bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
A Collection of Roman Legal Maxims on Papyrus
Authors: Schulz Fritz
Published: May 2006

More than ten years ago—in vol. iii of the Studi in onore di Pietro Bonfante (Milan, 1930)—Angelo Segrè published four pages of a papyrus-codex of the fifth or sixth century A.D. which are of considerable importance for all scholars interested in the study of Roman Law during the fifth century. As far as I can see, however, no one has dealt with the text during the last ten years. The reason for this lack of interest probably lies in the somewhat unattractive form of the editio princeps. Segrè's edition is obviously of a temporary nature. It contains an apographum of the much mutilated text and a few explanatory notes. Segrè neither gave a transcription of the text, nor did he attempt to fill in the gaps. He believed—wrongly, as we shall see—the missing part of the text columns to be very much greater than that in our possession, and therefore thought it wise to refrain from any reconstruction. In fact his edition gives us not a single complete line of the text. It is also regrettable that Segrè did not include a photograph of at least a small part of the papyrus. In the following brief notes I wish to make some suggestions to a future editor; for a new and revised edition is indispensable. Further, I wish to show that even the text of the present edition deserves the attention of students of Roman Law, who should not postpone its study till the publication of a better edition.
The Roman Evacuation of Britain
Authors: Schultz H. Stefan
Published: May 2006

Some apology may seem to be required for re-opening a question that has already been discussed by so many first-rate scholars. If so, it must be found in the hope that an examination of the points I propose to raise may possibly throw fresh light on the problem as a whole, and so bring about a greater measure of agreement as to the true date of the so-called evacuation of Britain.

To begin with, I should like to make it clear that, in my opinion, there must have been in fact something like a ‘departure of the Romans.’ It is difficult to see what justification there is for Haverfield's view that this departure did not mean any great departure of persons, Roman or other, from the island. If that had been so, we should have to suppose that all the Romans who were left, whether private individuals or military and government officials, were absorbed into the new régime, out of which there gradually developed a state that became England. Everything, however, indicates that there was a distinct break between Britain as a Roman province and Britain as it was under its Saxon rulers. It is almost a contradictio in adiecto to say : ‘No one went. Some persons failed to come.’ Why did they fail to come ? Obviously because nothing remained for them to go to. Thus the only point to be determined is exactly when this severance of the far northern province from the official western government took place. Was it in 407 or 410, as has usually been supposed, or was it at some later time ?
The Pax Caudina
Authors: Salmon E. T.
Published: May 2006

The circumstances surrounding one of the most grievous disgraces which ever befel a Roman army are familiar. In 321 B.C. the so called Second Samnite War was at its height. The Roman consuls, while at Calatia with their armies, received news that the enemy forces were in Apulia under the new Samnite general, Gavius Pontius. Pushing forward, either in the hope of winning a decisive victory on the Apulian plains, or in order to relieve the pressure on the allied city of Luceria, they advanced into a valley which had but two exits: on trying to get out of this defile, they found both entrances blocked. Doubtless the army made attempts to fight its way out of the encircling Samnite ring, but they proved unavailing. To avert death by starvation, the consuls surrendered. Pontius, being in a position to dictate his own terms, demanded that Roman garrisons should be withdrawn from territory which the Samnites regarded as theirs, while the Romans were not to re-open the war: in addition he took six hundred Roman knights as hostages, disarmed the Roman army and sent it ‘under the yoke.’
The Temple of Castor and Pollux in Rome
Authors: Ashby Thomas
Published: May 2006

A remark which I made in regard to Tenney Frank's article on the first and second temples of Castor at Rome, to the effect that its conclusions are based on inaccurate drawings, seems to call for some justification on my part. I may say that I had fully intended to discuss the matter in print long before this, and that it was only the impossibility of offering a more satisfactory solution that prevented me from doing so. But, if the truth is ever to be reached in this difficult problem, we must first clear away mistakes and misunderstandings; and it is with this object in view that I am publishing this note at the present time.

