E.’s book is an important contribution to a series of studies on private benefactions that had a public character. The book has been beautifully printed and Harrassowitz Verlag has set a high standard that other publishers might emulate. The CD inside the back cover provides the relevant epigraphical data and makes a useful supplement. Given the limited amount of distinctive material on this subject from central and southern Italy, a shorter and more concise publication might have been more effective for addressing the issues.

Following an introduction and review of the scholarship in Chapter 1, there follows: Chapter 2: definition and terminology; Euergetismus and Poverty. Chapter 3: Roman society in the first–third centuries (senatorial, equestrian, decurial and plebeian ordines and a discourse on the shared values of these groups on the issues introduced). Chapter 4: ‘poverty’ in the Late Republic and Principate; relative and absolute. Chapter 5: private Euergetismus (development and form, construction, games, distribution of food and cash). Chapter 6: ‘care of the poor’ and private Euergetismus, a summary. Appendices on benefactors and beneficiaries, a bibliography and indexes for literary and epigraphical sources, people, places and items complete the book.

This book is the latest in a series of studies of public liberality (beneficium, Euergetismus etc.). Within this context, see also R. Duncan-Jones, The Economy of the Roman Empire (1974) and S. Mrozek in Epigraphica, 1968 and 1972, G. Wesch-Klein, Liberalitas in rem publicam, focusing on North Africa (1990), and many others discussed and evaluated in Chapter 2.

On a theoretical level, E. devotes considerable attention to exploring how poverty (Armut) was understood and might be alleviated. To the elite and wealthy, anyone with fewer resources was relatively poor. Gifts and benefactions to maintain status are of course well known from the correspondence of Pliny (e.g. 1.19, a gift to Romatius Firmus). Absolute poverty (inops, mendicus), to be truly dependent on charity public and/or private to survive, does not receive much attention in the sources.

The lists of benefactions documented in this volume, impressive as they are in variety and utility, are, as E. recognises, difficult to connect to alleviation of true poverty. Moreover, the beneficiaries listed in the appendix are not labelled as individuals but appear as groups: populus, incolae, municipes, plebs (some of whom might be among the poorest) but also as decuriones, Augustales, seviri etc., surely not those living in absolute poverty.

In the very Late Republic and early Principate there was a growing trend to provide benefactions that improved the urban infrastructure and in doing so also improved the living conditions of all citizens. In the second century, there is a noticeable shift away from the construction of public buildings to the provision of alimenta, games etc. This shift may be a consequence of the gifts that newly elected magistrates were expected to confer on their communities.

Did the benefactions offer opportunities for the absolutely poor to escape poverty? E. twice cites Martial (5.81), and this is indeed the conclusion of the study.

Does the book succeed in answering the questions posed in Chapters 1 and 2? Admittedly, one would like to know more how real Armut (as distinct from relative Armut) was understood and what the ancients thought about how it might be alleviated, but the sources, literary and epigraphical, do not offer much guidance. Nonetheless, the data provided do offer a vivid insight into the Roman practice of Munifizenz.

The indexes and the supplementary CD with the epigraphical evidence saved as a PDF provide fine summaries of the evidence. In the printed book, there is a table of benefactors (Die Wohltäter), benefaction (Gabe; Finanzierung), date and a catalogue/reference number for the material on the CD. The table of beneficiaries (Nutznießer) arranges the material by groups: singules, sodales, aediles, patroni collegii etc. Scholars will welcome the collection of evidence but will not find it easy to create a profile of benefactors by status or office or patria or by any other associated rubric without compiling their own spreadsheet. The CD does provide all the relevant data in a PDF format; the texts and notes are beautifully laid out, but scholars will have to use the PDF search function to locate items of interest. Searching for ‘patro’ will indeed yield the usual variants (patronum, patrono, patroni etc.). E. does not state whether she would make the indexed information available on the CD to individual scholars on a spreadsheet. One may also wonder what will happen to the CD once the volume has been placed in a research library. Perhaps the publisher might make a digital version available online?