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Wealth and Munificence in Roman Africa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 August 2013

R. P. Duncan-Jones
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Extract

This paper utilises evidence for the size of public gifts in Roman Africa collected in a previous article to make a series of deductions about the classes from which the gifts came and about the gifts themselves. Because the questions asked here are for the most part different from those considered in the earlier paper, a reorganisation of the material has been necessary, and a table of African donations of known amount is given at the end of the article (pp. 173–5). The sample has been confined as far as possible to material from the period between the accession of Trajan and the death of Gordian III (A.D. 98–244), and gifts clearly belonging to other periods have been omitted.

The topics discussed are, firstly, the distribution of wealth among the monied class; the conclusions are based on observations about the background and nature of Roman munificence, as well as on the tabulation of gift-sizes. Internal evidence suggests that it is, in most cases, legitimate to make rough comparisons between gifts from different points in the period without practical compensation for the effects of inflation. The second part of the paper contains estimates of the total number of donors in the period discussed; the frequency of donation among the decurial class (i.e. the members of the town-councils); the total sum subscribed in the form of public gifts in Africa within the period; and the fluctuations in the amount given from reign to reign. The series of estimates depends critically upon assessing the rate of inscription–survival with as much accuracy as possible, and this subject has been discussed in a separate Appendix (pp. 176–7).

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Articles
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Papers of the British School at Rome , Volume 31 , Issue 1 , November 1963 , pp. 159 - 175
Copyright
Copyright © British School at Rome 1963

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References

1 CSRA, Papers of the British School at Rome 1962, pp. 47–115. I am much indebted for criticisms and suggestions to Professor A. H. M. Jones, Miss J. M. Reynolds and Mr. J. B. Ward Perkins.

2 CSRA pp. 54, 58 and 65.

3 Apuleius, Apology 87; cf. Pliny, , Ep. X, 116Google Scholar.

4 Apuleius, Apol., 77.

5 C. 26548.

6 C. 11034, 22733, 22743; 24101.

7 CSRA, Table II, p. 77.

8 Cf. CSRA Nos. 14, 21, 22, 24, 36, 37, 181 and 201, all of which are public promises fulfilled one or more generations later; Digest L, 12.

9 Cf. Charles-Picard, Civilisation, pp. 96–100.

10 Pliny, , Ep. X, 54, 55Google Scholar.

11 Ibid. III, 19: ‘Sum prope totus in praediis, aliquid tamen foenero’.

12 Apuleius, Apol. 93; the 400 slaves mentioned are apparently agricultural, in contrast to the 15 household slaves referred to in 44–45.

13 Of the HS5 million estimated as the total for Pliny's gifts to Comum, at least HS 1,600,000 was given during his lifetime (Ep. V, 7; Frank, , Econ. Survey, V, p. 106Google Scholar).

14 Pliny, , Ep. V, 11Google Scholar.

15 Fronto, ad Amicos II, 7, 8–9 (ed. van den Hout, 1954, I, p. 182). Cf. ILS 6772, 6780, 6927.

16 Apuleius, Apol. 23–24.

17 S. Gsell & A. Joly, Khamissa, Mdaourouch, Announa: ‘Mdaourouch’, 1922, p. 18 ff; Apuleius, Apol. 24.

18 Apuleius, Apol. 23.

19 Apuleius, Flor. 16; St. Augustine, Ep. 138, 19.

20 See cities listed in CSRA pp. 56–61 and 79–108.

21 See p. 167, n. 49 below.

22 Said by his grandson to have turned himself from a rich man into a poor one by his liberalities at Prusa in Bithynia, Dio, Or. XLVI, 3; cf. Plutarch Praec. ger. reip., also evidence from the east.

23 Apuleius, Apol. 23.

24 Pauly-Wissowa, , RE, IV, 1363Google Scholar; Dio Cassius LXI, 10, 3.

25 Tacitus, , Ann. XIII, 34Google Scholar; Suetonius, Vesp. 17; c.f. Dio Cassius LX, 29, 2.

26 The usual return from land in Italy being 6%, Pliny, Ep. VII, 18Google Scholar, Columella, , de re rust. III, 3, 8–13Google Scholar; Pliny, NH XIV, 56Google Scholar; CIL, X 114; 5853; XIV 367.

27 Pliny, , Ep. I, 19Google Scholar; Martial V, 27; 38.

28 Sicinius Pontianus, ‘splendidissimus eques’ of Oea, would presumably have inherited much of his mother's HS4 million, had he outlived her (Apuleius, , Apol. 62, 77, 97Google Scholar); Herennius Rufinus of the same town, owner of a fortune of HS3 million, was probably the son of a knight (Apol. 75).

