But if the Emperor was the most generous of the public benefactors, he was not the only one. The chief men throughout the Empire followed his example, some of them on so elaborate a scale as to challenge comparison with the most munificent American millionaires, when account is taken of the difference in the standards of riches in the respective epochs. The best-known figure among these donors is Herodes Atticus, an immensely rich Athenian of the second century A.D. What was his origin, and whence he got his money, we do not know. Probably he belonged to one of those families which had accumulated immense property in the provinces, during the first century of the Christian era, a century of rapidly acquired and great fortunes. This much is certain, that he applied himself to study, and became what was then called a rhetor, corresponding more or less closely to what we term a professor of literature, not however with a view to earning a livelihood, but with the object of cultivating his own and other people’s minds. Highly cultured, erudite, and at the same time one of the richest men in the Empire, Herodes was a great friend of Antoninus Pius and of Marcus Aurelius. But, great as was his reputation for wisdom and literary taste, and notwithstanding the enhancement of his prestige through the friendships of the two celebrated emperors, he left a name in the social history of the Roman world more particularly because of the vast sums he gave away all over the Empire. At Athens, he repaired in a splendid way the most ancient and famous buildings of that celebrated city. He presented, repaired, and maintained theatres, aqueducts, temples, and stadia in the cities of Greece and Italy. For the rest, several of the most highly admired buildings and most imposing ruins in Rome are actually gifts made to the public by ancient citizens. Out of them all, I may cite the Pantheon, that marvellous Pantheon, which we all still admire in the heart of Rome, the monument which stands deathless while the stream of ages flows by. This was constructed by Agrippa, the friend of Augustus, at his own expense, and can be compared in this respect to Carnegie Hall in New York. Agrippa built the Pantheon from the same notions of civic zeal that impelled Carnegie to endow New York with his great Hall. And the two monuments, built by the personal munificence of two ultra-wealthy citizens, with an interval of twenty centuries between them, express the same desire to extend to the whole people a share in the enjoyment of the donor’s private fortune.