II IMPERIAL VS. LOCAL PERSPECTIVES ON ARCHITECTURAL AND SPECTACULAR BENEFACTION

The sources that document architectural munificence have created a perception that architectural munificence was a preferred outlet for élite generosity at the height of the Roman Empire. Scholars investigating the ‘euergetic choice’Footnote ⁴ between public architecture and different types of spectacles benefit from the preservation of honorific and dedicatory inscriptions that celebrate not only acts of liberality but also the connections between the Roman government and local patrons.Footnote ⁵ These honorific inscriptions and published administrative correspondence emphasize the kinds of gifts from élites to towns that drew favourable responses from Roman authorities and from the emperor himself.Footnote ⁶ Yet these dossiers also reveal that the local beneficiaries of élite generosity honoured their patrons equally — in enthusiasm and in method — for donations of buildings or of spectacles and distributions.

Important but sometimes contradictory information concerning imperial attitudes towards patronage of buildings can be found in imperial decrees and correspondence of the Hadrianic and Antonine periods. Hadrian's letter to Aphrodisias, granting the city's right to ask the high priest of the imperial cult for money to fund the construction of an aqueduct rather than put on gladiatorial shows, indicates that the emperor sometimes had to compel funding for certain architectural projects from a city's richest people at the expense of combats that were the usual liturgical focus of imperial cult priests.Footnote ⁷ The permission to petition for an infrastructural use of funds normally earmarked for shows ultimately offered the Aphrodisian élite a more cost effective outlet for their euergetism, because the price of putting on gladiatorial combats was so high.Footnote ⁸ Conversely, Hadrian's letters to the Dionysiac Artists at Alexandria Troas ordered that money designated as funding for artistic contests, festivals and prizes be used for only those purposes, and forbade the diversion of such moneys towards architectural projects.Footnote ⁹ It has been pointed out that the favouring of these less expensive Greek-style contests, rather than gladiatorial combats, reflected the affinity for Greek culture on the part of Hadrian and the leading citizens of the Greek East.Footnote ¹⁰ The understandably philhellenic disposition towards games in the Hadrianic period had, however, reverted in the Antonine period towards more practical architectural projects, as evidenced by the oft-cited letter of the emperor Antoninus Pius to Ephesos, praising the patron Vedius Antoninus for his architectural benefactions instead of bidding for instant popularity through the funding of spectacles.Footnote ¹¹

This Roman emperor's partiality towards architectural benefaction, at the height of the construction boom in the Roman East, is sometimes seen to be confirmed by the lengthy dossier of inscriptions from the tomb of the Lycian notable Opramoas of Rhodiapolis, called by Veyne the ‘euergetēs par excellence’.Footnote ¹² The dossier details the honours granted to him for his benefactions by the Electoral Assembly of the Lycian League, and records the acknowledgement and eventual approval of those honours by imperial officials and the emperor. Opramoas was praised lavishly by the Lycian League for the prudent and unusually generous discharging of his offices, as well as for gifts of money out of his private purse — including a frequently mentioned 55,000 silver denarii gift, the interest from which went to the personnel of the AssemblyFootnote ¹³ — and his paying for festivals, gladiatorial combats, Greek-style contests, and grain distributions in the province.Footnote ¹⁴ On the basis of these actions, the League repeatedly but unsuccessfully petitioned the Roman governor and emperor to approve and join their commendation of Opramoas. Opramoas was also credited with building an entire bath in Gagai,Footnote ¹⁵ and other architectural gifts, which included theatres, bathing complexes, stoas and temples at various cities,Footnote ¹⁶ sometimes as a partial contributor towards the project's cost and at other times as the sole financer.Footnote ¹⁷ These architectural amenities and projects came largely after many Lycian cities had suffered devastating earthquake damage. As Opramoas provided money for both the repair of old buildings — often paying relatively small sums for embellishments and landscapingFootnote ¹⁸ — and the addition of new ones after the quake, he also continued to support important Lycian religious festivals. After these efforts in helping the cities of the League recover from disaster, the Lycian League was finally able to get the emperor to join in their praise of Opramoas.Footnote ¹⁹

Because Antoninus Pius refrained from commending Opramoas until he became a major financial backer of the construction and repair of Lycian civic infrastructure, and explicitly called for others to emulate his example, Kokkinia has argued that an imperial preference for architectural forms of munificence over spectacles was being articulated.Footnote ²⁰ I do not quarrel with this reasonable interpretation. I suggest, though, that the dossier as a whole also supports a local understanding, by the members of the Lycian League, of these architectural works as analogous and equivalent to the other forms of benefaction. While the emperors had their reasons — such as the support of provincial infrastructure in times of prosperity as well as calamity — to prefer building gifts, public enthusiasm for spectacles, and in general for large donations of money, was unmistakably present. The benefactor was highly praised by the Lycian League for both kinds of gestures, even if he was imperially acknowledged only for one. In the decrees dating prior to the earthquake, Opramoas was honoured by the Lycian League for fulfilling his duties with honesty and liberality; for generous gifts of money to help the province pay its tax to Rome and to maintain the smooth operation of the League; and for paying for festivals and games that were held in various cities in the province.

