euergetism

euergetism, in Greco-Roman antiquity, the phenomenon of elite benefaction to towns and communities through voluntary gifts, such as public buildings or endowments for various forms of festival or distribution. The phenomenon is regarded by many historians as critical to understanding how city-states functioned in the Hellenistic Greek east and throughout the wider Mediterranean world in the Roman republican and imperial eras.

Gift giving was a well-established aristocratic prerogative from very ancient times in the Greek world (the Greek mainland as well as Greek-speaking communities across the eastern Mediterranean). It was ill-suited to Athenian democracy but became well established from the late 4th century bce under the Hellenistic kingdoms that succeeded Alexander the Great, and it continued to form an important element of civic life as the influence and then the imperial presence of Rome came to dominate the area. As Rome also colonized the less-urbanized west, a very similar system of rule by gift-giving local elites was developed there.

Euergetism contributed to the physical development and sociopolitical stability of ancient cities. It bound local elites into a system of reciprocity with their communities and also allowed them to model their conduct on that of hegemonic powers—at first the Hellenistic kings honoured as liberators and benefactors, and later the Roman emperors, frequent recipients of divine cult in the east.

Euergetism, therefore, acted as a system that mediated wealth and status differences, enabling the spread of urbanism and enriching the lives of citizens. However, it was not conspicuously motivated by what would now be regarded as conventional charitable or philanthropic motives; seldom, for instance, does one hear of gifts having been aimed specifically at the relief of poverty. Indeed, euergetism tended to perpetuate inequalities of wealth and power by entrenching a strongly hierarchical social system with a limited political class. In this respect, it can be compared to other systems of power brokerage in the ancient world, such as slavery and patronage, which also tended to reinforce a strongly hierarchical status quo. By fostering a spirit of competition in gift giving within and between towns, and by facilitating the subordination of previously autonomous city-states to successive larger kingdoms and empires, euergetism also had a wider political dimension.