The Augustales shared with the members of the Curia the heavy burdens which public sentiment then imposed upon the rich. Direct taxation for municipal purposes was in the first century almost unknown. The municipalities often possessed landed property, mines, or quarries. Capua is said to have had distant possessions in the island of Crete.(1242) The towns also derived an income from the public baths,(1243) from the rent of shops and stalls in the public places, from the supply of water to private houses or estates, and from port dues and tolls. A very considerable item of revenue must have been found in the fee which all decurions, Augustales, and magistrates paid on entering on their office or dignity. Since the reign of Nerva, the towns had the right of receiving legacies and bequests.(1244) And, on the occurrence of any desolating calamity, an earthquake or a fire, the emperor was never slow or niggardly in giving relief. In the year 53 A.D. the town of Bologna received an imperial subsidy of about £83,000.(1245) The cities of Asia were again and again relieved after desolating earthquakes.(1246)
With regard to municipal expenditure, the budget was free from many public charges which burden our modern towns. The higher offices were unpaid, and in fact demanded large generosity from their holders. The lower functions were discharged, to a great extent, by communal slaves. The care or construction of streets, markets, and public buildings, although theoretically devolving on the community through their aediles, was, as a matter of fact, to an enormous extent undertaken by private persons. The city treasury must have often incurred a loss in striving to provide corn and oil for the citizens at a limited price, and the authorities were often reviled, as at Trimalchio’s banquet, for not doing more to cheapen the necessaries of life.(1247) Although our information as to municipal expenditure on education and medical treatment is scanty, it is pretty clear that the community was, in the Antonine age, beginning to recognise a duty in making provision for both. Vespasian first gave a public endowment to professors of rhetoric in the capital.(1248) The case of Como, described in Pliny’s Letters, was probably not an isolated one. Finding that the youth of that town were compelled to resort to Milan for higher instruction, Pliny, as we have seen, proposed to the parents to establish by general subscription a public school, and he offered himself to contribute one-third of the sum required for the foundation, the rest to be provided by the townsfolk, who were to have the management and selection of teachers in their hands.(1249) The Greek cities had public physicians 500 years before Christ,(1250) and Marseilles and some of the Gallic towns in Strabo’s day employed both teachers and doctors at the public expense.(1251) The regular organisation of public medical attendance in the provinces dates from Antoninus Pius, who required the towns of Asia to have a certain number of physicians among their salaried officers.(1252) The title _Archiater_, which in the Theodosian Code designates an official class in the provinces as well as at Rome, is found in inscriptions of Beneventum and Pisaurum belonging to an earlier date.(1253) But these departments of municipal expenditure were hardly yet fully organised in the age of the Antonines, and were probably not burdensome. The great field of expenditure lay in the basilicas, temples, amphitheatres, baths, and pavements, whose vanishing remains give us a glimpse of one of the most brilliant ages in history.