emergence of cash distributions in the civic euergetism of the Roman imperial east

Individualised distributions of money by civic benefactors, in the form of coinage, were a common feature of public life in Greece and Asia Minor under Roman imperial rule, from the 1st to 3rd centuries CE. However, the chronological specificity of this practice, as opposed to the distribution of other types of commodities (e.g. grain, oil), has not often been noticed. This paper firstly suggests that public euergetic distributions of coinage were virtually unknown before the early 1st century CE, before relating their emergence from this point to several factors inherent to the transformation of the Roman state at this time: the influence on the local elite of imperial ideology, particularly in cash handouts carried out at Rome, and developments in the monetary and fiscal history of the region. The rise of cash handouts thus presents an insight into the impact of Roman domination on local cultural practice.