Volume I offers a broad perspective on urban culture in the ancient European world. It begins with chronological overviews which paint in broad brushstrokes a picture that serves as a frame for the thematic chapters in the rest of the volume. Positioning ancient Europe within its wider context, it touches on Asia and Africa as regions that informed and were later influenced by urban development in Europe, with particular emphasis on the Mediterranean basin. Topics range from formal characteristics (including public space), water provision, waste disposal, urban maintenance, spaces for the dead, and border spaces; to ways of thinking about, visualising, and remembering cities in antiquity; to conflict within and between cities, economics, mobility and globalisation, intersectional urban experiences, slavery, political participation, and religion.

Volume I offers a broad perspective on urban culture in the ancient European world. It begins with chronological overviews which paint in broad brushstrokes a picture that serves as a frame for the thematic chapters in the rest of the volume. Positioning ancient Europe within its wider context, it touches on Asia and Africa as regions that informed and were later influenced by urban development in Europe, with particular emphasis on the Mediterranean basin. Topics range from formal characteristics (including public space), water provision, waste disposal, urban maintenance, spaces for the dead, and border spaces; to ways of thinking about, visualising, and remembering cities in antiquity; to conflict within and between cities, economics, mobility and globalisation, intersectional urban experiences, slavery, political participation, and religion.

In this chapter the author identifies the chief continuities and changes in civic munificence in the poleis under Roman imperial rule in comparison with the previous periods of Greek history. To do so, the author develops a model to answer the question of why elite public giving was a such an enduring element of polis society in the first place. He identifies three structural features of polis society that can explain the centrality of elite public giving: the specific way wealth, fame, power and authority needed to be legitimated in the polis; the particularity of the Greeks’ idea of politics; and the stateless character of the polis. To test this model, the author then applies it to explain two specific characteristics of civic euergetism in the Greek cities under the Roman empire, namely, its unprecedented proliferation during the first, second and early third centuries CE, and the extent to which munificence started to transcend the benefactor’s own civic community, that is, the increasing tendency of benefactors to include non-citizen groups in the poleis in their munificence as well as to give to cities other than their own.

The Introduction outlines the main themes, issues and structure of the volume; provides a historiography of the debate on public giving and euergetism; and discusses recent theories.

This chapter presents concluding thoughts by the editors, identifying some of the main themes that have emerged from the chapters, and outlining some areas for further study.