It was only after the earthquake that Opramoas became a major architectural patron, and he continued to sponsor festivals and distributions, which were mentioned alongside, without indication of preference or implied hierarchy of value, the architectural gifts. In addition, even after Opramoas assumed a major rôle as architectural benefactor, the Lycian Assembly took care to remind the emperor of Opramoas' pre-earthquake munificence, emphasizing the ‘unremitting generosity’ of this exceptional donor.Footnote ²¹ This suggests that the Lycian cities greatly appreciated in their benefactor both kinds of expenditure even at that time. Indeed, it was likely the continuous nature of Opramoas' generosity that the Lycians found most laudable of all. The emphasis of the inscription is on the carefully listed amounts of money given to each city. The Lycians did not indicate a difference between their appreciation of money spent on buildings to rebuild their shattered cities and money spent on a few days' entertainment. In addition, the public works that Opramoas paid for in whole or in part were not framed as monuments to his generosity. Rather, that function of public recognition was given over to the civic accoutrements, rituals of honour, and the annual registration of decrees of praise and gratitude. These included the testimony of his generosity by the provincial Electoral Assembly to the Roman governor and emperor, gold crowns and bronze statues, the privilege of sitting in the first row at theatrical assemblies (for either politics or performance), and the right to wear purple at those public functions. That permanent structures garnered the same kinds of honours for the benefactor as spectacles and monetary gifts once again, I believe, indicates that architectural donations were viewed by the patron's community, if not by the emperor, as not necessarily significantly better than donations of money for spectacles and distributions.Footnote ²² The reception of these gifts, the manner in which he was acknowledged by his Lycian compatriots, surely figured just as prominently as the aspiration to imperial commendation in Opramoas' decisions to continue his donations in various forms.

III ARCHITECTURAL GIFTS AND THEIR CONTINGENCIES: EVIDENCE FROM THE DIGEST

As honorific inscriptions and the well-known imperial letters discussed above have largely been understood to reflect an appraisal of architectural benefaction from the central ruling authority, the choice of a building gift can sometimes seem divorced from its immediate local social and economic contexts. Formulaic expressions of praise and graciousness belie the complexity of élite motivations, perceptions within the community, and other realities of such munificence.Footnote ²³ In attempting to restore some of these nuances, the Digest, the sixth-century a.d. topical compilation of the work of earlier Roman imperial jurists, proves an invaluable source. The cumulative opinions of multiple legal thinkers allow readers to reconstruct to some extent the civic and cultural environments of euergetism during the imperial building boom of the second and early third centuries a.d. Just as honorific decrees present a carefully constructed view of social and political relationships, the ponderings of the various jurists are sometimes hypothetical; nevertheless they emphasize ‘the validity or value of the endowment rather than what the testator intended it for’.Footnote ²⁴ As such the Digest allows for the consideration of how some benefactions were expected to work in their communities. The interpretations of the jurists reveal that the ancient way of thinking about architectural munificence and ephemeral spectacles, whether as a result of bequests or pollicitations, pledges for expenditure to be fulfilled at some future date, was deeply interrelated. One can also detect that acts of benefaction themselves often had the quality of transactions that were binding in some instances, and not in others — notably, in cases where the benefactor decreed that something should be done in order to preserve one's memory. Furthermore, the contents of the Digest indicate that for every successfully completed architectural benefaction such as those celebrated in dedicatory inscriptions, there were likely many unfulfilled ones that could have made a city much less welcoming of such pledges. Indeed, as benefactors had different reasons for pledging architectural donations, as well as different levels of commitment to following through on their promises, commemoration — which can only result from a finished project — cannot be assumed as a primary attraction for the patronage of buildings.

In Dig. 50.8.6.4, Valens states that monetary bequests to a (provincial) town must be used as intended by the deceased unless otherwise authorized by the emperor, and he further explicates the reading by referring specifically to money designated for building projects.Footnote ²⁵ Because of the potential of the Lex Falcidia, which guaranteed heirs of the deceased a quarter of the estate,Footnote ²⁶ to cause an under-funding of the intended construction project, Valens finds that the laws allow the town in such a situation to use what money it receives in a way that it finds most useful, without mentioning if that use should be architectural or of some other nature. If the bequest was made for multiple buildings but again proves insufficient due to the Lex Falcidia, then ‘it is possible for the money to be spent on one building which the community desires’, without reference to the original wishes of the testator. The passage up to this point shows that the law provided for respect for the wishes of the deceased as well as latitude to the towns in the real world application of bequests. There is, therefore, something of a gap between the pledge of a building and its actual fulfilment, in which economic or civic factors figure prominently.

In Dig. 50.12, the title on pollicitations (or undertakings), the economic and legal factors affecting benefactions are foregrounded, and the transactionary nature of public liberality and the uncertainty of a project's completion can be felt.Footnote ²⁷ If a person should make a donation for personal advancement, that act was not to be considered one of gift-giving but of a conditional exchange. One ‘who had undertaken to build something for a community or to give money’ is not liable for interest except in cases where the donor delays the project; ‘[b]ut’, Ulpian notes, ‘it must be realized that someone who has made an undertaking is not always bound’.Footnote ²⁸ In all the situations mentioned by the jurists in this title, the binding cases — in which a pledge to construct a building or to provide the money promised must be seen to completion — are the ones in which the undertaking was ‘in consideration’ or ‘made on account of an office (ob honorem)’ that was granted or to be granted; in which work had been begun on the project either by taking possession of the site to be occupied by the building or by the laying of the foundation for the structure; or if the city had started the work at public expense because it was expecting to be compensated by the promised private funds.Footnote ²⁹ Even in the case of gifts, not pollicitations, ‘if [one made a gift] in order to obtain some office, he is liable, if not, not’.Footnote ³⁰ The only cases in which something vowed must be fulfilled by either the original promiser or by his heirs, regardless of whether any work has been begun or money given, are those of religious dedications and when the promises were made to offer relief to a city due to a disaster like a fire or an earthquake,Footnote ³¹ and here the reasoning behind the exceptions is obvious.Footnote ³²

The legal requirement that a pollicitation made in anticipation or on account of an office must be completed stems from the fact that often such promises were ‘the middle ground between the obligatory payment of a summa honoraria and the purely voluntary legacy to a city; not compulsory, it is at the same time more structured and more closely implicated in local politics than any legacy’.Footnote ³³ In provincial cities, public offices and the summa honoraria associated with them were euergetic outlets as well as a vital component in the smooth functioning of the cities.Footnote ³⁴ There needed to be legal reassurances that those who courted the responsibilities of office — which resulted in personal glory — could not shirk their duties and obligations despite their extremely high costs.Footnote ³⁵ Indeed, the financial burden of these offices had, by the Antonine period, become a disincentive for élite public service, to the extent that imperial exemptions were being granted for the most expensive offices to cities of regional importance, to repeat office holders, as well as to those in occupations that were considered to be of public utility, such as teachers and orators.Footnote ³⁶

