Citizen-Sponsored Public Works in the Roman East

Assigned Materials

Online Web Readings and Videos

The following doesn't add up to a huge amount of reading, so very feasible:

This Study Guide

This is just a reminder that you need to study this Study Guide, which includes translations of important primary texts.

SWA Prompt

The following questions, very much an exercise in critical thinking, specifically address the inscription quoted below. For proper perspective, you'll need to complete assigned reading.

In a 3rd-cent. CE inscription from Oinoanda (see just below), one Euarestus prays "to the immortals that my children, my city and my country will always celebrate these festivals, unharmed" — why? What risk, if there is one, does philanthropy entail — is the dedicator over-dramatizing things? Are risk and benefit connected in some way?

 

Inscription, 3rd-cent Oinoanda

This is quoted from the Onno van Nijf reading from earlier in the semester (in Paideia, pp. 203-227). Just as a reminder, the inscription comes from a statue base in third-century Oinoanda. The statue itself, now lost, commemorated Lucius Pilius Euarestus, a teacher at one of the gymnasia (intellectual and physical training for elite male adolescents) in the city — more on the "Athletics and paideia" study guide.

What is Euarestus saying he's done? How is it a service to the city?

". . . I have put up prizes welcome to the Muses [goddesses of artistic and intellectual pursuits] for artistic performances and, obedient to the holy command of Phoebus [Apollo], son of Leto, I have adorned strong Alcides [Heracles/Hercules] with the Muse [here = poetry]. And I pray to the immortals that my children, my city and my country will always celebrate these festivals, unharmed."
· · ·
"Many have put up fair prizes for cities, after they were dead, but, in his own life, no mortal man. I alone dared do this, and it rejoices my heart to delight in the bronze images. So, abating your criticism, all those who have dread Envy (phthonos), look upon my statue with emulous eyes (meimēlois ossois, "with imitative eyes")."

Euergetism

What was euergetism? The short answer is that it was elite, free-will, financial sponsorship of projects benefiting city and citizens and bringing prestige and acclaim to the benefactor.

Details matter:

  • The word "euergetism" is a modern coinage, though it comes from ancient Greek euergetēs, "benefactor," and euergesia, "benefaction," "philanthropy"
  • Euergetism involved wealthy donors sponsoring various sorts of projects — baths, gymnasia, libraries, theaters, fountains, renovations, gladiatorial shows, theatrical productions, religious/sporting festivals, etc. — seen to benefit the community
  • Spawforth in the Oxford Classical Dictionary writes that "[c]ivic euergetism was a mixture of social display, patriotism, and political self-interest." Altruism it wasn't. It was, rather, reciprocity:
    • The benefactor (euergetēs) will have been expected to demonstrate what Aristotle calls "magnificence" (megaloprepeia), and Philostratus, "great-mindedness" (megalophrosunē), and will have done so by an act of what we would call philanthropy
    • Beneficiaries (cities and their citizens) would reciprocate by showering honors on the benefactor, whose social reputation (timē) would, as a result, be enhanced
    • Euergetism, though technically voluntary, could appear to function as semi-obligatory, a kind of wealth tax with perks for the one taxed. As such it resembled, and operated alongside, liturgies, officially sanctioned obligations imposed by cities on wealthy citizens
    • As a source of prestige, euergetism could become a competitive affair, as it was a path to leadership in cities dominated by the wealthy few
    • Both women and men sponsored these sorts of public works
    • Lest we get carried away with this concept, the Oxford Classical Dictionary reminds us that "[p]robably at no time was the economic significance of euergetism as great as the vast number of honorific inscriptions might suggest." Yet that vast number of inscriptions suggests something — what?

Non-Euergetistic Citizen Public Works?

One type of non-euergetistic citizen-sponsorship was the liturgy (leitourgia). This isn't "liturgy" in the sense of a religious services Liturgies were financial responsibilities imposed by a city on its wealthy citizens, and for the purpose of funding the same sorts of projects as in the case of euergetism. If the city assigned you a liturgy, you would have had to foot the bill for a gymnasium, an aqueduct, a theatrical performance — whatever it was that the liturgy was intended to fund. I have a substantial discussion of liturgies on the "Terms" page; it will be helpful to study that.

For a different sort of citizen-sponsored project, one that likewise blurred the lines, see below on the Library of Celsus.

Philostratus on Herodes' Philanthropy

He employed his wealth the best of all men. And let us not consider this a very easy thing, but full of difficulties and troublesome. Those who are drunk with wealth tend to let loose a flood of insults on their fellow men, and they bring the slander on Plutus that he is blind.*

* Plutus is god of wealth.

Even if at all other times he seemed blind, in the case of Herodes he recovered his sight. For he had eyes for his friends, had eyes for the cities, had eyes for the nations, since Herodes kept watch over them all and stored his wealth in the minds of those who shared them with him. Indeed he used to say that one who used wealth rightly ought to give to the needy so that they would not be in need, to those who were not needy, so that they would not become so. And he used to call wealth that did not circulate and was tied up by thrift “dead wealth,” and the treasure chambers into which some people put it “prisons of wealth,” and he named those who even think it right to make sacrifice to their hoarded money Aloadae, because they sacrifice to Ares after imprisoning him.*

* In mythology, the "sons of Aloeus" (Aloadae) were Otus ("Insatiable") and Ephialtes ("Nightmare"), who imprisoned Ares, the war god, for thirteen months.

. . . .

