In the last age of the Republic it had become a necessary part of the aedile's duty to supplement the State's contribution, and as a rule he had to borrow heavily, and thus to involve himself financially quite early in his political career.

In his _de Officiis_,[479] writing of the virtue of _liberalitas_, Cicero gives a list of men who had been munificent as aediles, including the elder and younger Crassus, Mucius Scaevola (a man, he says, of great self-restraint), the two Lueulli, Hortensius, and Silanus; and adds that in his own consulship P.Lentulus outdid all his predecessors, and was imitated by Scaurus in 58 B.C.[480] Cicero himself had to undertake the Ludi Romani, Megalenses, and Florales in his aedileship; how he managed it financially he does not tell us.[481] Caesar undoubtedly borrowed largely, for his expenditure as aedile was enormous,[482] and he had no private fortune of any considerable amount.
Our friend Caelius Rufus was elected curule aedile while he was in correspondence with Cicero, and his letters give us a good idea of the condition of the mind of an ambitious young man who is bent on making the most of himself.

He is in a continual state of fidget about his games; he has set his heart on getting panthers to exhibit and hunt, and urges Cicero in letter after letter to procure them for him in Cilicia.

"It will be a disgrace to you," he writes in one of them, "that Patiscus has sent ten panthers to Curio, and that you should not send me ten times as many."[483] The provincial governor, he urges, can do what he pleases; let Cicero send for some men of Cibyra, let him write to Pamphylia, where they are most abundant, and he will get what he wants, or rather what Caelius wants.

Even after a letter full of the most important accounts of public business, including copies of senatus consulta (ad Fam.viii.