Nevertheless, not all pollicitations of public buildings were made in hopes of gaining office. Quite the contrary, by this period élites also had tried to offer one kind of expenditure in lieu of the much greater sum associated with public office. This is attested in Dig. 50.12.12, in which Modestinus notes that, ‘if someone promised a building in order not to hold office, the deified Antoninus issued a rescript to the effect that he was to be forced to hold office rather than erect the building’. And, should a patron realize too late that an undertaking was too expensive or otherwise regrettable,

The second thoughts and attempted substitutions alluded to here were unlikely to have been missed by the public; there could not have been many who were under the impression that all benefactions were motivated purely by liberality and patriotism, or that all projects would see their fruition. The cynicism, or at least the realistic appraisal, of various parties to benefactions that honorific inscriptions often elide is more easily discerned in the Digest.

As pollicitations were in their nature a procrastinatory enterprise, allowing the promiser to put off the fulfilment of a pledge until a time of his or her own choosing, it is not surprising that the passages of the Digest indicate that there could be much waiting for the completion of many privately funded buildings.Footnote ³⁸ There were further scenarios in which a promise to build a public work could still result in no building or in an incomplete one. If a person decided, purely for reasons of liberality and not for an office, to offer his or her city some new structure, the city could not legally press the patron either to start the building or to provide the money for the city's building supervisory officer to use. This constraint on a city's ability to hold donors financially accountable obtained even in cases when a public work had indeed been undertaken for some honour or office, despite the emperors' decrees and legal opinions that such a building must be completed.Footnote ³⁹ As a result, the construction of donated structures could be postponed for many years. Though Trajan seemed to have wanted to prevent such limbos with a constitutio declaring that a building project promised for an honour or office must be completed by the person who made the promise or by his heirs,Footnote ⁴⁰ by the time of Antoninus Pius, this was no longer the case. Pomponius relates that in the Antonine period, no doubt related to issues such as the profusion of public buildings in crowded cities and the financial toll on competitive élites, if the maker of such a conditional promise should die having begun, but not finished, a public construction, his foreign heir must fulfill his promise either by finishing the building or by giving to the community one-fifth of the inheritance from the deceased, by his preference. If the heirs of the deceased were his own children, they could fulfill the pledge by giving the city only one-tenth of their patrimony.Footnote ⁴¹ There is no stipulation that the one-fifth or one-tenth of the estate had to be sufficient to see the building project through to completion.Footnote ⁴² In the opinion of Modestinus, the imperial constitutiones in fact allowed that, if no work had begun before the death of the promise-maker, ‘his heirs should not be pursued for the money which [the deceased] had promised for the honour or the magistracy’.Footnote ⁴³ These considerations of the legal liability of heirs are not unimportant because building projects could take a long time to complete, and could very well outlive their patrons. The picture painted by Dig. 50.12, in short, is one in which cities would have a list of promised buildings but also a good number of works in progress that might never see completion. The very real potential for architectural pledges to fail — from the city's perspective, at least — makes the patron whose gift does come to fruition that much more worthy of public praise. As pollicitations of buildings could easily come to nothing, even as their patrons reaped the rewards of prestigious offices, it is clear that the social force of architectural munificence was often strongest when the promises were made, not at some point after the completion of the promised building, should that time have come at all.

IV ARCHITECTURAL MAINTENANCE AND EXPECTATIONS OF PHYSICAL DURABILITY

Even successfully completed architectural benefactions presented certain critical problems to their cities. There has long been recognition in modern scholarship that building projects were sometimes left incomplete by the donor or by his heirs as a result of a variety of circumstances, from lack of funds to ‘fall from power’.Footnote ⁴⁴ Veyne described the society of the Roman Empire as one that was ill-suited to infrastructural investment, and one in which, if the money should run out, it was acceptable for a building to stand unfinished or for it to slowly fall apart.Footnote ⁴⁵ In light of the strong possibility that numerous buildings would stand unfinished, due to the permissiveness of the law as it pertained to pollicitations, it must be expected that cities would have need for élites to take up the promised works of others and that these secondary patrons should be publicly hailed for their part in preventing the accumulation of unsightly, aborted construction works. Yet another reality of architectural benefaction is that ‘only rarely were buildings endowed by their owners to ensure maintenance and repair’.Footnote ⁴⁶ This behaviour suggests that the inevitable decay of the structures was assumed, and that this dilapidation would provide other patrons, kin or stranger, with new opportunities for benefaction.

Indeed, a rescript of the emperor Antoninus Pius, recorded in the Digest, declared ‘that money bequeathed for new building was rather to be converted to the upkeep (in tutelam) of those which already existed than spent on beginning a building, that is, if a community had enough buildings and money was not easily found for their repair (ad reficienda)’.Footnote ⁴⁷ The long-term costs of a structure could make what was intended as a boon into a burden, were the expenditures of other benefactors not directed to solving that problem. A logical consequence of this control over euergetic spending was that new patrons, thwarted from creating new buildings that would bear their names, would want public acknowledgement of their adoption of others' architectural orphans. Thus, the rescript of Antoninus Pius is followed by additional explication that the Senate approved of the inscription of the name of one who embellishes a building raised by another, provided that the original benefactor's name remains in place.Footnote ⁴⁸ In addition, the patron who uses private moneys to repair or embellish a publicly funded building would have the right to inscribe on the structure his name and the amount of money that went into the refurbishment. Thus, a structure's associations could change over time and, though not divorced from the identity of the first benefactor, certainly be re-oriented to support the prestige of the latest benefactor to loosen the purse strings for the city. Perhaps the temptation to eclipse generous predecessors eventually became too great, necessitating a law commented on by the jurist Ulpian, that the provincial governor must act to ensure that the name of a building's original donor never be erased and replaced by the names of others, indicating that epigraphic tampering had been taking place.Footnote ⁴⁹

