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  • Chapter 9 - Benefactors and the Poleis in the Roman Empire

  • from Part IV - Benefactors and the Polis under Rome
  • Edited by Marc Domingo Gygax, Princeton University, New Jersey, Arjan Zuiderhoek, Universiteit Gent, Belgium
  • Book:
    Benefactors and the Polis
    Published online:
    21 January 2021
    Print publication:
    18 February 2021, pp 222-242

  • Summary

    In this chapter the author identifies the chief continuities and changes in civic munificence in the poleis under Roman imperial rule in comparison with the previous periods of Greek history. To do so, the author develops a model to answer the question of why elite public giving was a such an enduring element of polis society in the first place. He identifies three structural features of polis society that can explain the centrality of elite public giving: the specific way wealth, fame, power and authority needed to be legitimated in the polis; the particularity of the Greeks’ idea of politics; and the stateless character of the polis. To test this model, the author then applies it to explain two specific characteristics of civic euergetism in the Greek cities under the Roman empire, namely, its unprecedented proliferation during the first, second and early third centuries CE, and the extent to which munificence started to transcend the benefactor’s own civic community, that is, the increasing tendency of benefactors to include non-citizen groups in the poleis in their munificence as well as to give to cities other than their own.

Benefactors and the Polis
  • The Public Gift in the Greek Cities from the Homeric World to Late Antiquity
  • Edited by Marc Domingo Gygax, Arjan Zuiderhoek
  • Published online:
    21 January 2021
    Print publication:
    18 February 2021
  • Historians generally study elite public gift-giving in ancient Greek cities as a phenomenon that gained prominence only in the Hellenistic and Roman imperial periods. The contributors to this volume challenge this perspective by offering analyses of various manifestations of elite public giving in the Greek cities from Homeric times until Late Antiquity, highlighting this as a structural feature of polis society from its origins in the early Archaic age to the world of the Christian Greek city in the early Byzantine period. They discuss existing interpretations, offer novel ideas and arguments, and stress continuities and changes over time. Bracketed by a substantial Introduction and Conclusion, the volume is accessible both to ancient historians and to scholars studying gift-giving in other times and places.

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