Citizen-Sponsored Public Works in the Roman East

What to read and to study for this class meeting is explained below. Here, I start with a major. . .

Course Question (not journal prompt)

The following will form the centerpiece of the one essay question I'm posing on the midterm:

This isn't meant to insist that East-Imperial competition actually was zero-sum cometition; rather, it's to prompt reflection on the implications — social, emotional, and otherwise — of winning and losing.

What is zero-sum competition? In game theory and economics, it's when winnings and losses, measured numerically, add up to zero. Thus a point won by player X (+1) entails a point lost by player Y (–1). +1 added to –1 equals zero. If X and Y form a group, their collective net gain (or loss) is zero.

Returning to the Roman Imperial East, the prizes for which players competed — a first place in the Olympics, a coveted professorship in rhetoric at Athens, the honors and privileges that cities showered on their preeminent benefactors — were few. Not all could win. Still, did the contest, the effort to be better than others, better, even, than oneself, lift everyone up? But even if it did, could others' successes feel — or be believed to to feel — like personal failure or loss? What, ultimately, was at stake for players? For the community? What issues of gender are at play? Of identity?

Quiz Response Prompt, Aim

• Citizen-sponsored Public Works, etc. Brightspace "quiz" (or better, journal entry).

Again, for materials to study/read, see below.

The specific aim of this assignment is to investigate yet another form of agōn: philanthropic and commemorative public works in the Imperial Roman East. Hence the following journal prompt:

* Here follows that quotation, from an inscription translated near the beginning of the van Nijf "Athletics and paideia" reading (p. 204) from a few meetings back:

". . . I have put up prizes welcome to the Muses [goddesses of artistic and intellectual pursuits] for artistic performances and, obedient to the holy command of Phoebus [Apollo], son of Leto, I have adorned strong Alcides [Heracles/Hercules] with the Muse [here = poetry]. And I pray to the immortals that my children, my city and my country will always celebrate these festivals, unharmed."
· · ·
"Many have put up fair prizes for cities, after they were dead, but, in his own life, no mortal man. I alone dared do this, and it rejoices my heart to delight in the bronze images. So, abating your criticism, all those who have dread Envy, look upon my statue with emulous eyes."

Citizen-Sponsored Public Works in the Roman East

(Materials to study/read, below)

For this class meeting, we're studying citizen-sponsored public works in the Roman East. Some of it will be what scholars call "euergetism," what most of us would call philanthropy, though not all of it. Still, philanthropic or not, the stories told by these public works have much in common.

Euergetism

What was euergetism? The short answer is that it was elite, free-will financial sponsorship of projects benefiting city and citizens and bringing prestige and acclaim to the benefactor.

Details matter:

• The word "euergetism" is a modern coinage, though it comes from ancient Greek euergetēs, "benefactor," and euergesia, "benefaction," "philanthropy"
• Euergetism involved wealthy donors sponsoring various sorts of projects — baths, gymnasia, libraries, theaters, fountains, renovations, gladiatorial shows, theatrical productions, religious/sporting festivals, etc. — seen to benefit the community
• Spawforth in the Oxford Classical Dictionary writes that "[c]ivic euergetism was a mixture of social display, patriotism, and political self-interest." Altruism it wasn't. It was, rather, reciprocity:
  • The benefactor (euergetēs) will have been expected to demonstrate what Aristotle calls "magnificence" (megaloprepeia), and Philostratus, "great-mindedness" (megalophrosunē), and will have done so by an act of what we would call philanthropy
  • Beneficiaries (cities, citizens) would reciprocate by showering honors on the benefactor, whose social reputation (timē) would, as a result, be enhanced
  • Euergetism, though technically voluntary, could appear to function as semi-obligatory, a kind of wealth tax with perks for the one taxed. As such it resembled, and operated alongside, liturgies, officially sanctioned obligations imposed by cities on wealthy citizens
  • As a source of prestige, euergetism could become a competitive affair, as it was a path to leadership in cities dominated by the wealthy few
  • Both women and men sponsored these sorts of public works
  • Lest we get carried away with this concept, the Oxford Classical Dictionary reminds us that "[p]robably at no time was the economic significance of euergetism as great as the vast number of honorific inscriptions might suggest." Yet that vast number of inscriptions suggests something — what?

Non-Euergetistic Citizen Public Works?

One type of non-euergetistic citizen-sponsorship was the liturgy (leitourgia). This isn't "liturgies" in the sense of "religious services." Liturgies were financial responsibilities imposed by a city on its wealthy citizens, and for the purpose of funding the same sorts or projects as in the case of euergetism. If the city assigned you a liturgy, you would have to foot the bill for a gymnasium, an aqueduct, a theatrical performance — whatever it was that the liturgy was intended to fund. I have a substantial discussion of liturgies on the "Terms" page; it will be important to study that.