Actual cases of architectural failure and decrepitude and their impact on private benefactions can be found in the letters sent by Pliny the Younger to the emperor Trajan. As the governor of Bithynia in the early second century a.d., Pliny had to travel through the cities of the province and inspect their finances and the state of their public works, consulting with the emperor on issues arising. For example, Pliny asked the emperor to grant the city of Prusa permission to construct a new bath building because the current ‘public baths are filthy and out of date’.Footnote ⁵⁰ The site for the new baths was occupied by a house made derelict after the exhaustion of its privately endowed funding, and Trajan gave Pliny permission to tear down the house to clear the site, and was in agreement with Pliny's inclination to develop derelict areas of the city.Footnote ⁵¹ Further, both Pliny and Trajan expressed concern at the aqueduct of Nicomedia, which was never completed and then demolished, despite absorbing millions of sesterces of funding, prior to another aqueduct project being abandoned.Footnote ⁵² The theatre at Nicaea, another financial drain that had swallowed many million sesterces, also stood unfinished, and showed huge cracks and holes in its structure. Pliny's letter to Trajan raised the question of whether this theatre should be completed or destroyed. Crucial to his considerations was the fact that numerous private pledges (ex priuatorum pollicitationibus multa) related to the theatre, such as for colonnades and porticoes, could not be fulfilled if the theatre were never finished.Footnote ⁵³ Furthermore, the gymnasium in the same city was being rebuilt on an overly grand scale after fire damage, and according to Pliny, the renovations were of low quality.Footnote ⁵⁴ Other situations on which Pliny required imperial counsel included the addition of a new forum to the old one in Nicomedia, entailing the movement of a shrine to the Great Mother, which Trajan approved.Footnote ⁵⁵ The letters from Pliny and the emperor's responses indicate that architectural projects often did not go according to plan, and that, if a structure were found to be decrepit or to be occupying a site that could have been better exploited, its destruction or removal were considered to be within the bounds of normal practice. Moreover, the letters highlight the fact that public and private buildings were subject to renovation and repair due to dilapidation or to damage such as from fire, and that failure to maintain a building would cause them to become embarrassing eyesores for an urban community. Provisions for the upkeep of these structures were neither open-ended nor, ultimately, effective, due to dwindling of funds or mismanagement.Footnote ⁵⁶ In addition, a public building's completion and adequate maintenance had ramifications for private generosity, which could extend as far as indefinitely postponing the fulfilment of architectural pollicitations.

Similar concerns regarding architectural preservation, decay, and élite generosity are present in the orations of Dio Chrysostom, who was not only a Sophist active in the late first and early second centuries a.d., but also a man whose family had long been benefactors of his home city, Prusa. Dio's own patronage of a public building famously intersected with Pliny's duties as the provincial governor, as Pliny wrote to Trajan to tell him of charges of financial corruption brought against Dio by his enemies in Prusa — charges that Trajan dismissed, though the emperor did call for the inspection of Dio's accounts.Footnote ⁵⁷ Dio, being involved as benefactor and aggrieved party, naturally had much more to say on this matter. In his forty-seventh oration, Dio spoke to the public assembly at Prusa about the need for beautifying the city, and in doing so laid out for his listeners and scholars a picture of an urban landscape that was not static, but had to change by necessity as new construction projects were proposed and realized to replace ageing ruins. Referring to his benefaction of a colonnade as an ‘improvement’ to the city of Prusa, Dio cited an imperial letter supporting the ‘development’ of Prusa,Footnote ⁵⁸ and how other cities in the province, as they also sought to update their environs, moved old shrines and tombs out of areas to be developed.Footnote ⁵⁹ These facts were marshalled to answer disparagements that he was a ‘sacker of cities and citadels’Footnote ⁶⁰ for tearing down an old smithy to make room for his new building. Dio's characterization of this smithy, as being ‘disgraceful, ridiculous ruins’, like ‘hovels where even the blacksmiths were scarcely able to stand erect but worked with bowed head; shanties, moreover, in tumbledown condition, held up by props, so that at the stroke of the hammer they quivered and threatened to fall apart’, conveyed his scorn for the position of his critics and their ‘lamentations over the smithy of So-and-so, feeling bitter that these memorials of the good old days were not to be preserved’.Footnote ⁶¹ Though Dio's account, like Pliny's letters to Trajan, is a work of rhetoric, it nevertheless provides evidence that the relocation or even destruction of old or run-down structures to make room for new construction was a widely accepted behaviour in second-century cities, and that sentimental attachments to landmarks such as the ‘smithy of So-and-so’ as memorials should not be viewed as manifestations of genuine nostalgia, but instead should be understood as flimsy excuses for political or personal enmity. There was clearly no strong impulse for architectural preservation felt by patrons who sought to update the physical image of their cities.Footnote ⁶² Neither Dio Chrysostom nor Pliny the Younger viewed public buildings as permanent, either as fixtures in the urban landscape or as memorials to persons or times gone by.

