Poverty and Philanthropy:
The Inscriptional Evidence from the Fourth Century CE

Jinyu Liu (DePauw University)

Ever since Paul Veyne’s seminal work Le pain et le cirque (1976), the nature of ancient philanthropy (euergetism and liberalitas), which is widely attested in inscriptions, has been extensively explored. Scholars have reached consensuses that benefactions in the Graeco-Roman cities were not directed at the poorer segment of the society but at the citizen body at large and that the benefactors were not motivated by altruistic goals but by the desire of self-promotion. There has been a general tendency to emphasize the discontinuity between ancient philanthropy and Christian charity. Recently, Susan Holman (2001) and Peter Brown (2002)’s works have lent further support to this differentiation by bringing into focus such topics as the development of Christian rhetoric concerning poverty, invention of “the poor” and their acquisition of cosmic significance in late antiquity.

Despite these superb contributions to a profound understanding of the rise of Christian charity, there are still many missing links in our understanding of the transition from pagan philanthropy to Christian charity particularly on the micro-level.  How, for example, did different ideas and practices meet, clash, or mutually influence each other in the transitional period of the fourth century CE? To shed light on this question, this paper will provide a focused study of a small sample of Latin inscriptions which present a mixture of Christian language of salvation, traditional language of benefaction and honorific practices. One such inscription (AE 1904,108=ILS 8376=FIRA III 43, 370 AD) came from Praeneste, where the spread of Christianity was well underway in the late second and third century CE. The broader significance of  such an investigation lies in its outstanding potential to contribute to a better understanding of the roots of Western philanthropy, and to an ongoing discourse on the ways in which philanthropy as a social phenomenon was conditioned by historical and cultural contexts.