A careful examination of the existing remains seems to establish the following points with regard to the earliest temple. (As I have not been able to give a fresh series of drawings, I have adhered closely to the order of Frank's argument.) The first point of divergence is in regard to the interpretation of the walls e and d. The former is no less than 3·24 metres in thickness, the latter 1·54 m.; and they are supposed each to carry a line of four wooden columns only 0·77 m. in diameter. The adaptation of means to ends is entirely out of all proportion.
The Imperial Finances under Domitian, Nerva and Trajan
Authors: Syme Ronald
Published: May 2006

The work of the spade and the use of common sense have done much to mitigate the influence of Tacitus and Pliny and redeem the memory of Domitian from infamy or oblivion. But much remains to be done. The policy of this able and intelligent Emperor has been vindicated on the frontiers, but is still, in the matter of finance, condemned as extravagant and ruinous. Not only is this the view of those who, with the warrant of the senatorial tradition, see little in his reign but the dark night of despotism before the dawn of a new era of felicity—even a judicious historian like M. Gsell reproaches Domitian for not having done enough to restore the finances of the Empire, compromised as they had already been by Titus. So the charge is not baseless: and it is more with sorrow than with surprise that we read at the beginning of M. Carcopino's elegant and ingenious paper, Les richesses des Daces et le redressement de l'empire romain, the emphatic statement ‘c' est un fait reconnu de tous que Domitien laissa derrière lui une situation financière obérée.’
Philip V and Lemnos
Authors: Fraser P. M. , McDonald A. H.
Published: May 2006

The letter of Philip V to the Athenian cleruchs in Hephaestia on Lemnos was discovered in 1938 during the Italian excavations of the Cabirion there. It was published by Dr. Silvio Accame in Riv. Fil. LXIX (1941), 179 ff., and repeated by Robert, Rev. des Études Grecques, 1944, 221, no. 150. The stone is now in the Epigraphical Museum in Athens (EM 13148). It has been damaged since its original publication.

The revised text of the inscription given here is based on a study of the stone in Athens by Fraser in 1951, and on a combined study of the squeeze and a photograph of the squeeze (pl. X, 2) by both of us.
The Tablettes Albertini and the Value of the solidus in the fifth and sixth centuries A.D.
Authors: Grierson Philip
Published: May 2006

The discovery in 1928 of what are now known as the Tablettes Albertini threw a flood of new light on economic conditions in late Roman imperial times. The Tablettes consist of a potful of legal documents, written on wooden tablets and dating from the last three years of the reign of the Vandal king Gunthamund (484–496), which were found at some not precisely ascertainable spot on the frontier between Algeria and Tunis. They include the details of a marriage settlement, a contract for the sale of a slave, a number of deeds relating to the sale of olive trees and other agricultural property, and a list of personal names with sums of money noted against each. Many of the tablets are no more than fragments and their decipherment and interpretation involve problems of great complexity. Two of them, and an assessment of the extent and value of the whole collection, were published in 1930 by Professor Eugène Albertini, of the University of Algiers, and he continued to collect material for their definitive study up to his death in 1941. In 1952 they were elaborately published by four French scholars, who subjected every aspect of their material features and their contents—epigraphy, language, law, economic significance—to minute analysis and review.
Caesar's cursus and the intervals between Offices
Authors: Badian E.
Published: May 2006

The puzzle of C. Julius Caesar's date of birth and cursus honorum has never been satisfactorily solved. The facts can be stated quite simply. All but two of the sources referring to his age imply 100 B.C. as the date of his birth, and the date of his quaestorship agrees with this; yet he held the senior magistracies two years earlier than, according to what we know of the normal cursus, that date would allow. Are nearly all the sources wrong (as Mommsen thought) ? Or did Caesar at some time get a special dispensation, which no one has bothered to mention (as the majority opinion would now hold) ? Or is there another explanation of a more general kind, fitting Caesar into a class of exceptions (as Afzelius proposed) ?
Expectatio Corfiniensis
Authors: Bailey D. R. Shackleton
Published: May 2006

Ancient historians must be thankful for what they get; but it seems a pity that the fall of Corfinium in mid-February, 49 B.C., should be the best recorded episode in Roman warfare, so far as contemporary documents are concerned. Regrets apart, however, the affair is of interest, psychological and dramatic as well as austerely military; and I think the relevant letters in Cicero's correspondence will repay further investigation. ‘quae qui legat non multum desideret historiam contextam’—if he reads perceptively.

