Certain sums were set aside for this purpose, differing in amount from time to time; thus in 217 B.C., for the Ludi Romani, on which up to that time 200,000 sesterces (L16,600) had been spent, the sum of 333,333-1/3 sest.

was voted, because the number three had a sacred signification, and the moment was one of extreme peril for the State.[476] On one occasion only before the end of the Republic do we hear of any public collection for the ludi; in 186 B.C.Pliny tells us that every one was so well off, owing no doubt to the enormous amount of booty brought from the war in the East, that all subscribed some small sum for the games of Scipio Asiaticus.[477] There was no doubt a growing demand for magnificence in the shows, and thus it came about that the amount provided by the State had to be supplemented.

But the usual way of supplementing it was for the magistrate in charge of the ludi to pay what he could out of his own purse, or to get his friends to help him; and as all the ludi except the Apollinares were in charge of the aediles, it became the practice for these, if they aspired to reach the praetorship and consulship, to vie with each other in the recklessness of their expenditure.

As early as 176 B.C.the senate had tried to limit this personal expenditure, for Ti.

Sempronius Gracchus as aedile had that year spent enormous sums on his ludi, and had squeezed money (it does not appear how) out of the subject populations of Italy, as well as the provinces, to entertain the Roman people.[478] But naturally no decrees of the senate on such matters were likely to have permanent effect; the great families whose younger members aimed at popularity in this way were far too powerful to be easily checked.