A few free libraries are supported by donations and subscriptions or charities.
Collecting donations for a charity in the street is a very familiar form of charity fundraising.
Among the first of these benefactions was the great gymnasium of Ptolemy, built in the neighbourhood of the Agora about 250 B.C. Successive princes of the dynasty of Pergamum interested themselves in the adorn western entrance being the well-known Doric portico of Athena Archegetis with an inscription recording its erection from donations of Julius Caesar and Augustus.
The Drapers' Company has given £15,50o towards building a library, in addition to previous donations to the engineering department and the scholarship fund of the college.
Having won popularity by donations to poorer citizens, he took advantage of a festival of Hera, which was being celebrated outside the walls, to make himself master of the city (about 535 B.C.).