O. E. Schmidt arranged these letters, which take up a large part of the eighth book Ad Atticum, into a narrative, and I do not propose to do that work over again. My purpose is confined to points on which I think I have something new to say. But it may be well to begin with a brief reminder of the whereabouts of the principal persons involved.
The Settlement of the Barbarians in Southern Gaul
Authors: Thompson E. A.
Published: May 2006

In 418 the Patrician Constantius recalled the Visigoths from Spain and settled them in the province of Aquitanica Secunda (on the western seaboard of Gaul between the mouth of the Garonne and that of the Loire) and in some neighbouringcivitates. Where these neighbouring cities lay is not certain. One of them was Toulouse in Narbonensis Prima, and this became the capital of the Visigothic kings. Salvian writing in 440–1 seems to imply that the Visigoths controlled Novempopulana as well as Aquitanica II. That is an exaggeration, but it may well be that the additional cities granted to the Visigoths over and above Aquitanica II lay immediately south of the Garonne. And this is in some measure confirmed by the fact that in 439 Orientius, Bishop of Auch, acted as the Visigothic king's ambassador to Litorius and Aëtius. We may conclude that in addition to Aquitanica the Visigothic kings controlled a strip of land south of the Garonne running from Toulouse to the ocean, but this did not extend to the Pyrenees. Moreover, they did not control any land north of the Loire. Whether they allowed themselves to be dispersed uniformly over the whole of their territory or whether they were concentrated in more or less dense settlements in restricted parts of their new kingdom is obscure.
Macedonia and Illyria (217–167 B.C.)
Authors: May J. M. F.
Published: May 2006

The early history of the coastal lowland to the south and south-east of Lake Scutari (Lacus Labeatis), through which the Bojana (Barbanna) and Drin (Drilo) rivers find their way to the sea, is not recorded, although archaeology suggests that this region, an obvious point of departure for penetration of the interior, was developed earlier by Greeks and played a greater part in their affairs than the writers of antiquity alone would allow us to believe. It contains two sites of local strategic importance, both admirably adapted to ancient settlement. First, the prominent sugar-loaf hill rising sharply above the village of Lesh on the south bank of the Drin to a height of 186 m., to overlook the low ground about the mouth of the river and to command a convenient point for a crossing. Second, the natural acropolis formed by Scutari citadel, enclosed on three sides by rivers and dominating access from the coastal lowland to the lake.
The Problem of the Early Roman Coinage
Authors: Milne J. G.
Published: May 2006

Messrs. Mattingly and Robinson gave a comprehensive account of the theories which have been propounded by numismatists from the time of Eckhel onwards with reference to the history of the earliest coinages of Rome in a paper in the Numismatic Chronicle for 1938: in this they summarized the points on which they claimed that general agreement had been reached as follows. These points are (1) that there is a long chapter of Roman coinage prior to the ‘X’ denarius (i.e. the silver nummus with the mark of value X): (2) that of the silver in that chapter the ROMANO issues come before the ROMA issues and the quadrigatus (i.e. the didrachms bearing on the reverse the legend ROMANO or ROMA): (3) that the victoriate is a drachm of the light series of didrachms: (4) that the small bronze coins associated with ROMANO-ROMA silver represent token coinage: (5) that the bars are approximately contemporary with the first Aes Grave: (6) that the ROMA silver and the light ‘Latin’ Aes Grave run in parallel series: (7) that as the ‘X’ denarius is certainly contemporary with the sextantal as, all heavier asses must be looked for earlier: (8) that the quadrigatus didrachm and the Janus-prow as are more obviously connected with the later coinage of Rome than the Romano-Campanian silver and the ‘Latin’ Aes Grave: and, probably, (9) that the ‘X’ denarius was not struck till many years after 269 B.C.
The Fifth Campaign of Agricola
Authors: Miller S. N.
Published: May 2006