V BENEFACTIONS OF ‘EPHEMERA’ AND EXPECTATIONS FOR THEIR LONGEVITY

The Digest's accounts of non-architectural benefactions and legacies provide a great deal of insight into the different perceptions — on the part of donors, heirs, cities and various representatives of Roman authority, including the emperors — of spectacles and distributions as acts of private liberality. Valens' mention of a senatorial prohibition against the use of money for the purpose of wild animal fights and games, even if that was the specifically designated purpose of the bequest, can be seen as evidence of the general preference for buildings over games by Roman authorities. The ban on the funding of beast fights and games has been explained as a result of the Senate's interest in preventing opportunities for public mayhem.Footnote ⁶³ Macer's opinion that a person would be allowed to start a privately funded project without having to get imperial permission unless ‘it is to outdo another citizen or causes sedition or is a circus, theatre, or amphitheatre’,Footnote ⁶⁴ makes clear the conceptual links between spectacular entertainment and popular unrest.Footnote ⁶⁵

An instance in which a bequest of games was not prohibited but negated after the fact is mentioned by Pliny the Younger, who wholeheartedly supported his friend Rufinus' abolishment of gymnastic games — part of a private bequest — in Vienne in Gallia Narbonensis on the grounds that they contributed to the corruption of public morals.Footnote ⁶⁶ The rather pejorative view of games and shows offered by Pliny is echoed by other authors. For example, Cicero characterized spectacles and distributions generally as ways to ‘squander’ money, and he quoted with approval Aristotle's opinion that a ‘serious-minded man who weighs such matters with sound judgement cannot possibly approve of them’.Footnote ⁶⁷ Plutarch, in his advice to statesmen, disparaged spectacles as ways to ‘curry favour’ with the public, and as a source of ‘false honours’.Footnote ⁶⁸ Indeed, he went further, and wished that it would be possible to abolish games and shows that led to the arousal of ‘the murderous and brutal or the scurrilous and licentious spirit’, and advised that the public's call for these shows be resisted.Footnote ⁶⁹ Benefactions of spectacles and their related venues were also tied by Macer to self-promotion and rivalry. Though the type of munificence meant to ‘outdo another’ is not specified by the jurist, and indeed could be any expensive and high profile public building, Plutarch and Cicero both associated the self-impoverishment and abasement of character arising from élite competitive zeal explicitly with shows and spectacles.Footnote ⁷⁰

An unflattering and suspicious view of spectacular benefactions emerges from this sample of opinions, but just as there is conflicting evidence on imperial preferences for games or building donations, there is also much in the Digest to indicate that private funding of games, festivals and distributions was appreciated and supported not only by the public, but also by legal opinion. It is worth including in its entirety Paul's description of legacies to the civitates here:

In this passage, there is no hierarchy of value, at least in the legal sense, with regards to legacies that ornament or honour a community, and no hint of the hostility towards spectacles that is evident in the Valens passage from Digest 50.8.6.Footnote ⁷² The equality of architectural, spectacular, and distributive benefactions is supported by Marcian's commentary in the same book, that ‘if anything is left to civitates, it is all valid, whether it be for distributions or for public works, or for the maintenance or education of boys or anything else’.Footnote ⁷³ The kinds of legacies that honoured a community, such as the maintenance of vulnerable populations and the provision of entertainment, are precisely what made urban living a pleasant and exciting experience. It is not surprising, therefore, to find many references to donations of money for distributions, games, and other events. Johnston has noted that among legacies to municipalities, ‘[m]ost common were games, periodical sportulae, alimenta, dinners on specified annual occasions, usually the anniversary of the testator's birth’.Footnote ⁷⁴

Though these sorts of bequests are sometimes portrayed in official and philosophical language as frivolous, the Digest provides evidence that they were afforded sufficient legal respect that made them an appealing option for benefactors. In particular, the terms of a munificence of games, festivals, and distributions were not easily modified, provided that there was adequate income to support the event. Scaevola discusses a case in which a Lucius Titius bequeathed money to his town so that the interest could be used for biennial games. Should the town not hold the games, or refuse to fulfill the conditions set forth in the legacy, Scaevola holds that, per the explicitly stated wishes of the testator, the heirs of Lucius Titius had the right to reclaim all the money. Furthermore, should a city fail to put on the annual games that were to be funded — and that expressly were to be the only thing funded — by income from land bequeathed to the city by a legacy, all the profits from that land had to be returned to the heirs.Footnote ⁷⁵

Modestinus recounts a situation in which a woman made a pollicitation of a sizeable (30,000 denarii) endowment to a city, the interest of which was paid by the patron to provide for prizes in a quadrennial contest, so long as her husband served as the ‘master of ceremonies and president’ and then her children afterwards.Footnote ⁷⁶ The question for the jurist was, ‘whether the sons of [the woman] can suffer the injury of being deprived of the presidency of the contest according to the terms and condition of the undertaking’. Modestinus answers that the undertaking, if lawful to begin with, had ‘to be preserved’.Footnote ⁷⁷ Despite the fact that imperial constitutiones allowed cities to ignore stipulations that were contrary to public interests, and that money donated for a new building could be turned towards maintenance of old structures, the conditions of this undertaking involving the husband and children were understood as binding. The legal protection for the conditions of the games not only ensured that the contests would continue to entertain the citizens of the town in question, but also ensured the family of the donor would continue to enjoy great visibility and positions of honour in the community.

In the case of these non-architectural gifts, it appears, the cities did not have as much freedom to use the money as they saw fit, and money could be clawed back, to borrow a term from modern corporate governance, if the conditions of the legacies and undertakings were not met.Footnote ⁷⁸ The possibility of a city losing a source of income — or for the money to be directed outside the city entirely — was an incentive for the city to abide by the wishes of the donor.Footnote ⁷⁹ Because these festivals were founded with the intention of celebrating the benefactor or his family, or to celebrate his memory, it was vital for them to take place as planned.Footnote ⁸⁰ Of course, spectacular benefactions were also subject to some of the same vagaries of fate that architectural ones were; gradual impoverishment of the endowment and financial mismanagement could prevent the implementation of the donor's scheme.Footnote ⁸¹

