ideas as to the importance which it gave to the city as a municipal
unit or as a corporation. It was in no way what we could call a
municipal government, even admitting a rather loose interpretation of
the term, as the supporters of the theory of the survival of the Roman
curial system would have us believe.[22] The _judex_ may be called
"the highest municipal officer among the Lombards," and this
designation still be correct, though perhaps misleading. He was the
highest officer of the locality, and his official duties were for the
most part carried on within the city; but the leading fact we must
keep prominently before us is, that he was the head of the whole
_civitas_, and not in any sense of the city as such: and further, that
his powers over the rural portions of the _civitas_ were in no sense
added to any purely municipal powers he may have possessed; but, on
the contrary, if we are to draw any distinctions, the municipality
formed a part of the land division. That the whole _civitas_ was
commonly named after the largest town contained within its borders,
and that the seat of power was generally placed within the city walls,
are facts too evidently brought about by motives of convenience and
expediency and by the force of old association, to lead to any
confusion in appreciating the proper place of the city. Where there
were to be found buildings suitable for the residence of the _dux_,
and where was located the largest collection of individuals, was
manifestly the most appropriate place for holding the courts and
settling the disputes of the inhabitants of the whole _civitas_, and
this formed a natural centre for the machinery of government. But
every inhabitant of the _civitas_ had equal rights with the townsman
proper, and, as in the old Greek [Greek: polis], the most remote
countryman dwelling on the borders of the _civitas_, if he possessed
the franchise, was as much a citizen of Padua, Siena or Milan, as if
he dwelt within the walls of the city which gave its name to the whole
_civitas_.

A consideration of these facts brings out two important points, which
I will briefly indicate before passing on to a little more detailed
treatment of the powers and the duties of the _judex_. In the first
place it has been made clear that at the time under discussion nothing
that could correctly be called a "municipal system" existed in
Lombardy, and the city, _as such_, had no independent existence or
independent rela