The practice of giving may well have started with the town officials.  We have already noticed that in Rome, under the Republic, candidates for office, in seeking votes, and magistrates, in return for the honors paid them, not infrequently spent large sums on the people.  In course of time, in the towns throughout the Empire this voluntary practice became a legal obligation resting on local officials.  This fact is brought out in the municipal charter of Urso,[95] the modern Osuna, in Spain.  Half of this document, engraved on tablets, was discovered in Spain about forty years ago, and makes a very interesting contribution to our knowledge of municipal life.  A colony was sent out to Urso, in 44 B.C., by Julius Caesar, under the care of Mark Antony, and the municipal constitution of the colony was drawn up by one of these two men.  In the seventieth article, we read of the duumvirs, who were the chief magistrates:  “Whoever shall be duumvirs, with the exception of those who shall have first been elected after the passage of this law, let the aforesaid during their magistracy give a public entertainment or plays in honor of the gods and goddesses Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva, for four days, during the greater part of the day, so far as it may be done, at the discretion of the common councillors, and on these games and this entertainment let each one of them spend from his own money not less than two thousand sesterces.”  The article which follows in the document provides that the aediles, or the officials next in rank, shall give gladiatorial games and plays for three days, and one day of races in the circus, and for these entertainments they also must spend not less than two thousand sesterces.

Here we see the modern practice reversed.  City officials, instead of receiving a salary for their services, not only serve without pay, but are actually required by law to make a public contribution.  It will be noticed that the law specified the minimum sum which a magistrate must spend.  The people put no limit on what he might spend, and probably most of the duumvirs of Urso gave more than $80, or, making allowance for the difference in the purchasing value of money, $250, for the entertainment of the people.  In fact a great many honorary inscriptions from other towns tell us of officials who made generous additions to the sum required by law.  So far as their purpose and results go, these expenditures may be compared with the “campaign contributions” made by candidates for office in this country.  There is a strange likeness and unlikeness between the two.  The modern politician makes his contribution before the election, the ancient politician after it.  In our day the money is expended largely to provide for public meetings where the questions of the day shall be discussed.  In Roman times it was spent upon public improvements, and upon plays, dinners, and gladiatorial games.  Among us public sentiment is averse to the expenditure of large sums to secure an election.  The Romans desired and expected it, and those who were open-handed in this matter took care to have a record of their gifts set down where it could be read by all men.