that of the Roman Senate.
By law, only three persons were required to create a legal collegium; the only exception was the college of consuls, which included only the two consuls.
There were four great religious corporations (quattuor amplissima collegia) of Roman priests. They were, in descending order of importance:
- Pontifices (also known as College of Pontifices), headed by the Pontifex Maximus,
- Augures,
- Quindecimviri,
- Epulones.
Read more about this topic: Collegium
Famous quotes containing the word functioning:
“Wisdom is not just knowing fundamental truths, if these are unconnected with the guidance of life or with a perspective on its meaning. If the deep truths physicists describe about the origin and functioning of the universe have little practical import and do not change our picture of the meaning of the universe and our place within it, then knowing them would not count as wisdom.”
—Robert Nozick (b. 1938)
“The trouble is that the expression ‘material thing’ is functioning already, from the very beginning, simply as a foil for ‘sense-datum’; it is not here given, and is never given, any other role to play, and apart from this consideration it would surely never have occurred to anybody to try to represent as some single kind of things the things which the ordinary man says that he ‘perceives.’”
—J.L. (John Langshaw)
“A functioning police state needs no police.”
—William Burroughs (b. 1914)