In September, 1938, Dr. J. K. St. Joseph, in retracing the ‘Roman way’ described by Roy as ‘leading from the neighbourhood of Lanark … towards the gorge of Loudon-hill, and so into Airshire’, identified the site of a reputed Roman ‘camp’ on a small plateau overlooking the ‘gorge’ on the south. It was at once arranged with the Glasgow Archaeological Society that trial trenches should be dug under his supervision. These proved that the enclosure was, in fact, a Roman fort, and produced some fragments of pottery which suggested that the site had been occupied in the Flavian as well as the Antonine period. There the matter had to rest for the duration of the war, and it was September, 1946, before Dr. St. Joseph's excavations for the Glasgow Society could be resumed. It is too soon yet for a coherent plan of the complicated remains to be laid down, but enough has been done to show that an Antonine fort with an interior area of between two and three acres had been preceded by at least two earlier enclosures ; and a substantial collection of datable pottery, produced partly by these excavations and partly by the encroachment of a gravel-quarry upon the north corner of the site, includes a considerable proportion of Flavian pieces—estimated at about one-third by Miss Anne Robertson, who is in charge of the small finds.

The significance of this for the history of the early occupation of Scotland is dealt with in a report on various excavations and surveys which will be published soon by the Glasgow Society. The purpose of this paper is to draw attention to the guidance which the discoveries at Loudoun Hill seem to offer for the interpretation of Tacitus' account of one of the campaigns of Agricola which preceded the occupation.
Pliny's Laurentine Villa
Authors: Buren A. W. Van
Published: May 2006

Mr. Clifford Pember's enthusiastic and attractive presentation of his reconstruction of this seaside residence (Pliny, Ep. ii, 17), in the Illustrated London News, no. 5653 (23 August, 1947), 220–1, together with his skilfully executed model now exhibited at the Ashmolean Museum, is sure to render good service to Roman studies: partly through directing the attention of the larger public to one of the most significant literary and administrative personalities of the age of Trajan, and partly as an affirmation of faith in the possibility of using the indications in the famous letter for the purpose of a reconstruction, not only graphic but plastic, of the epistolographer's beloved retreat: a reaction from the extreme view of some recent scholars, e.g. A. M. Guillemin, that the letter in question is so profoundly steeped in the conventions of the literary genre to which it belongs as to defy practical interpretation—that it is less a description of an actual villa than a gesture of politeness towards a friend.
A Curse Tablet from Nottinghamshire
Authors: Turner Eric G.
Published: May 2006

This tablet was found on 10th December, 1960, by Mr. Roger Wilson of Thrumpton, Notts, after ploughing had taken place on the lower slope of Red Hill in the parish of Ratcliffe-on-Soar, Notts. Roman pottery, bone counters and other objects have been found on Red Hill, which appears to be a Roman site. It is at the junction of the rivers Trent and Soar (where also Nottinghamshire and Leicestershire meet). The tablet was folded roughly into three when found. The material, discoloured by corrosion and of a browny copper colour, proved on analysis to be essentially lead (in an impure state). Its maximum measurements are 8·4 cm. in height, 5·7 cm. in width. Both sides have been lightly incised, perhaps with a needle, with Latin cursive writing. The hand is regularly formed and clear and shows skill on the part of the scribe. To judge from parallels from Egypt, it should be assigned to the end of the second or the early part of the third century A.D. For the earlier limit compare the receipt P. Lond. 730 (plate in Écriture Latine 26) of A.D. 167; and for the later, P. Oxy. VIII, 1114, a declaration of inheritance of A.D. 237 (plate ibid., pl. 7). Both of these, however, show a slope to the right, whereas in this tablet the slope is to the left in the older manner.
Tax Collecting in Byzantine Egypt
Authors: Boak A. E. R.
Published: May 2006

In this article there is presented a small group of hitherto unpublished tax receipts from Egypt which belong to A.D. 309 and 314. They come from the archive of Aurelios Isidoros, a farmer and occasional local office-holder of the village of Karanis, and with the other papyri of the same collection are in the possession of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. The chief interest which these texts hold for students of Byzantine Egypt lies in the picture which they provide of the tax-collecting process and of the handling of government grain in Egypt under the tax system introduced by Diocletian, and in particular the new information which they furnish on the matter of supplementary fees and transportation charges.