Should a spectacular benefaction be or continue to be well-funded, it was likely to be fulfilled as often as possible. Longevity was considered to be an inherent feature of such gifts, at least as it pertained to the right of a city to claim income. Modestinus, when presented with a question as to whether a man's legacy for annual games at which his heirs were to preside was ‘to be paid only as long as the heirs presided’ — that is, no longer valid once those specific heirs were succeeded by others — responds that the city was owed its annual income ‘in perpetuity’.Footnote ⁸² Moreover, Marcian relates that the emperors believed that the money left by a private individual to Sardis for the Chyrsanthian games held every four years was ‘to be paid every four years in perpetuity, not merely after the first four years’.Footnote ⁸³ Even if the money were not set aside for anything so extravagant as games, but was limited to a distribution of money to decurions on the occasion of a man's birthday, the emperors also held ‘that it was not plausible that the testator should have been thinking about a single year, but rather about a perpetual legacy’.Footnote ⁸⁴ That the undertakings and legacies for games and distributions were considered to be payable in perpetuity, and that cities were in turn obligated to abide by their conditions for as long as they were funded is significant for our understanding of the potential commemorative effect of these events in their communities.

It is necessary, yet difficult, to consider how such expectations for longevity were met by reality. Circumstances and outcomes varied from case to case, depending on how well the funds from each endowment were managed and on the effects of economic inflation on the income from the capital given by a benefactor.Footnote ⁸⁵ The epigraphic record, so rich in evidence for the expressions of honour and gratitude when a pledge is made or fulfilled, is obviously poor at recording failures of benefactions due to badly handled or insufficient funds. Nevertheless, enough pieces of information regarding iterations of festivals and games can be gathered to show that, while some festivals lasted for several decades, others persisted for more than a century.

Roueché's study of contests in Aphrodisias provides valuable information on the durability of endowed games in this provincial city, based on epigraphic evidence mainly dating to the late second to early third century a.d.Footnote ⁸⁶ The texts indicate that there was — as with building projects — imperial involvement in the administration of funds left by individuals for contests because of the complexity of endowments and the large number of bequests and gifts that were made.Footnote ⁸⁷ Inscriptions name persons as ‘contest-president in perpetuity’,Footnote ⁸⁸ reflecting at least the hope for long-lasting celebrations of festivals.Footnote ⁸⁹ The published letters of Eurycles, the imperial curator tasked with scheduling festivals and contests named for private benefactors, served as physical place-holders for the commemorative spectacles. Though there might be some time between the initial endowment of a contest and its first iteration, the names of the benefactors, the amounts donated or bequeathed, the types of competitions, and the prizes were displayed in inscriptions for all to see until the events could themselves be witnessed. The correspondence from Eurycles to Aphrodisias also shows that the original terms of endowments were respected and were not reduced in scope, not only because of the legal force behind the wills of the benefactors, but also because the associations of artists who profited from these contests put substantial pressure on the organizers to abide by the most generous terms possible.Footnote ⁹⁰ Even though, as Roueché suspects, there might have been some practical constraints on putting on a tragedy festival established by Adrastus as he had decreed, nevertheless the agent of the Roman government called for the event to be held as prescribed.Footnote ⁹¹

The Aphrodisian dossier of letters from the imperial curator is concerned largely with when enough money has accrued to support the first iteration of an endowed festival. Inscriptions honouring victors in the Philemoniean games, one of the athletic festivals still awaiting the maturation of its endowment in Eurycles' letter dating to the early 180s, attest to the continuation of the games on a three-yearly basis into the third century a.d.Footnote ⁹² If Roueché is correct in her restoration of an inscription dating to a.d. 241, and if the first iteration of the contest of Philemon took place just after a.d. 182, then this spectacular benefaction lasted for at least twenty iterations held over sixty years. A base dating perhaps from the late first or early second century a.d. honours a boy named Adrastus as the victor of a musical festival endowed not by a single individual but by the Synod of Sacred Victors in Aphrodisias from their own funds, the prizes of which were laid out in detail by Eurycles, indicating a possible duration of this benefaction of close to a century.Footnote ⁹³ Though a corporate foundation such as this synod festival perhaps might have been more stable in its financing, the longevity of this festival in Aphrodisias is nonetheless indicative of how an endowment could last over many decades and generations of citizens.

Spectacular endowments by private individuals — if well-administered and adequately supported by the appointed agonothetes — could last just as long as the musical festival of the Aphrodisian Synod of Sacred Victors, or even longer. The thymelic festival of Demosthenes of Oenoanda was a gift that was approved by Hadrian in a.d. 124. To fund this festival, Demosthenes pledged to provide land from his estate to the eikosaprotoi of Oenoanda to rent out for 1,000 denarii per year with a monthly interest of 100 asses. As at the time of the foundation's approval by the emperor the property to be rented out had not yet been designated by Demosthenes, he promised to make annual contributions of 1,000 denarii until the land was turned over to the city. Demosthenes expressly states in his gift that the eikosaprotos responsible for renting out and collecting interest on his property ‘will take care that the lands do not deteriorate, and that the income from them is not diminished’.Footnote ⁹⁴ While the agonothete of the Demostheneia was not expected to spend personal funds to support the festival, if he or any other official tasked with the maintenance of Demosthenes' endowment was found to have caused the capital to lose value or to have tried to circumvent the stated wishes of Demosthenes, he would have to pay significant mandated penalties. These provisions were included so that the estates of Demosthenes and his heirs would not be harmed as a result of this act of generosity.Footnote ⁹⁵ Just as the architectural benefaction of a new market by Demosthenes was seen to its fruition, this festival also seems to have been successfully managed. The Demostheneia, held every four years, is epigraphically attested in a.d. 233, meaning that it had survived at least into its twenty-seventh iteration, one hundred and nine years after it was founded.Footnote ⁹⁶

