'Bread and Circuses': Euergetism and Municipal Patronage in Roman Italy

'Bread and Circuses': Euergetism and Municipal Patronage in Roman Italy

Kathryn Lomas

Language: English

Pages: 182

ISBN: 0415518563

Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub


Cities in the ancient world relied on private generosity to provide many basic amenities, as well as expecting leading citizens to pay for 'bread and circuses' - free food and public entertainment. This collection of essays by leading scholars from the UK and USA explores the important phenomenon of benefaction and public patronage in Roman Italy.
Ranging from the late republican period to the later Roman Empire, the contributions cover a wide range of topics, including the impact of benefactions and benefactors on the urban development of Roman Italy, on cultural and economic activity, and on the changing role of games and festivals in Roman society. They also explore the relationship between communities and their benefactors, whether these were local notables, senators, or the emperor himself, and examine how the nature of benefaction changed under the Empire.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

‘ B R E A D A N D C I RC U S E S ’ iii iv ‘BREAD AND C I RC U S E S ’ Euergetism and municipal patronage in Roman Italy edited by Kathryn Lomas and Tim Cornell v First published 2003 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor and Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of

particularly the Templars (who also had the means to communicate between the eastern Mediterranean and home, thus obviating the need physically to transport cash). Cf. Barber 1992. In the medieval Drama of St. Nicolas, a Jewish moneylender leaves his property in the care of the saint’s church when he goes away on a journey. 9 Cic., Lael. 18.65. The vast literature on fides is surveyed by Becker 1969: 801–36; cf. Fraenkel 1916: 187–99. We may also note the strong feelings expressed against novae

Bristol: Bristol Academic Press. Osborne, R. (1985) Demos: the Discovery of Classical Attica, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Perlwitz, O. (1992) Titus Pomponius Atticus (Hermes Einzelschrift 58) Stuttgart: Steiner. Poliakov, L. (1977) Jewish Bankers and the Holy See (Engl. trans.), London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Rauh, N. (1986) ‘Cicero’s business friendships’, Aevum 60(1): 3–30. Rathbone, D. (1991) Economic Rationalism and Rural Society in Third Century AD Egypt, Cambridge:

‘quod viae mun(itae) sunt’ ( RIC I2 (Augustus) 140–5), and depict a series of arches with triumphal chariots which (if actual rather than symbolic) must themselves have commemorated the road-building programmes. The arch set up at Ariminum to commemorate the building of the Via Flaminia and of other celeberrimae Italiae viae still survives ( CIL XI.365 = ILS 84; De Maria 1988: 260– 2; Laurence 1999: 42–5). The improvement of the road-system can be seen as yet another element in the increasingly

ceremony, status and hierarchy are the keywords of late Roman life. So too was eloquence: Symmachus himself remarked on the cultural sophistication of the Beneventum optimates, whom he described as ‘amantissimi litterarum morumque mirabiles’. Thus we move easily into a world dominated by authority, ‘power and persuasion’ (Brown 1992) and a history of late antiquity dominated by aristocratic sources and therefore written largely de haut en bas. The ‘crowd’ was a necessary part of the backdrop to

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