The receipts of the year 309 are for deliveries of barley; that of 314 is for the payment of money for the village quota of clothing requisitioned for military purposes. We shall take up the barley receipts first, and then that for the price of the clothing.
The Emperor's Divine Comes
Authors: Nock Arthur Darby
Published: May 2006

No one has done more than Norman Baynes to clarify our thinking on the later Roman Empire and its spiritual atmosphere, to dispel the mirage of ‘Orientalism’, and to emphasize the sober continuity of Roman thought. So he has stressed the emperor's conscious humanity and dependence upon the supernatural as against excessive inferences from the language of ruler-worship. May I offer to him a few remarks on a phenomenon which might seem to tell on the other side, the description of this or that deity as comes Augusti?

(i) Under Commodus we find a coin-type of 186–9, perhaps of about 189, HERCVLI C[OMIT]I. After a considerable interval SOLI (INVICTO) COM(I)TI (AVGVSTI) appears on issues of Gallienus and Probus. Gallienus has also SERAPIDI COMITI AVG and Probus has Minerva (unnamed, but recognizable) as COMES AVG and COMITI PROBI AVG as well as Hercules (unnamed) with the latter legend. The emperors of Gaul employed the legend; Postumus for Hercules, Neptunus, Serapis, and Victoria; Victorinus for Mars and Victoria (both, it seems, unnamed); Tetricus for the same pair, again without names; Tetricus II for Hercules (named), Minerva, and Victoria; Carausius for Neptunus, Apollo, Minerva, Victoria, and Providentia (Apollo alone named); Allectus for Minerva and Victoria (without names). Constantius Chlorus has comes for Minerva and the Dioscuri (no. names). After his death Sol as comes is frequent on the coins of the tetrarchy, and Hercules (named), Mars and Minerva also have the epithet. Sol still appears as comes under Crispus and Constantine II.
Constantine as a ‘Bishop’
Authors: Seston W.
Published: May 2006

The author of the Vita Constantini (traditionally and persistently identified with Eusebius, despite the silence of St. Jerome), tells us that Constantine ‘at a banquet he was giving to the bishops declared that he too was a bishop. He added these words which I heard with my own ears: ἀλλ᾽ ὑμεῖϛ μὲν τῶν εἴσω τῆϛ ἐκτὸϛ ὑπὸ θεοῦ καθεσταμένοϛ ἐπίσκοπϛ ἂν εἴην ’.

In attempts to define the relations between the first Christian emperor and the Church, no phrase is more frequently quoted than this obiter dictum. In the sixteenth century the French scholar Henri de Valois rendered τῶν ἐκτόϛ as if it were the genitive of τὰ ἐκτόϛ, and since then it has been the practice to regard Constantine as an ‘évèque du dehors’: the Emperor either exercised episcopal functions though not consecrated, or supervised mundane affairs (that is, the State), after the fashion of a bishop, or else held from God a temporal commission for ecclesiastical government, the bishops retaining control of dogma, ethics and discipline. Each of these three distinct interpretations is equally admissible.
Roma and Constantinopolis in Late-Antique Art From 312 to 365
Authors: Toynbee J. M. C.
Published: May 2006

Little more than a decade after Constantine's conversion to Christianity the ancient gods and goddesses of the Graeco-Roman pantheon ceased to appear upon the official coinage and public monuments of the Empire. The personifications—Victoria, Virtus, Pax, Libertas, Securitas, etc., and the ‘geographical’ figures of Res Publica, Roma, Tellus, cities, countries, and tribes—remained. Yet some of these had, up to that very time, received, like the Olympians, their shrines and altars and other honours associated with pagan cultus; and we ask ourselves how it was that a Christian State, while rejecting the one, could retain and ‘baptize’ the other. The answer to this question, which involves the whole complex problem of the nature of pagan religious belief under the later Empire, can only be tentatively suggested here. The pantheon had eventually to go because its denizens had possessed, for the great majority of pagans, a real, objective, and independent existence.
Melinno's Hymn to Rome
Authors: Bowra C. M.
Published: May 2006