For a different sort of citizen-sponsored project, we have The Library of Celsus, in Ephesus, Turkey. As a funerary monument, the Library of Celsus will have served chiefly to glorify the deceased and his family. But it also served the needs of scholars and the city (see below), nor was glorification of individuals out of step with the aims of euergetism. As such, the Library of Celsus helps show how lines separating euergetism from other forms of citizen-sponsored public works (including liturgies) could be blurred.

Items to View, Read, Ponder

Read/View:

1. Texts, images pertaining to the Odeon (recital hall) of Herodes Atticus in Athens, via fysathens.
2. This Study Guide (all!), including extracts drawn from. . .
3. Philostratus Lives of the Sophists (Philostratus and Eunapius, Loeb edition) on Herodes' philanthropy and that of his father, Atticus:

   No man employed his wealth to better purpose. [Philostratus is talking about Herodes, the son.] And this we must not reckon a thing easy to achieve, but very difficult and arduous. For men who are intoxicated with wealth are wont to let loose a flood of insults on their fellow-men. And moreover they bring this reproach on Plutus [god of wealth] that he is blind; but even if at all other times he appeared to be blind, yet in the case of Herodes he recovered his sight. For he had eyes for his friends, he had eyes for cities, he had eyes for whole nations, since the man watched over them all, and laid up the treasures of his riches in the hearts of those who shared them with him. For indeed he used to say that he who would use his wealth aright ought to give to the needy that they might cease to be in need, and to those that needed it not, lest they should fall into need; and he used to call riches that did not circulate and were tied up by parsimony “dead riches,” and the treasure-chambers in which some men hoard their money “prison-houses of wealth”; and those who thought they must actually sacrifice to their hoarded money he nicknamed "Aloadae,"* for they sacrificed to Ares after they had imprisoned him. (Loeb pp. 139-141)

   * In mythology, the "sons of Aloeus" were Otus ("Insatiable") and Ephialtes ("Nightmare"), who imprisoned Ares, the war god, for thirteen months.

   This same Atticus [Herodes' father] was also distinguished for his lordly spirit. As an instance, at a time when Herodes [the son] was governor of the free cities in Asia, he observed that Troy* was ill-supplied with baths, and that the inhabitants drew muddy water from their wells, and had to dig cisterns to catch rain water. Accordingly he wrote to the Emperor Hadrian to ask him not to allow an ancient city, conveniently near the sea, to perish from drought, but to give them three million drachmae to procure a water-supply, since he had already bestowed on mere villages many times that sum. The Emperor approved of the advice in the letter as in accordance with his own disposition, and appointed Herodes himself to take charge of the water-supply. But when the outlay had reached the sum of seven million drachmae, and the officials who governed Asia kept writing to the Emperor that it was a scandal that the tribute received from five hundred cities should be spent on the fountain of one city, the Emperor expressed his disapproval of this to Atticus [Herodes' dad], whereupon Atticus replied in the most lordly fashion in the world: "Do not, Ο Emperor, allow yourself to be irritated on account of so trifling a sum. For the amount spent in excess of the three millions I hereby present to my son, and my son will present it to the town." (p. 143)

   * Philostratus means Alexandria Troas, near the fabled city of Troy.

   Herodes [again, the son] also dedicated to the Athenians the theatre in memory of Regilla,* and he made its roof of cedar wood, though this wood is considered costly even for making statues. These two monuments, then, are at Athens, and they are such as exist nowhere else in the Roman Empire; but I must not neglect to mention also the roofed theatre which he built for the Corinthians, which is far inferior indeed to the one at Athens but there are not many famous things elsewhere which equal it; and there are also the statues at the Isthmus and the colossal statue of the Isthmian god, and that of Amphitrite, and the other offerings with which he filled the temple; nor must I pass over the dolphin sacred to Melicertes. He also dedicated the stadium at Pytho to the Pythian god, and the aqueduct at Olympia to Zeus, and for the Thessalians and the Greeks who dwell around the Maliac gulf, the bathing pools at Thermopylae that heal the sick. (p. 149)

   * You'll recall Regilla was Herodes wife, whom Herodes had been accused of killing.

4. "Plancia Magna, Aurelia Paulina, and Regilla: Civic Donors." Barbara F. McManus, Social Class and Public Display site. Women sponsors of philanthropy. Note that Regilla was the wife, mentioned earlier, of sophist Herodes Atticus.
5. From the Inscriptions of Aphrodisias site: "Acclamations for Albinos, clarissimus; 2. Acclamation for the city." Find the translation near the bottom of the page.

6. 

