This project aims at offering a fresh study of public generosity and benefactors in the late Roman and early Byzantine periods in the Eastern Mediterranean as a way to advance three key debates which feature prominently in today’s study of the late Roman world. Positioned at the intersection of these debates - the ‘decline’ of the late antique city (urbanism); governance in late antique cities; and processes of Christianization, including the increasing grip of the Church on late antique society -, this project is perfectly fit to draw from these debates as well as feed them. Observing that archaeological evidence for the continued care for late antique cities clashes with historical insights into the government of municipalities, this proposal raises the hypothesis whether we can explain the continuous efforts to repair, modify and/or construct (new units of) urban infrastructure in the fourth, fifth and even sixth centuries through the lens of benefactors, who are still engaged with the public maintenance of their cities as their predecessors in the Roman imperial period