ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the economic and cognitive roles of personal benefaction in Hispania Tarraconensis, a province of the Roman Empire encompassing a northeast region of modern Spain. During the Imperial period, in particular, individuals and families financed public works, buildings, statues, foundations, and various forms of entertainment such as games, banquets, and performances. As a way of assessing both the financial and cognitive impact of these benefactions over time, this paper analyzes a corpus of inscriptions from Hispania Tarraconensis dating from the Augustan period through the late second century. Assessing the financial impact of benefaction involves charting the cost outlays and whether the donation was a single or continuing occurrence, while analyzing the cognitive impact considers such factors as the function of the monument or activity funded and whether the benefaction might have encouraged competition among the wealthy to make even greater contributions.
