Amongst the inscriptions which have reached us from the Roman world, and which have been collected in the _Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum_, we find a considerable number referring to these donations. In all the provinces of the vast Empire, in all the cities great and small, stories have been found recounting, often in forcible terms, the donation by some citizen, during his life or at his death, of a certain sum to the city, it might be to construct or repair an edifice, it might be to distribute grain to the people in time of dearth, or to give bounties of oil on festive occasions, or to assure to the people the enjoyment of certain periodical spectacles, or to supplement the finances of the city, which had been thrown into disorder by excessive expenditure, or which were not equal to all the calls made upon them. Every city, then, had her own millionaire benefactors, her little Carnegies, her Huntingtons, Morgans, and Rockefellers in miniature, whose generosity was necessary to the public good, and to whom were raised in gratitude monuments, many of which have come down to our time. The Roman Emperor himself was, at first at any rate, only the most generous and the best known of these rich donors: a kind of Carnegie, Morgan, and Rockefeller of the Empire. Suetonius, for instance, tells us what sums Augustus spent in the course of his life, out of his private patrimony, on public objects. Augustus himself, in the famous _Monumentum Ancyranum_, the great inscription found in Asia, in which he gives a clear résumé of the story of his life, enumerates many of the gifts which he made to the public out of his own pocket. On several occasions, he simply liquidated the deficit in the Empire’s budget out of his private purse. At another time, he repaired at his own expense the roads of Italy which after the civil wars had through neglect fallen into disrepair. On countless occasions, he spent money for public works, for the relief of famine, for popular amusements, for all the forms of beneficence then customary, without paying any regard to the serious inroads he was making on the fortune which he would have to leave to his own heirs. This is exactly what many wealthy men are doing to-day in the New World. It would be in accord with the facts to say that those striking largesses were one of the means by which imperial authority was gradually concentrated at the heart of the Roman State, and surrounded itself with so much gratitude, so many interests, and so many hopes as to be able definitely to secure the principal position amongst all the organs of the State.