29 The procuratorial range being HS300,000, 200,000, 100,000 and 60,000.

30 The father of Apuleius bequeathed to his two sons slightly less than HS2 million (Apol. 23). The fact tha t Apuleius held the sacerdotium provinciae (n. 19 above) suggests that he may have remained outside the equestrian class even in his later days of fame at Carthage: only two of the fourteen priests of the province of whom epigraphic record has survived from our period are known to have been knights (C. 11546; 16472; cf. CSRA, p. 52, n. 13).

31 CSRA, no. 248 (procurator a rationibus under Marcus and Verus); no. 249 (proconsul of Asia under Marcus or Commodus; the figure given includes an estimate of HS200,000 for the cost of a temple bequeathed in addition to the foundation whose value was specified as HS1 million); nos. 32–250–382 (praefectus leg. XIIII Gem. under Septimius or Caracalla).

32 CSRA, no. 38 (HS400.000), the gift of a senator, is the only exception, and is omitted from consideration here.

33 By a rar e coincidence, two of the gifts in this range (CSRA nos. 28 an d 42) were actually made by non-equestrian donors at Madauros, the town to which the Apulei i belonged.

34 Save the obligation to carry out benefactions promised to the city in honour of local office (Digest, L, 12, 1, 1).

35 The highest rate of tax of which there is evidence (under the earlier Empire) is a tax in kind of one-tenth. Death-duty was levied at a flat one-twentieth. A tax of one-hundredth on the rateable value of land is mentioned for Syria (Appian, , Syr. VIII, 50Google Scholar). The rate of the standard tributum soli is not known, but is likely to have been low. Though this was a pro rata tax, fixed rate taxes, like the tributum capitis, which demanded a fixed sum from every man regardless of his resources, were obviously more irksome for the poor. (Cf. Marquardt, J., Staatsverwaltung1 II, p. 190 ff.Google Scholar).

36 In 1953, 66% of the incomes of those in Great Britain earning over £2,000 per year went in income-tax, an d estate-duty was progressive up to 80% of the whole estate (U. K. Hicks, Public Finance,2 1955, pp. 254–255).

37 See Table below, pp. 174–5; nos. 248 (HS1,300,000), 249 (1,200,000), 32, etc. (750,000), 38 (400,000), 255 (50,000); the donors were respectively a procurator, a senator, a prefect of a legion, a second senator, and a second procurator. Equestrian rank by itself has not been regarded as grounds for exclusion from the decurial sample.

38 The total of the first eleven decurial gifts is HS4,893,500 (since some of the components include estimates, this is an approximation); half of the total sum subscribed decurially, excluding section B on the grounds of imprecision, is HS4,747,201.

39 Who gave HS2,364,000.

40 HS131,333 against HS444,863.

41 HS1,305,955, slightly over one-eighth, which would be HS1,186,800.

42 HS930,748.

43 CSRA p. 66 an d n. 53.

44 P. A. Brunt, Papers of the British School at Rome 1950, p. 71.

45 See n. 29 above.

46 Dio Cassius LXXVIII, 22. The period referred to is the reign of Macrinus, but proconsuls were already receiving salaries under Augustus (id. LIII, 15, 4–5, cf. Tacitus Agr. 42); it is likely that they would always have received an amount considerably larger than that allowed to procurators.

47 Since legionary pay was only one-third higher under Marcus than it had been under Caesar, the comparison with evidence of the Caesarian period does not seem ludicrous.

48 See n. 37 above.

49 The African ratios of priced to unpriced gifts indicated by two different samples are these: dated building gifts suggest 1:3.66 (CSRA Table I, Section A, and Table II, left-hand column, pp. 76–77); the sample of inscriptions in ILAf suggests 2.16. The average is approximately 1: 3, suggesting that priced gifts were about one quarter of the whole.

50 See Appendix, p. 176–7 below.

51 P. Salama, Les Votes romaines de l'Afrique du Nord, 1951, pp. 119–140.

52 See for instance CSRA nos. 13, 16, 24, 47, 57, 58, 110, 165, 168, 202a, 210, 348.

53 See Appendix III in Tissot, C., Géographic comparée de la province romaine d'Afrique t. II, 1888, pp. 763–784Google Scholar.

54 Pliny, , NH, V, 2–29Google Scholar; it is stated directly that there were 516 populi between the eastern boundary of Mauretania, and the western boundary of Cyrenaica; and 27 towns and 8 tribes are listed individually in Mauretania, though there were doubtless others which Pliny does not mention by name.

