for a popular
testimonial to one's generosity is indeed generosity in its perfect form.
The statues themselves have disappeared along with the towns which erected
them, but the tablets remain, and by a strange dispensation of fate the
monument which a town has set up to perpetuate the memory of one of its
citizens is sometimes the only record we have of the town's own existence.

The motives which actuated the giver were of a mixed character, as these
memorials indicate. Sometimes it was desire for the applause of his fellow
citizens, or for posthumous fame, which influenced a donor; sometimes
civic pride and affection. In many cases it was the compelling force of
custom, backed up now and then, as we can see from the inscriptions, by
the urgent demands of the populace. Out of this last sentiment there would
naturally grow a sense of the obligation imposed by the possession of
wealth, and this feeling is closely allied to pure generosity. In fact, it
would probably be wrong not to count this among the original motives which
actuated men in making their gifts, because the spirit of devotion to the
state and to the community was a marked characteristic of Romans in the
republican period.

The effects which this practice of giving had on municipal life and on the
character of the people are not without importance and interest. The
lavish expenditure expected of a magistrate and the ever-increasing
financial obligations laid upon him by the central government made
municipal offices such an intolerable burden that the charter of Urso of
the first century A.D., which has been mentioned above, has to resort to
various ingenious devices to compel men to hold them. The position of a
member of a town council was still worse. He was not only expected to
contribute generously to the embellishment and support of his native city,
but he was also held responsible for the collection of the imperial taxes.
As prosperity declined he found this an increasingly difficult thing to
do, and seats in the local senate were undesirable. The central government
could not allow the men responsible for its revenues to escape their
responsibility. Consequently, it interposed and forced them to accept the
honor. Some of them enlisted in the army, or even fled into the desert,
but whenever they were found they were brought back to take up their
positions again. In the fourth century, service in the common council was
even made a penalty imposed upon cr