My dissertation investigates how Roman cities generated, managed, and redistributed wealth through their own fiscal institutions. Traditional scholarship has emphasized imperial taxation and elite benefaction as the twin pillars of Roman finance; this study instead highlights the municipal treasury (aerarium) as a third, autonomous sphere of economic activity. Drawing on inscriptions, papyri, and legal texts, it reconstructs how cities derived income from public land leases (ager vectigalis), urban property rents, civic loans, and interest-bearing endowments. Through epigraphic and quantitative analysis, the project redefines Roman cities as active fiscal agents whose careful management of public wealth sustained both civic and imperial stability.