But the Roman people had come to look for acts of generosity from their political as well as from their military leaders, and this factor, too, must be taken into account in the case of Augustus.  In the closing years of the Republic, candidates for office and men elected to office saw that one of the most effective ways of winning and holding their popularity was to give public entertainments, and they vied with one another in the costliness of the games and pageants which they gave the people.  The well-known case of Caesar will be recalled, who, during his term as aedile, or commissioner of public works, bankrupted himself by his lavish expenditures on public improvements, and on the games, in which he introduced three hundred and twenty pairs of gladiators for the amusement of the people.  In his book, “On the Offices,” Cicero tells us of a thrifty rich man, named Mamercus, who aspired to public office, but avoided taking the aedileship, which stood in the regular sequence of minor offices, in order that he might escape the heavy outlay for public entertainment expected of the aedile.  As a consequence, when later he came up for the consulship, the people punished him by defeating him at the polls.  To check the growth of these methods of securing votes, Cicero, in his consulship, brought in a corrupt practices act, which forbade citizens to give gladiatorial exhibitions within two years of any election in which they were candidates.  We may doubt if this measure was effective.  The Roman was as clever as the American politician in accomplishing his purpose without going outside the law.  Perhaps an incident in the life of Cicero’s young friend, Curio, is a case in point.  It was an old Roman custom to celebrate the ninth day after a burial as a solemn family festival, and some time in the second century before our era the practice grew up of giving gladiatorial contests on these occasions.  The versatile Curio, following this practice, testified his respect for his father’s memory by giving the people such elaborate games that he never escaped from the financial difficulties in which they involved him.  However, this tribute of pious affection greatly enhanced his popularity, and perhaps did not expose him to the rigors of Cicero’s law.

These gifts from generals, from distinguished citizens, and from candidates for office do not go far to prove a generous or philanthropic spirit on the part of the donors, but they show clearly enough that the practice of giving large sums of money to embellish the city, and to please the public, had grown up under the Republic, and that the people of Rome had come to regard it as the duty of their distinguished fellow citizens to beautify the city and minister to their needs and pleasures by generous private contributions.