A similarly enduring contest is also known from the Pamphylian city of Perge. The sixth iteration of the enneateric athletic festival called the Vareia is attested in an inscription honouring C. Iulius Plancius Varus Cornutus, who was the governor of Cilicia under Hadrian, as the victor in all events.Footnote ⁹⁷ Given the Hadrianic date of the inscription, it is possible to locate the start of this contest in the Flavian period. These athletic games may have been founded by M. Plancius Varus, the grandfather of C. Iulius Plancius Varus on his mother's side, and the proconsul of Bithynia under Vespasian.Footnote ⁹⁸ Though the terms of the foundation for the Vareia are not preserved, the financing of this benefaction must have been secure, as the wealth of this Pergaian family was famously demonstrated by M. Plancius Varus' daughter, Plancia Magna, in the extravagant renovation of Perge's South City Gate in a.d. 119–122.Footnote ⁹⁹ Though the architectural benefactions of the family appear to have peaked under Plancia Magna, this eponymous festival lasted beyond this Hadrianic heyday. Wrestlers were honoured as victors in what was called the ‘great enneateric festival’ of the city — identified as the Vareia by Şahin in his edition and commentary on the honorific inscription — even in the first half of the third century.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ The Vareia, therefore, went on for fully a century and a half. Though a number of imperial games, such as the Tacitean Metropolitan games and Asylia Pythia games, were added to Perge's festival calendar in the mid- to late third century a.d.,Footnote ¹⁰¹ this spectacle was, for a significant span of time, a fixture in the lives of Pergaians. The durability of this contest and other well-financed foundations indicates that the juristic opinions and common expectations found in the Digest did have a grounding in reality, when best practices and circumstances prevailed.

VI BUILDINGS AND SPECTACLES AS PERSONAL MEMORIALS

Just as there were different legal and financial expectations for architectural and spectacular benefactions, there were also differences in the legal consideration of architecture and spectacles meant explicitly as memorials. Though scholars note that public buildings and monuments such as statues were donated ex testamento, this phenomenon is in fact relatively rare, and usually subject to conditions of fideicommissum as well as to certain public judgements of proper purpose.Footnote ¹⁰² When Pomponius expresses his opinion that ‘[s]ome things are written in wills which merely indicate the testator's wishes and do not create an obligation’, he refers specifically to an example of an architectural legacy: ‘if I institute you my sole heir and write that you should erect a monument to me for a fixed sum; for that clause involves no obligation, but you can, if you desire, put it into effect in order to carry out my wish’.Footnote ¹⁰³ If there is a co-heir, the co-heir could sue to compel the building of the monument, but there is actually no legal basis for a single heir to act upon such wishes. In addition, ‘it is also a matter of the testator's wishes when a man has ordered statues to be placed in a municipality; for if he did this to honour not the municipality but himself, nobody is entitled to an action on that ground’.Footnote ¹⁰⁴

In these two instances, where the specific purpose of the erection of a physical monument, architectural or sculptural, was to commemorate personal glory and identity, the reading of the law is such that no one is thought to be harmed should no action be taken. In the first instance, the matter is obviously private, between a testator and his heir. In the second instance, however, the matter seems to be public. While the law should rightly stand back and let the first case be settled privately — if an heir is disinclined to commemorate someone, so be it — it is noteworthy that, again, legacies motivated by egotism rather than patriotism should be framed as rather trivial and therefore dismissible. A similar principal seems to inform Marcellus, when he writes that a bequest by Lucius Titius — to have his heirs build a new portico in his home town and place therein his silver and marble sculpture — was valid because the city would benefit from the adornment, though his heirs appeared to have challenged the legacy ‘on the ground that it is not of an object proper for public acceptance’.Footnote ¹⁰⁵ There is an inclination for architectural benefaction to be contextualized as ornaments for the city, as serving the public. This is the same mentality underlying Dio Chrysostom's arguments for his beautification efforts in Prusa. His portico was not to aggrandize his own reputation and honour, for the expressions of love by his citizens are enough, but to make Prusa modern-looking and equal to its rivals.

This stands in contrast to a passage regarding the legacy of a commemorative spectacle:

This legacy, public and motivated by personal interest, seems similar to the order for erection of statues, but in this case, the town is obliged to find some other way to use the money bequeathed to them, so as to fulfill the expressed purpose of celebrating the memory of the deceased. As a fideicommissum, the spectacle inherently had more legal standing and expectation for fulfilment than an unsupported wish expressed in a will. Moreover, the town stood to lose income by not finding a way to abide by the terms.Footnote ¹⁰⁷ However, what is important for the purpose of this essay is that spectacles were considered in general a valid way of celebrating and — due to the legal protections discussed above — perpetuating personal memory, despite Plutarch's view that public recognition from such shows was only ‘ephemeral’.Footnote ¹⁰⁸ Though Cicero likewise thought that buildings, not games, preserved one's memory for posterity,Footnote ¹⁰⁹ major donors like Demosthenes of Oenoanda saw one to be as effective as the other. Demosthenes first expresses his intention to endow his festival as a ‘wish … to leave behind for my home land, in like manner with these buildings, a permanent capital fund, publicly promise (the foundation of) a thymelic [musical festival] to be called the Demostheneia’.Footnote ¹¹⁰ Pliny's letter to Trajan, asking for help to decide whether a man's legacy should be spent on games or a monument, both in honour of the emperor, drew a response that showed no preference on the part of the emperor, but one that stressed that the central issue was the commemoration of the testator.Footnote ¹¹¹

With the contests, games and distributions that were either undertakings or legacies, however, the burnishing of the reputations of the donors and their families was almost always the focus, and formed the core of many of the stipulations of the gifts.Footnote ¹¹² So, though permanent and ephemeral benefactions were considered equal legally, the valuation of these gifts as instruments of social relationships was different. The architecture and statuary, which have been invested with memorial capacity in scholarship, emerge from this examination of relevant legal opinion as much more temporally fixed and easily disrupted than the games, monetary distributions, and contests.

