layed a
small part in a city election under the Empire. It must have been
demoralizing, too, to a Pompeian or a citizen of Salona to vote for a
candidate, not because he would make the most honest and able duumvir or
aedile among the men canvassing for the office, but because he had the
longest purse. How our sense of propriety would be shocked if the newly
elected mayor of Hartford or Montclair should give a gala performance in
the local theatre to his fellow-citizens or pay for a free exhibition by a
circus troupe! But perhaps we should overcome our scruples and go, as the
people of Pompeii did, and perhaps our consciences would be completely
salved if the aforesaid mayor proceeded to lay a new pavement in Main
Street, to erect a fountain on the Green, or stucco the city hall.
Naturally only rich men could be elected to office in Roman towns, and in
this respect the same advantages and disadvantages attach to the Roman
system as we find in the practice which the English have followed up to
the present time of paying no salary to members of the House of Commons,
and in our own practice of letting our ambassadors meet a large part of
their legitimate expenses.

The large gifts made to their native towns by rich men elected to public
office set an example which private citizens of means followed in an
extraordinary way. Sometimes they gave statues, or baths, or fountains, or
porticos, and sometimes they provided for games, or plays, or dinners, or
lottery tickets. Perhaps nothing can convey to our minds so clear an
impression of the motives of the donors, the variety and number of the
gifts, and their probable effect on the character of the people as to read
two or three specimens of these dedicatory inscriptions. The citizens of
Lanuvium, near Rome, set up a monument in honor of a certain Valerius,
"because he cleaned out and restored the water courses for a distance of
three miles, put the pipes in position again, and restored the two baths
for men and the bath for women, all at his own expense."[96] A citizen of
Sinuessa leaves this record: "Lucius Papius Pollio, the duumvir, to his
father, Lucius Papius. Cakes and mead to all the citizens of Sinuessa and
Caedici; gladiatorial games and a dinner for the people of Sinuessa and the
Papian clan; a monument at a cost of 12,000 sesterces."[97] Such a
catholic provision to suit all tastes should certainly have served to keep
his father from being forgotten. A citizen of Bene