ROMAN URBAN TOPOGRAPHY in Britain and the western Empire

ILAf 528), and the restoration of the temple of Fortuna by
the city (CIL, 8, 26548).
The main building development of Thugga was now
complete, after two or more centuries. From this point on,
following the serious upheavals in Africa in the late 230s,
there was much less building in African cities. But there
was a revival under Gallienus, and at least three more
buildings were erected. One was a second set of baths, the
Licinian baths (ILTun 1500). The dedication does not
survive and we do not know how they were paid for. This
impressive building was no doubt put up to celebrate
Thugga’s receiving colonial status from Gallienus (ILS
9018). We know that private generosity continued even in
these comparatively dark years of the mid 3rd century. A
woman donor, Botria Fortunata, paid for a temple of
Tellus (ILAf 530). An equestrian benefactor gave a
portico and a large cash sum to the city a few years later, in
264 (CIL, 8, 26559; ILTun 1416). The inscriptions are
then silent again for another two or three decades, after
which we find building activity starting once more under
Diocletian. A temple of the Genius Patriae was adorned
with private money (CIL, 8, 26472), and the city itself
built a portico of the temple of Mater Deum (ILAf 531).
This very condensed version of Thugga’s building
history shows a number of things. Firstly, Thugga started
acquiring buildings very early, and was still receiving new
ones even under Diocletian; the overall span approaches
three centuries. Secondly, the source of financing was
overwhelmingly the pockets of private benefactors, not
the coffers of the community. We can associate this with
the fact that Thugga lacked proper municipal institutions
for most of the period. Payments by magistrates for
office-holding were not being made on the large scale that
must have happened in African cities with fully Roman
institutions. But even after the grant of municipal status at
the start of the 3rd century, Thugga went on acquiring
buildings which were paid for by private generosity.
Perhaps by this date private generosity had become so
deeply engrained in the ruling class that there was little
question of leaving the building programme in the hands
of the city. Perhaps also the resources of the community as
such always remained too small to give it buildings of
much note. The wealthy classes who lived in the splendid
villas in the town’s best residential district may have
wanted to see something better than the buildings which
the town itself could have afforded from municipal funds.
Whatever the reasons, the building history of Thugga
demonstrates to a remarkable degree the power of a small
community to attract wealthy benefactors.
But Thugga’s history is not the history of every African
town, still less the history of every town in other parts of
the Empire. If we turn to look at the ratio of private to
public financing in some other African towns, a rather
different picture emerges. A cross-section of buildings at
Thamugadi in Numidia, now eastern Algeria, in the
period up to the Severi shows a clear majority as being paid
for by the city from its own funds, not by private
benefactors. 8
There are conspicuous differences between Thamugadi
and Thugga. One is that Thamugadi was considerably
larger. To take a crude index, whereas Thugga had two
sets of public baths, Thamugadi had four (Duncan-Jones
1974, 81, n 19). Another difference was that Thamugadi
was a full Roman community from the start. Founded by
31
Duncan-Jones: Who paid for public buildings in Roman cities?
Trajan in 100, it was a Roman colony of veterans from
Legio III Augusta. As a civil community it was a Roman
town with a flamen, duoviri, aediles, and quaestors (ILS
6841). 9
There was a system of summae honorariae for
offices. We know that the flamen paid 10,000 sesterces,
quite a large sum, for his office, while a duovir paid 2000
(Duncan-Jones 1982, 110, no 366a; 109, no 356). Income
from this source must have given a firm basis to the town’s
finances. Since Thamugadi was founded as a new colony,
there was almost certainly also an endowment of town land
which would have been a further source of revenue. l0
Thamugadi was able to put up monuments considerably
grander than most of those at Thugga, usually
without resorting to private benefactors. The Capitol for
example was much larger than the one at Thugga, having
22 columns compared with only 6 at Thugga (Boeswillwald
et al 1905, 178, 161). Of the dated buildings at
Thamugadi listed by Romanelli in the period up to
Caracalla, almost all were paid for by the town (see note 8).
There were nevertheless rich benefactors here also. A
market was given in the late Severan period by the eques M
Plotius Faustus (Boeswillwald et al 1905, 183), and a
library was given in the mid 3rd century by a senator, at a
cost of 400,000 sesterces (ibid, 297; ILS 9362 = Duncan-
Jones 1982, 91, no 38 and note; 1967, 170, no 62).
These gifts show that Thamugadi did not lack a ruling
class rich enough to make major benefactions. Nevertheless,
the dominant pattern is that the town was mainly able
to put up a very large complement of public buildings
from its own official sources of income. This pattern
probably obtained also in other veteran colonies, and it
probably existed in other African towns of pre-Roman
origin where Roman institutions had been introduced by
the grant of municipal or colonial status. But many
African towns did not have proper Roman status and were
either civitates or pagi without full municipal rights. It
might be tempting to think that these would have
belonged to the same category as Thugga. But the fact that
a community lacked a Roman constitution did not
automatically mean that it would have had citizens
wealthy and generous enough to pay for a large building
programme themselves. There is some reason to think
that Thugga, perhaps because of its Carthage connection
and its tax-free status, was exceptionally lucky in its
number of benefactors.
Probably there was no such thing as a normal African
city, but rather a small spectrum of different types. Each
would have had its characteristic financial structure and
the pattern of building development that this structure
dictated. But if we look for an artificial average, that
average seems to lie between the extremes represented by
Thugga and Thamugadi. An analysis of the sample of
more than 100 buildings dated between Trajan and
Caracalla in Romanelli’s lists (excluding material from
Thugga and Thamugadi) shows publicly-financed building
as 42% of the whole and private as 58% (Table 1). This
is closer to the Thugga pattern than to that of Thamugadi.
But the sample of 115 buildings is not large, and in broad
terms it suggests that public and private financing were
roughly equal in importance.
But there is a definite chronological shift. Evidence
from the start of the 2nd century shows only a fifth of the
building as being paid for by the city. A century later the
proportion has risen to a half (Table 1). This very marked