The ardent ambition of this Atticus was manifest. For instance when Herodes was governing the free cities in Asia, and he saw that Troy was badly supplied with baths and the inhabitants drew muddy water from their wells and dug trenches for rain water, he wrote to the emperor Hadrian, asking him not to overlook a city ancient and well-sited on the sea, when it was suffering from drought, but to give them three million drachmae for the water supply, since he had already given to mere villages many times that sum. The emperor approved the contents of the letter since they were in line with his own thinking, and he appointed Herodes himself to take charge of the water supply. But when the expenditure had extended to seven million drachmae, the governors of Asia kept writing to the emperor, complaining that it was a scandal that the tribute received from five hundred cities should be used to pay for the fountain of just one. The emperor complained of this to Atticus and Atticus, the most ardently ambitious of men, said, “Emperor, do not allow yourself to be worked up over such a small sum. The amount in excess of the three million I present to my son, and he will present to the city.” 549And then there is his will, in which he left to the Athenian people one mina per person per year, which proclaims the ardent ambition of the man. And he practiced it in other ways also. He often used to sacrifice to the goddess a hundred oxen in a single day, and entertain at the sacrificial feast the whole population of Athens by tribes and families. And whenever the Dionysia came around and the sacred image of Dionysus paraded to the Academy,8 he would supply wine to drink for citizens and strangers alike in the Cerameicus, as they lay on couches of ivy leaves.

. . . .

Herodes also dedicated to the Athenians the theater*

* The Greek says theatron; technically, it was an ōdeion, a "recital hall": song, poetry, probably sophistic performances. See the web reading linked to above.

in memory of Regilla, building its ceiling from cedar wood. And this material is considered costly even for making statues. These two monuments are at Athens, and nothing like them exists elsewhere in the Roman Empire.

Library of Celsus

The Library of Celsus, in Roman Ephesus, on the western coast of Turkey, combined the functions of a funerary monument with those of a cultural institution. As a funerary monument, the Library of Celsus will have served chiefly to glorify the deceased and his family. As a funerary monument situated within the city (where burial ordinarily wouldn't be permitted), it will have treated the honoree as, in effect, a recipient of hero cult, like one of Philostratus' heroes in the Dialogue on Heroes. But the library also served the needs of scholars and the city, nor was glorification of individuals out of step with the aims of euergetism. As such, the Library of Celsus helps show how lines separating euergetism from other forms of citizen-sponsored public works (including liturgies) could be blurred.

The Library's dimensions are not vast. It rises to a height of seventeen meters. The hall behind the façade measures 16.72 by 10.92 meters. Still, in design and visual impact, the structure is stunning. Visitors to the site have told me that the approach from the southeast end of Curetes Street (in the ancient city) is dramatic, with the Library's façade visible at the other end of the street. Architecturally, the façade of the library resembles the ornate backdrops of Roman-era theaters (scaenae frontes) and creates movement through the use of projecting and receding bays featuring segmented lintels staggered in such a way as to create a back-and-forth "lacing" together of the façade's two levels. In the back of the hall, over the crypt containing Celsus' sarcophagus, was an apse with a statue, now lost. In class, I'll discuss design features intended to correct visual perspective from in front and to increase the apparent depth of the hall.

(The building functioned as a library/document repository for only about a century and a half. Later, in the 500s CE, the façade was re-purposed as a fountain backdrop. Even before that, perhaps in the 200s CE, the bronze statues in the niches were removed and melted down. Probably in the 500s they were replaced with marble ones taken from elsewhere.)

The Library was built by the consul Tiberius Julius Aquila over the tomb of Aquila's father, Tiberius Julius Celsus Polemaeanus: general, senator, consul, and governor of Asia. Inscriptions (in Greek and Latin) and statues were clearly intended to honor the deceased's military and political record, as well as his paideia. The honoree, Celsus, seems to have died before 114 CE. We're not informed as to the cost of construction, but after construction, the family donated an additional 25,000 denarii (we can maybe think of that in terms of about 1,250,000 of today's dollars): 2,000 denarii toward initial purchases, 23,000 to create an interest-generating endowment. Those additional funds actually do not appear particularly generous, given the likely cost of running and maintaining the library. It's thought that the city itself also contributed.

Inside were three groups of book cabinets set into the walls: one accessed from the floor of the hall, the second and third accessed from upper galleries. The library, large enough to contain perhaps 12,000 scrolls (ancient books came in the form of scrolls), served, on the one hand, the needs of scholars and rhetoricians/sophists, on the other hand, to proclaim the everlasting fame of Celsus and his family. In addition, the building may have have housed a legal archive, for it was was located right next to a law court. It was, in fact, a rare honor to be buried within the walls of a city. As a library with a tomb, the structure recalls, and may have been inspired by, the Ulpian Library at Rome, that is, the Library of Trajan, begun in 114 CE, and adjacent to the emperor's forum, with its column and tomb in the base of that column. Just as we see in the above mentioned artist's visualizations, the structure originally would have been painted in bright colors. Modern restoration of its façade (the only part currently standing) was completed in 1978.

For more, see the article (optional reading) from which most of the above comes: Strocka, Volker Michael. 2003. "The Celsus Library in Ephesus."

FOR OPTIONAL VIEWING, a video lecture by the late Diana Kleiner, of Yale University, with a segment on the Library of Celsus, starting at the 15 minute, 21 second mark.

ascholtz@binghamton.edu
© Andrew Scholtz | Last modified 16 April, 2026