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In Ancient Rome, a 'collegium' (plural '''collegia''', "joined by law") was a term applied to any association with a legal personality. There were collegia which functioned as guilds, others as social clubs or funerary societies. Their organization was often modelled on that of civic governing bodies, the Senate of Rome being the epitome. The meeting-hall was often known as the curia, the same term as that applied to that of the Roman Senate.
There was required by law three persons to create a legal collegium, and the only exception to this rule is the college of consuls, which had only the two consuls.
There were four great religious corporations (''quattuor amplissima collegia'') of Roman priests. They were, in descending order of importance:

★ ''Pontifices'', headed by the ''Pontifex maximus''

★ ''Augures''

★ ''Quindecemviri''

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