Paganism has often been accused of having paid no attention whatsoever to public charities. On the contrary, during the period with which we are now occupied institutions of poor-relief were founded and were as remarkable for the wisdom with which they were organized as for the spirit of beneficence which they manifested. There was abundance of evidence in Pliny's time to show that his beautiful words were not mere rhetoric: "It is a duty to seek out those who are in want, to bring them aid, to support, and make them in a sense one's own family." Has the modern spirit anything better to say than this sentence which was inscribed upon a tomb: _Therc is in life but one beautiful thing, and this is beneficence._ The Romans of the Antonine period put this sentiment into practical operation in more ways than one. Nerva conceived the project of rendering State aid to poor parents to enable them to rear their children. Trajan, his successor, adopted this scheme and developed it on a magnificent scale. As early as the year 100, there were, in the city of Rome, as we learn from Pliny, no less than five thousand children who received this assistance. So much consideration was shown in the arrangement for this distribution, that it was ordered that the apportionment of the sick or absent should be reserved until it was sent for. From the Inscription of Veleia, one of the longest which have come down to us, and the table of the Bæbiani for the apportionment of food among the poor, we learn of the poor-relief system under which two hundred and sixty-four boys and thirty-six girls were supported. "The boys received annually one hundred and ninety-two sesterces [$9.20], the girls one hundred and forty-four [$6.90]. The foundation was established for a definite number of children, a number that did not change so long as the foundation was not increased; but the assistance varied, doubtless with the price of provisions, in different localities; thus, at Veleia, sixteen sesterces per month; at Tarracina, twenty." The writer of the above demonstrates by authorities and examples that from sixteen to twenty sesterces per month was sufficient to support a Roman child. He continues: "It cannot be affirmed that the institution was in a general measure established in the whole of Italy; but coins, inscriptions, and even sculptures, enable us to discover it in many places. Thus the bas-reliefs of the Arch of Beneventum represent men carrying boys on their shoulders, and four women, their heads adorned with mural crowns, conducting young girls to Trajan. Do these women represent the four towns of the vicinity, or are they the symbol of all the cities of Italy which had profited by the same benefaction? The second hypothesis is the more probable, and Dion confirms it.