In this article, the author describes the changing character of urban society under the early Roman Empire by focussing upon tria collegia (i.e., fabri, centonarii and dendrophori) and their public activities and social composition. In the conventional research, tria collegia are assumed to have been originally formed as voluntary associations of builders (fabri), ragmakers (centonarii), and timber dealers (dendrophori), but were subsequently embedded in the Roman state structure as official corporate bodies. In addition, it has been supposed that dendrophori performed the same public role as fabri and centonarii did, because of their appearance as such in the epigraphic evidence, whereas dendrophori also played a certain role in rituals for Cybele and Attis. Recently O.M. van Nijf's comparative study of tria collegia has shown that the social composition of tria collegia was urban middling sorts in general, not confined to any particular group in terms of trade. Although his argument contains a variety of interesting points, two aspects remain to be clarified: the substance of the public activities of dendrophori, and the plausibility of identifying tria collegia with any specific trade organizations. The author concludes that the public service conducted by fabri and centonarii should be firefighting and that of dendrophori rituals for Cybele and Attis and that the tria collegia should be understood from the function of the public bodies performing those roles. Consequently, their members were urban middling type citizens who could perform those voluntary activities.

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