In his collection of passages περὶ ἀνδρείας Stobaeus (Ecl. 3, 7, 12) quotes a poem in five Sapphic stanzas by Melinno and, in introducing it with the words Μελινοῦς Λεσβίας ἰςε ῥώμην, blunders. The poem, as Grotius saw long ago, is addressed not ἰςε ῥώμην, to physical strength, but ἰςε ῥώμην, to Rome, and has in fact nothing to do with ἀνδρεία. Nor is there any good reason to think that the authoress came from Lesbos.
The History of Rome in the Regal Period
Authors: Fraccaro Plinio
Published: May 2006

When we consider the information concerning the history of the earliest days of Rome which ancient authors have handed down to us, we have to ask ourselves : which parts of it are acceptable and which are not ? What, after all, do we really know about early Roman history ?

Modern scholars view these problems from very different psychological standpoints. Some of them ask why we should refuse credence to a venerable tradition which has been given an artistic form of great beauty by writers of genius, and which is full of lessons of political and moral importance. Others, however, seized with the full frenzy of the critic, and with uncompromising devotion to logic, discard all, or practically all, the tradition. Whatever the cost, they intend to reach the truth. These two conflicting tendencies prevail turn and turn about in accordance with the views dominating in different periods or with the different temperaments or ages of individual scholars.
The Friend of Tacitus
Authors: Syme Ronald
Published: May 2006

The aspiration to fame being open, avowed, and honourable, it was no scandal if a Roman of consular rank insisted on a mention in books of history written by a friend and destined (it was clear) to undying renown. Pliny saw his chance (Epp. VII, 33). There was another way and device. By publishing his own correspondence, Pliny was able to put in circulation a kind of autobiography, subtle and unimpeachable. The collection carries no fewer than eleven letters to the address of Cornelius Tacitus, and he is referred to in four others. Pliny quietly established a claim to parity in the field of eloquence.
Manius or Mamercus?
Authors: Sumner G. V.
Published: May 2006

Quinque consulates in 65 B.C. gave evidence against C. Cornelius, accused under the lex Cornelia de maiestate. One of them was an Aemilius Lepidus. Though not generally perceived, a problem of identity exists.
Collegiate Prefectures
Authors: Jones A. H. M.
Published: May 2006

Among the many favours for which Ausonius thanked Gratian when he was designated consul in the autumn of 378 was ‘ad praefecturae collegium filius cum patre coniunctus’ (Grat. Act. 7). This favour, he goes on to say, preceded his nomination to the consulship, and was Gratian's own gift after his father's death; ‘et tui tantum praefectura beneficii, quae et ipsa non vult vice simplici gratulari, liberalius divisa quam iuncta, cum teneamus duo integrum, neuter desiderat separatum’ (Grat. Act. 11). This prefecture was apparently that of the Gauls (Grat. Act. 40: ‘agant et pro me gratias voces omnium Galliarum, quarum praefecto hanc honorificentiam detulisti’). In later poems he alludes to his ‘praefecturam duplicem’ (Protrept. 91), in which he was, before entering upon his consulship on 1 Jan. 379, ‘praefectus Gallis et Libyae et Latio’ (Epiced. 42).
Hadrian and Italica
Authors: Syme Ronald
Published: May 2006

Italica in the province of Baetica is the ‘patria’ of the Aelii. Hadrian duly bears the tribe of that municipium, the ‘Sergia’. However, the place of a man's birth is not always the same as the legal ‘origo’ of his family. A child may see the light of day somewhere else, according to the rank and occupation of his parent. The consular historian, probably Narbonensian by his ‘patria’, might have been born at Augusta Treverorum or Colonia Claudia: a Cornelius Tacitus is on record as imperial procurator in Belgica and the Germanies. Or, for that matter, Claudius Caesar. That infant was born at Lugdunum, a Roman colonia. Seneca, by a double denigration, labels him a ‘Gallus germanus’.
Senatorial and Equestrian Governors in the Third Century A.D.
Authors: Petersen Hans
Published: May 2006

