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Commemoration and Élite Benefaction of Buildings and Spectacles in the Roman World*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 April 2015

Diana Ng
Diana Ng*
Affiliation:
University of Michigan-Dearborn
*
dmng@umich.edu
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Abstract

Current scholarship on élite munificence in the Roman Empire often sees architectural benefactions as being at least partially driven by the élite desire for personal commemoration. I use juristic opinions from the Digest and other textual evidence related to building gifts to argue that there was an ancient understanding of the physical and symbolic ephemerality of architectural benefactions. In contrast, I present legal and epigraphic evidence to argue that there was an explicit expectation for gifts of spectacles and monetary distributions to be lasting memorials for their donors, and that the perpetuation of identity was also a motivating factor in the euergetic choice of a spectacle.

Keywords

public monumentsélite benefactionthe Digestspectaclescommemorationinscriptions
Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Roman Studies , Volume 105 , November 2015 , pp. 101 - 123
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2015. Published by The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies 

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Footnotes

*

This article began as a paper, ‘Architectural benefaction and monumentality: evaluating the evidence for the commemorative function of public architecture in the Greek East’, presented at the Annual Meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America in Seattle, Washington, on 6 January 2013. I am very grateful to Dr Molly Swetnam-Burland, Dr Adrian Ossi, Dr Nora Ng, and Dr Robert Chenault for their perceptive comments and encouragement. I also thank the anonymous readers for their helpful critiques. All remaining errors are my own.

References

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