401 BETWEEN AMBITION QUIETISM AND after his death seems to indicate that his decree had only a mild impact on the actual situation. Tiberius and Gaius apparently did not experience too much trouble with voluntary associations, but Dio Cassius (60.6.6) reports a ban decreed by Claudius on the sale of cooked meat and hot water in the streets of Rome. As Cotter suggests, “these measures would have made it almost impossible for any group to meet publicly for any length of time and escape notice ”. The ban was therefore intended to keep revolutionary groups from meeting under the form of a “social group” 38. Up to this point, it seems that voluntary associations were considered troublesome and potentially dangerous only in Rome and the Italian peninsula. However, it is logical to suppose that Roman officials sent to administer the provinces carried with them such a congenital distrust. Pliny, governor of Bithynia, had an epistolary exchange with Trajan about the request of a city to form a company of firemen limited to 150 individuals (Ep. X.33.3). He felt compelled to inform the Emperor, who responded: “...we must r e m e m b e r that it is societies like these which have been responsible for the political disturbances in your provinces, particularly in its towns. If people assemble for a common purpose, whatever name we give them and for whatever reason, they soon turn into a political association” (X.34.1) 39. Another promulgation of the Senate before 136 CE and recorded in the Roman Digest 47.22.1 denied soldiers the right to have clubs in the camp and prohibited other citizens from organizing in illegal societies. Only poor people were allowed to meet once a month for the sake of religion and to gather contributions. The law apparently applied to all the Provinces, but it was necessary to specify it later on : the decree of the senate dates before 136 CE, since the edict is mentioned in CIL XIV 2112 (= ILS 7212, Lanuvium, Italy, 136 CE). and legitimate ones is rightly questioned by Ascough on the basis of CIL VI 2193 (= ILS 4966, Rome, early I CE): ASCOUGH, Voluntary Associations, 398, n. 246. COTTER, “The Collegia”, 80-81. 38 For the texts of the letters see: Pliny the Younger. Correspondence with 39 Trajan from Bithynia, Epistles X (trans. W. Williams) (Warminster 1990). For a c r i t i c a l comment on Pliny’s request and Trajan’s response see A.N. SHERWIN-WHITE, The Letters of Pliny. A Historical and Social Com- mentary (Oxford 1966) 606-610.