55 Most of the surviving information about conferments of city-status is reproduced in Romanelli's Storia delle Province Romane dell'Africa, 1959; but what survives is too incomplete for direct statistical inference. The apparent preponderance of Augustan foundations over the creations of any subsequent reign is in part due to the accident of there being literary evidence for this reign, in some of Pliny's lists in the Naturalis Historia.

56 Perhaps, for instance, the ‘populus Thabarbusitanus’, in whose long-winded dedication there is no mention of decurions or of an ordo (AE 1960, 214).

57 CSRA p. 70 and n. 67.

58 C. 7041; 12006; 12302; 12331; 14755; 14791; 14875; 25808.

59 At Thuburbo Maius, CSRA, pp. 70–71.

60 CSRA pp. 71–72.

61 Strict eligibility for the ordo began at 25 (Digest L, 2, 11). Life-expectancy in pagan Roman Africa has been equated for practical purposes with tha t shown for India in the census of 1901 (see my ‘City population in Roman Africa’, Journal of Roman Studies 1963, n. 24). In fact more than half of the men alive in India in 1901 could have been expected to die by 45; but in setting the African expectancy at this age at 20 years, I have allowed for the fact that African life-expectancy was apparently better than Indian, especially at the later ages, from the evidence compiled by Burn (‘Hic breve vivitur’, Past and Present, November 1953, pp. 2–31). Something has also been allowed for the fact that those who survived the crucial decade of the 40's very often lived considerably longer.

62 (The average number of cities having decurions at any time during the period) × (the average number of decurions per city) × (the number of decurial generations within the period).

63 Having assumed an average decurial life-span of 20 years, and an average ordo-size of 100, there would be a rate of adlection of 5 decurions per year on average, and thus a ninth man roughly every two years.

64 CSRA nos. 345–348.

65 Cf. Charles-Picard, Civilisation, p. 119.

66 At Cirta there was no differentiation between the summa honoraria for the decurionate and that for the magistracies (CSRA, nos. 345, 349). At Thubursicu Numidarum, the charge for the decurionate was the same as that for the aedileship, but the charge for the flaminate was half as much again (CSRA, nos. 346, 353, 370).

67 C. 12058; 20144 + unpublished section; ILS 5476; AE 1949, 40.

68 ‘Pensiones plurimas ad quartam usque ob decurionatum dependitne?’ (referring to Concordia), Fronto, , ad Amicos II, 7, 6Google Scholar (ed. van den Hout, 1954, I, p. 182).

69 See the range of values given in CSRA, nos. 345–379, to which ad d HS5,000 as the summa honoraria for the flaminate at Mustis in Zeugitana in A.D. 238, from an unpublished inscription copied in situ, October 1962. Haywood (Frank, , Econ. Survey IV, p. 77Google Scholar) is mistaken about this office.

70 E. Albertini, L'Afrique du Nord dans l'Histoire, p. 66; Charles-Picard, Civilisation, pp. 44–59.

71 Whitaker's Almanack 1962, under Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya.

72 Cf.J. Bradford, Ancient Landscapes 1957, p. 203: ‘The population of Tunisia … is probably still below its total in the best Roman period.’

73 Charles-Picard, Civilisation, p. 51; p. 370, n. 29.

74 Josephus, , Bell. Iud. II, 385Google Scholar; cf. Johnson, in Frank, , Econ. Survey II, p. p245Google Scholar.

75 Charles-Picard, Civilisation, p. 70.

76 Broughton, in Frank, , Econ. Survey IV, p. 815Google Scholar; Philostratus speaks of 500 cities in Asia (Vit. Soph. II, 3).

77 Tertullian, de anima, 30.

78 See my article cited in n. 61 above.

79 Cf. also Jones, A. H. M., Recueils de la Société Jean Bodin vii, 1955, pp. 167–168Google Scholar.

80 The rules of the curia Iovis codified at Simitthus in A.D. 185 mirror rather crudely those of the funeral college at Lanuvium founded in A.D. 133, whose members included slaves (ILS 6824, 7212).

81 CSRA p. 73 and Addendum; the original hypothesis put forward on pp. 73–74 (suggesting the figure of 100 per curia) is probably mistaken.

82 Cf. chronological list of towns yielding specified gifts, CSRA, Table I, pp. 76–77.

83 CSRA Table II (left-hand column), p. 77.

84 The number of surviving inscriptions from African statues of Commodus is so small as to be almost negligible, although the rate of private building in his reign was very high (CSRA Table II, p. 77): plainly statues were more easily disposed of after a damnatio memoriae than were buildings, for obvious reasons.