   This inscription, carved into columns lining the city's South Agora (marketplace, but it was probably more park than market), dates from late antiquity, the sixth century CE, and in its first line reflects the prevalence of Christianity. It is an "acclamation," or rather, two of them:

   1. One long inscription honoring a certain Albinos, evidently, a benefactor who had financed the repair of a stoa (= portico).
   2. Another brief one wishing the city well.

   The title clarissimus (the Latin translates the Greek lamprotatos), meaning "most distinguished," could refer to a lower ranking senator, or to someone not quite a senator, under the later Roman Empire. Roueché (Aphrodisias in Late Antiquity page 131) thinks the city here is supporting Albinos' bid for membership in the Senate in Constantinople (modern Istanbul, in Turkey). PERDE marks where we have something missing from the Greek.

   • QUESTION: Do you find that those acclamations resonate with other readings with regard to euergetism? I'll confess I have in mind the bit about phthonos, "envy," but also the part reading "The fortune of the city triumphs!"

   

View and Reflect On:

Virtual Reconstructions of the Celsus Library in Ephesus, Turkey, by Adam Nemeth:

• 2016 reconstruction
• 2018, new color scheme
  • Fantastic images, click them to expand. Did you think ancient buildings looked like that, with all the paint and color? They more or less did, though most modern reconstructions are largely conjectural. The paint has mostly — but not entirely — worn off from most ancient sculpture and architecture. More on the topic at the MET Museum Chroma site.

The Library of Celsus, in Roman Ephesus, on the western coast of Turkey, combined the functions of a funerary monument with those of a cultural institution. Its dimensions are not vast. It rises to a height of seventeen meters. The hall behind the façade measures 16.72 by 10.92 meters. Still, in design and visual impact, the structure is stunning. Visitors to the site have told me that the approach from the southeast end of Curetes Street (in the ancient city) is dramatic, with the Library's façade visible at the other end of the street. Architecturally, the façade of the library resembles the ornate backdrops of Roman-era theaters (scaenae frontes) and creates movement through the use of projecting and receding bays featuring segmented lintels staggered in such a way as to create a back-and-forth "lacing" together of the façade's two levels. In the back of the hall, over the crypt containing Celsus' sarcophagus, was an apse with a statue, now lost. In class, I'll discuss design features intended to correct visual perspective from in front and to increase the apparent depth of the hall.

(The building functioned as a library/document repository for only about a century and a half. Later, in the 500s CE, the façade was repurposed as a fountain backdrop. Even before that, perhaps in the 200s CE, the bronze statues in the niches were removed and melted down. Probably in the 500s they were replaced with marble ones taken from elsewhere.)

The Library was built by the consul Tiberius Julius Aquila over the tomb of Aquila's father, Tiberius Julius Celsus Polemaeanus: general, senator, consul, and governor of Asia. Inscriptions (in Greek and Latin) and statues were clearly intended to honor the deceased's military and political record, as well as his paideia. The honoree, Celsus, seems to have died before 114 CE. We're not informed as to the cost of construction, but after construction, the family donated an additional 25,000 denarii (we can maybe think of that in terms of about 1,250,000 of today's dollars): 2,000 denarii toward initial purchases, 23,000 to create an interest-generating endowment. Those additional funds actually do not appear particularly generous, given the likely cost of running and maintaining the library. It's thought that the city itself also contributed.

Inside were three groups of book cabinets set into the walls: one accessed from the floor of the hall, the second and third accessed from upper galleries. The library, large enough to contain perhaps 12,000 scrolls (ancient books came in the form of scrolls), served, on the one hand, the needs of scholars and rhetoricians, on the other hand, to proclaim the everlasting fame of Celsus and his family. In addition, the building may have have housed a legal archive, for it was was located right next to a law court. It was, in fact, a rare honor to be buried within the walls of a city. As a library with a tomb, the structure recalls, and may have been inspired by, the Ulpian Library at Rome, that is, the Library of Trajan, begun in 114 CE, and adjacent to the emperor's forum, with its column and tomb in the base of that column. Just as we see in the above mentioned artist's visualizations, the structure originally would have been painted in bright colors. Modern restoration of its façade (the only part currently standing) was completed in 1978.

For more, see the article from which most of the above comes: Strocka, Volker Michael. 2003. "The Celsus Library in Ephesus." In Ancient Libraries in Anatolia: Libraries of Hattusha, Pergamon, Ephesus, Nysa, edited by International Association of Technological University Libraries, 33-43. Ankara: Middle East Technical University Library. (Not required reading, but interesting all the same.)

FOR OPTIONAL VIEWING, a video lecture (Diana Kleiner, Yale), with a segment on the Library of Celsus, starting at the 15 minute, 21 second mark.