In the second half of the third century a.d., a large number of Roman provinces which used to be governed by legati Augusti pro praetore of senatorial rank, came to be governed by praesides of equestrian rank. In this article the evidence for this change in provincial administration has been collected as fully as possible, and thereupon the question investigated whether the change was in any way the outcome of military considerations.

The principles according to which such an investigation must be conducted, should be self-evident. The inscriptions of the latter half of the third century are considerably fewer in number than those of the earlier Empire, and the inscriptions concerning the provincial governors of this period make no exception. They should, therefore, be interpreted with the utmost care and caution. I have tried both to avoid forcing the evidence of inscriptions which have obviously been copied badly, and to avoid utilizing identifications of persons which are either improbable, or demonstrably mistaken: I believe that such evidence should not be used to support any pre-conceived views concerning supposed changes in the administrative system.
Aspects of the Jewish Revolt in A.D. 115–117
Authors: Fuks Alexander
Published: May 2006

Our knowledge of the Jewish Revolt in A.D. 115–117, derived formerly from scanty literary sources only, has been considerably enriched during the last few decades by new evidence, papyrological, epigraphical, and archaeological and the course of the events in the countries of the Jewish Diaspora can now be ascertained in fuller detail than was possible before.

The purpose of this paper is to inquire into the general aspects of the revolt.
Portrait-bearing Codicils in the Illustrations of the Notitia Dignitatum?
Authors: Grigg Robert
Published: May 2006

To judge from written sources, by about the year 300 imperial portraits painted on wooden panels must have been common. Yet only one example has survived to represent them. Portraits of emperors and empresses painted on wooden panels are not the only underrepresented imperial portraits. Imperial portraits were used to decorate an unexpected variety of objects, including consular sceptres, curule chairs, gabled pediments, triumphal togae, reed cases, and shields. That these portrait-bearing objects, many of which served as insignia, are known at all is largely because they are represented in images that decorate official ivory diptychs, mostly consular diptychs, and in some of the surviving copies of the Notitia Dignitatum.
Observations on the Octagon at Thessaloniki
Authors: Vickers Michael
Published: May 2006

One of the most remarkable buildings to have been discovered in the area of the Tetrarchic palace at Thessaloniki is the Octagon. Although known since 1950, it has not really been granted the attention that it warrants. The following pages are an attempt to remedy this situation.

I. A Description of the Remains

First, a brief description of the surviving remains which were found on the site of the Akçe Mecidiye mosque about 50 m west of the Hippodrome. The mosque was demolished many years ago, but even when it was standing, part of the Octagon was visible: O. Tafrali's plan of 1913 mentions ‘mines byzantines’ on the site. The following account is based on the reports of Ch. Makaronas, first excavator of the building, and of those who subsequently cleared the site, as well as on personal observation.
Scipio, Laelius, Furius and the Ancestral Religion
Authors: Rawson Elizabeth
Published: May 2006

In the anxieties of the Second Punic War the Romans sought divine aid alike from new Greek and even oriental cults and from ancient Italian rites. But in the subsequent decades a deeper—and to some extent a disenchanted—knowledge of Greece and things Greek combined with the nationalistic pride of a conquering people (and one already committed to reverence of its ancestors) to create a new consciousness of the Roman religious tradition, and of the need to keep it free from the contamination of foreign cults—or foreign scepticism. In 186 B.C. the Bacchanals were suppressed, and in 181 the books of Numa; in 161 philosophers and rhetors were expelled; either in 173 or 154 two Epicureans were thrown out of Rome by a consul, L. Postumius; in 155 the embassy of the Athenian philosophers caused some concern; and in 139 Chaldaeans (astrologers) and possibly Jews were banned by the praetor and Xvir, Cn. Cornelius Scipio Hispanus.
Symmachus and the Oriental Cults
Authors: Matthews J. F.
Published: May 2006

