he distributed gold, silver, bronze, linen garments, and other things."[98] The people of Telesia, a little town in Campania, pay this tribute to their distinguished patron:  “To Titus Fabius Severus, patron of the town, for his services at home and abroad, and because he, first of all those who have instituted games, gave at his own expense five wild beasts from Africa, a company of gladiators, and a splendid equipment, the senate and citizens have most gladly granted a statue."[99] The office of patron was a characteristic Roman institution.  Cities and villages elected to this position some distinguished Roman senator or knight, and he looked out for the interests of the community in legal matters and otherwise.

This distinction was held in high esteem, and recipients of it often testified their appreciation by generous gifts to the town which they represented, or were chosen patrons because of their benefactions.  This fact is illustrated in the following inscription from Spoletium:  “Gaius Torasius Severus, the son of Gaius, of the Horatian tribe, quattuorvir with judicial power, augur, in his own name, and in the name of his son Publius Meclonius Proculus Torasianus, the pontiff, erected (this) on his land (?) and at his own expense.  He also gave the people 250,000 sesterces to celebrate his son’s birthday, from the income of which each year, on the third day before the Kalends of September, the members of the Common Council are to dine in public, and each citizen who is present is to receive eight asses.  He also gave to the seviri Augustales, and to the priests of the Lares, and to the overseers of the city wards, 120,000 sesterces, in order that from the income of this sum they might have a public dinner on the same day.  Him, for his services to the community, the senate has chosen patron of the town."[100] A town commonly showed its appreciation of what had been done for it by setting up a statue in honor of its benefactor, as was done in the case of Fabius Severus, and the public squares of Italian and provincial towns must have been adorned with many works of art of this sort.  It amuses one to find at the bottom of some of the commemorative tablets attached to these statues, the statement that the man distinguished in this way, “contented with the honor, has himself defrayed the cost of the monument.”  To pay 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.