The motives which actuated the giver were of a mixed character, as these memorials indicate.  Sometimes it was desire for the applause of his fellow citizens, or for posthumous fame, which influenced a donor; sometimes civic pride and affection.  In many cases it was the compelling force of custom, backed up now and then, as we can see from the inscriptions, by the urgent demands of the populace.  Out of this last sentiment there would naturally grow a sense of the obligation imposed by the possession of wealth, and this feeling is closely allied to pure generosity.  In fact, it would probably be wrong not to count this among the original motives which actuated men in making their gifts, because the spirit of devotion to the state and to the community was a marked characteristic of Romans in the republican period.

The effects which this practice of giving had on municipal life and on the character of the people are not without importance and interest.  The lavish expenditure expected of a magistrate and the ever-increasing financial obligations laid upon him by the central government made municipal offices such an intolerable burden that the charter of Urso of the first century A.D., which has been mentioned above, has to resort to various ingenious devices to compel men to hold them.  The position of a member of a town council was still worse.  He was not only expected to contribute generously to the embellishment and support of his native city, but he was also held responsible for the collection of the imperial taxes.  As prosperity declined he found this an increasingly difficult thing to do, and seats in the local senate were undesirable.  The central government could not allow the men responsible for its revenues to escape their responsibility.  Consequently, it interposed and forced them to accept the honor.  Some of them enlisted in the army, or even fled into the desert, but whenever they were found they were brought back to take up their positions again.  In the fourth century, service in the common council was even made a penalty imposed upon criminals.  Finally, it became hereditary, and it is an amusing but pathetic thing to find that this honor, so highly prized in the early period, became in the end a form of serfdom.

We have been looking at the effects of private generosity on official life.  Its results for the private citizen are not so clear, but it must have contributed to that decline of independence and of personal responsibility which is so marked a feature of the later Empire.  The masses contributed little, if anything, to the running expenses of government and the improvement of the city.  The burdens fell largely upon the rich.  It was a system of quasi-socialism.  Those who had, provided for those who had not—­not merely markets and temples, and colonnades, and baths, but oil for the baths, games, plays, and gratuities of money.  Since their needs were largely met by others, the people lost more and more the habit of providing for themselves and the ability to do so.  When prosperity declined, and the wealthy could no more assist them, the end came.