ABSTRACT
Paul Veyne, in his ground-breaking work Bread and Circuses, famously defined the phenomenon of euergetism as ‘private munificence for public benefit’, a means of harnessing the wealth of the elites of the Roman empire to provide the public amenities needed by cities and to provide entertainment for their citizens. Veyne’s magisterial analysis explored the motivations of these elites, the types of activities undertaken, and the impact of their benefactions extensively and in detail. However, there is one major gap in his analysis: his work covers Hellenistic kings and kingdoms, the cities of the Roman provinces, and the role of the emperor as euergetes. He does not, however, include any detailed discussion of the role of euergetism, benefaction and public patronage in the cities of Roman Italy, restricting his comments to observations that the benefactions and privileges to Italy were part of a more general development of the emperor as euergetes on a global scale (Veyne 1990: 362, discussed further by Patterson in Chapter 5).
