The objects for which donors gave their money seem to prove the essentially materialistic character of Roman civilization, because we must assume that those who gave knew the tastes of the people.  Sometimes men like Pliny the Younger gave money for libraries or schools, but such gifts seem to have been relatively infrequent.  Benefactions are commonly intended to satisfy the material needs or gratify the desire of the people for pleasure.

Under the old regime charity was unknown.  There were neither almshouses nor hospitals, and scholars have called attention to the fact that even the doles of corn which the state gave were granted to citizens only.  Mere residents or strangers were left altogether out of consideration, and they were rarely included within the scope of private benevolence.  In the following chapter, in discussing the trades-guilds, we shall see that even they made no provision for the widow or orphan, or for their sick or disabled members.  It was not until Christianity came that the poor and the needy were helped because of their poverty and need.

Some Reflections on Corporations and Trades-Guilds

In a recent paper on “Ancient and Modern Imperialism,” read before the British Classical Association, Lord Cromer, England’s late consul-general in Egypt, notes certain points of resemblance between the English and the Roman methods of dealing with alien peoples.  With the Greeks no such points of contact exist, because, as he remarks, “not only was the imperial idea foreign to the Greek mind; the federal conception was equally strange.”  This similarity between the political character and methods of the Romans and Anglo-Saxons strikes any one who reads the history of the two peoples side by side.  They show the same genius for government at home, and a like success in conquering and holding foreign lands, and in assimilating alien peoples.  Certain qualities which they have in common contribute to these like results.  Both the Roman and the Anglo-Saxon have been men of affairs; both have shown great skill in adapting means to an end, and each has driven straight at the immediate object to be accomplished without paying much heed to logic or political theory.  A Roman statesman would have said “Amen!” to the Englishman’s pious hope that “his countrymen might never become consistent or logical in politics.”  Perhaps the willingness of the average Roman to co-operate with his fellows, and his skill in forming an organization suitable for the purpose in hand, go farther than any of the other qualities mentioned above to account for his success in governing other peoples as well as his own nation.