The inscriptions pay all honour to the voluntary, single-minded generosity with which men bore costly charges, and gave time and effort to the business of the city. But there was a tendency to treat public benefactions as the acknowledgment of a debt, a return for civic honours. We can sometimes even see that the gift was extorted by the urgency of the people, in some cases even by menaces and force.(1392) The cities took advantage of the general passion for place and social precedence, and, often from sordid motives, crowded their curial lists with _patroni_ and persons decorated with other honorary distinctions. On the famous roll of the council of Canusium, out of a total of 164 members, there are 39 _patroni_ of senatorial or knightly rank, and 25 _praetextati_, mere boys, who were almost certainly of the same aristocratic class, and were probably destined to be future patrons of the town.(1393) In the desire to secure the support of wealth and social prestige, the municipal law as to the age for magisterial office was frequently disregarded, and even mere infants were sometimes raised to the highest civic honours.(1394) The position of patron seems to have been greatly prized, as it was heavily paid for. A great man with a liberal soul might be patron of several towns,(1395) and sometimes women of rank had the honour conferred on them.(1396) The _ornamenta_ or external badges of official rank were frequently bestowed on people who were not eligible by law for the magistracy. A resident alien (_incola_), or an augustal, might be co-opted into the “splendid order” of the Curia, or he might be allowed to wear its badges, or those of some office which he could not actually hold.(1397) But it is plain that such distinctions had to be purchased or repaid. The city seldom made any other return for generous devotion, unless it were the space for a grave or the pageant of a public funeral. It is true that a generous benefactor or magistrate is frequently honoured with a statue and memorial tablet. Indeed, the honour is so frequently bestowed that it seems to dwindle to an infinitesimal value.(1398) And it is to our eyes still further reduced by the agreeable convention which seems to have made it a matter of good taste that the person so distinguished by his fellow-citizens should bear the expense of the record himself!(1399) Nor did the expectations of the grateful public end even there; for, at the dedication of the monument, it was seemingly imperative to give a feast to the generous community which allowed or required its benefactor to bear the cost of the memorial of his own munificence.(1400) It is only fair, however, to say that this civic meanness was not universal, and that there are records to show that even the poorest class sometimes subscribed among themselves to pay for the honour which they proposed to confer.(1401)