Inscriptions found at the site confirm the typical social institutions of a Roman colony — local government organized around a council of decuriones, commercial activity, religious practice, the whole apparatus of Roman civic identity transplanted to the edges of the empire.

For the first two and a half centuries of its existence, Deultum functioned in the way that prosperous Roman provincial cities functioned.

It grew.

It developed its infrastructure.

Its citizens participated in the civic and economic life of the empire.

It was not the most important city in the region, but it was a real city, with real institutions and real people.

Then the third century happened.