In Ancient Rome, a collegium (plural collegia, "joined by law") was a term applied to any association with a legal personality. Ancient Rome was a Civilization that grew out of a small agricultural community founded on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 10th century BC Such associations might have had various functions.

Functioning

Collegia could function as guilds, social clubs, or funerary 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. A guild is an association of craftsmen in a particular trade The earliest guilds were formed as confraternities of workers A club is an association of people united by a common interest or goal Rione (plural rioni) is the name given to a ward in several Italian cities the best-known of which is Rome. The organization of a collegium was often modeled on that of civic governing bodies, the Senate of Rome being the epitome. The Senate of the Roman Republic was a political institution in the ancient Roman Republic. The meeting hall was often known as the curia, the same term as that applied to that of the Roman Senate. A Curia in early Roman times was a subdivision of the people i

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. Consul (abbrev cos; Latin plural consules) was the highest elected office of the Roman Republic and an appointive office under the Empire

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 Pontiffs), headed by the Pontifex maximus,
• Augures
• Quindecemviri
• Epulones. The College of Pontiffs or Collegium Pontificum ( Collegium in Latin means a board or committee rather than an educational institution was a body of the The Pontifex Maximus was the high priest of the Ancient Roman College of Pontiffs. The Augur was a priest and official in the classical world especially Ancient Rome and Etruria. The quindecemviri sacris faciundis were the fifteen members earlier ten ( decemviri) of a college for less clearly defined religious duties In Ancient Rome, the Epulones formed a collegium of seven men and were one (the least of the four great religious corporations ( quattuor amplissima

Greek equivalent

The Ancient Greek term for collegium is hetaireia, and such organizations existed from as early as the 6th Century B. C. E. in Athens.