VII ON EUERGETIC CHOICE AND THE ‘EXPLOSION AGONISTIQUE’

In considering the euergetic choice of spectacles over buildings as vehicles for commemoration, the availability of both spectacular and architectural benefaction as equally attractive and valid options to benefactors is a crucial factor. Therefore, it is important to ask if patrons of spectacles were acting within a historical or social milieu in which both kinds of munificence occurred often and found similar favour, or one in which, due to changes of historical circumstances and of patterns of élite behaviour, games had largely overshadowed architecture as an outlet for generosity.

The legal opinions and epigraphic evidence related to both architectural and spectacular gifts presented in the previous sections date to the second century and the first half of the third century a.d., spanning the height of building activity across the Roman Empire. The prosperity of the second century allowed patrons such as Demosthenes and Opramoas to give both buildings and games, while others such as Vedius Antoninus drew imperial praise for their efforts to beautify their city with architecture rather than chase popularity through shows. The establishment of well-funded and therefore long-lasting games such as the Demostheneia and the Vareia had taken place by the end of Hadrian's reign. Élites wishing either to promote their reputation and career or to perpetuate their memory in their community, then, could give according to their specific social objective. It is nevertheless necessary to consider the phenomenon of the ‘explosion agonistique’ observed by Robert, especially in the eastern half of the Roman Empire. The ‘explosion agonistique’ is associated primarily with the third century a.d.,Footnote ¹¹³ which brings a relevant implication to the argument of this essay: that spectacles were not a popular outlet for élite munificence during most of the second century, but only became one as élites shunned building gifts. The evidence for the ‘explosion agonistique’ and for overall patterns of benefaction in the third century a.d., however, does not appear to support such premises.

Robert situated the ‘explosion agonistique’ chronologically over the first three centuries a.d., with the rise in the number of sacred or imperial games — contests named for civic deities, Roman emperors, or both — beginning with the establishment of Actia and Sebasteia festivals under Augustus.Footnote ¹¹⁴ Robert identified multiple peaks for agonistic foundations, in the Julio-Claudian period, the Hadrianic and Antonine periods, the early Severan period, and the mid-third century under Gordian III and his immediate successors.Footnote ¹¹⁵ The fervour for games in Roman Asia Minor did not emerge after the Antonine construction boom of the mid-second century a.d. Rather, as Robert noted, it was a long-term manifestation of several major and concurrent phenomena: the Hellenization of the Empire, the observation of religion that was the context for agonistic festivals, and the ongoing communication between Roman emperors and their subjects.Footnote ¹¹⁶

Nollé recently confirmed these spikes in the number of imperial and sacred games, finding large numbers of agonistic coin issues during several of the same periods observed by Robert: the Severan dynasty, with festivals named for the emperors; the reign of Gordian III, when the right to hold games was used as a way to reward cities important to the staging of his eastern campaigns; finally, the reigns of Valerian and Gallienus, for much the same reason.Footnote ¹¹⁷ The cities issuing coins with agonistic imagery — less than a fifth of the total number of cities minting their own coinsFootnote ¹¹⁸ — fall into a very specific category. Specifically, they were the leading cities of a province that were involved in intense rivalries with their neighbours for provincial ranking, imperial titles, and the right to hold major international games. The cities that were hegemonic in their province or region did not issue agonistic coins, because their primacy was not under challenge; neither did small cities that could not have had expectations for high administrative rank or imperial favour.Footnote ¹¹⁹ Cities pointedly asserted in coin legends that the contests they hosted were imperial grants and sacred and international festivals, just as the iconography also emphasized the privileges, titles, and ranks of the cities holding the games, rather than the athletic or musical competition itself.Footnote ¹²⁰ Thus, it is clear that the games that proliferated in this period were especially meaningful as signifiers of imperial patronage and civic prestige.

The kinds of games that proliferated during the mid- to late third century a.d. were not private spectacular benefactions named for their donors with the object of personal commemoration, the subject of this essay, but rather one of various political prizes given by emperors that enhanced the reputation and standing of the host city. In reciprocation for benefits and privileges received from the emperor, a provincial city could make a grand statement of loyalty by establishing games in his name. Perge did precisely that in the late third century, when it celebrated the Tacitean Metropolitan Games upon being designated the metropolis of the province of Pamphylia.Footnote ¹²¹ As Weiss, Nollé and Ziegler have shown, imperial and sacred games were important political instruments, used by emperors in order to advance their political and military agendas. They were also coveted by cities in rivalries over civic ranking in the provincial hierarchies that had become increasingly important in the administration of the Roman Empire.Footnote ¹²² The obviously political motivation for the creation and spread of these third-century agonistic festivals should not be confused with the desire for personal commemoration that led to the élite patronage of local themides and distributions.

When it came to such benefactions and the kinds of endowments that are attested in our legal, epigraphic and textual sources, there does not appear to have been an explosive growth in number in the mid-third century a.d. Indeed, the majority of such festivals may have wound down by exactly that point in time.Footnote ¹²³ While it is true that architectural benefaction slowed significantly after the Severans, the number of benefactions overall, regardless of form, declined across most of the Empire then also.Footnote ¹²⁴ Various explanations have been put forth for this change: cities had become fully urbanized; economic conditions may have made significant donations too expensive for most patrons; the assertion of centralized imperial power in the provinces and the increasing importance and prestige of imperial office both suppressed élite motivation for local patronage and diverted their energies and funds to the pursuit of offices that took them outside of their communities.Footnote ¹²⁵ Whatever the cause for the decline in architectural benefaction by the middle of the third century a.d., the private money that had supported them in whole or in part were not diverted to a correspondingly increased number of games and festivals established to commemorate their élite patrons. The euergetic choice in the second and early third centuries a.d., to endow a festival that would perpetuate their names or to pledge a building that would earn honours and office, was a real one.