The decline of late Roman paganism could hardly be said to have been an under-studied subject in the past, nor one which currently lacks appeal among late Roman historians: indeed, one has the impression that it is often through this, and the broader question of the ‘conflict’ between paganism and Christianity in the fourth century, that students of Roman history have acquired their interest in the late imperial period. This is all for the best: at the same time, it may be that in this, as in other aspects of late Roman history, there is a danger of ‘over-familiarity’ in the interpretation of well-known evidence.
Air Reconnaissance in Britain, 1969–72
Authors: St Joseph J. K.
Published: May 2006

Air reconnaissance has been continued over the United Kingdom during the last four years, and this summary of results follows the same pattern as the accounts of earlier surveys already described in this Journal. The years 1969 and 1970 saw the most favourable weather for archaeological reconnaissance, particularly in the eastern half of Britain. Hopes of a good year for crop marks in 1971 vanished when the month of June turned out to be almost the wettest of this century, and then in 1972, cold, damp weather persisting from the end of May through June did not favour the development of crop marks.

Once again most of the new information has come from the military districts of Wales and the north. Understanding of military sites, both in their immediate setting and their wider significance in relation to the system to which they belong, requires some appreciation of local geography.
State and Coinage in the Late Republic and Early Empire
Authors: Cascio E. Lo
Published: May 2006

From the time of the introduction of the denarius system onwards, Roman currency gradually spread over all, or nearly all, the regions under Roman rule, in the wake of their progressive integration into the Empire. Partly, the denarius replaced previous currencies, partly it brought about the monetization of areas not yet monetized. It was therefore the most striking feature, and indeed the logical premise, of the economic unification of the Empire (in so far as one can speak of such a unification). Until the Severan age, the Roman monetary system remained stable, notwithstanding the widening of the area it covered and the various changes it underwent—the introduction of new denominations and new metals, the retariffing of some elements in relation to each other, the transformation of the physical quality of the coins, for instance through debasement: in fact, there were no sudden and considerable rises of prices and Roman currency almost always enjoyed automatic confidence.
Chronology of the Campaigns of Aelius Gallus and C. Petronius
Authors: Jameson Shelagh
Published: May 2006

Two prefects of Egypt, Aelius Gallus and C. Petronius, undertook expeditions outside their province under Augustus. Aelius Gallus led a campaign against Arabia Felix, and C. Petronius on two occasions fought the Ethiopians. Dio dates the Arabian expedition to 24 B.C., the Ethiopian campaigns to 22.

The sources suggest that both men waged their wars during their prefectures. The proximity of their periods of activity, which may well confuse their chronology, is vouched for by Augustus himself, who says that both the Arabian and the Ethiopian wars took place ‘eodem fere tempore’. Several scholars have, indeed, rejected the order of prefectures given by Dio; others have involved themselves in a series of constitutional difficulties, which demand attention if it is assumed that the campaigns in these two areas overlapped.
The Spanish Mines and the Development of Provincial Taxation in the Second Century B.C.
Authors: Richardson J. S.
Published: May 2006

Spain was famous for its mineral wealth long before the Romans arrived there. Stesichorus in the sixth century had written of the silver-rich river Tartessos, and the wealth extracted by the Carthaginians was well-known to later writers. The way in which Rome exploited these resources is of special interest. So large a source of profit must have benefited not only the state, but also the men who organized the working of the silver mines; and this in turn may well have led to political and social changes in Rome. Moreover in Spain for the first time the Romans had to evolve financial institutions and methods whereby an overseas province of substantial wealth might be taxed. The two Spanish provinces were not of course Rome's first possessions outside Italy; but Sicily already had a comprehensive set of fiscal institutions, known as the lex Hieronica, which the Romans had taken over along with their control of Hiero's kingdom, and which they had copied for the tax system in the rest of the island; while in the case of Sardinia, though very little indeed is known of the early period of its administration by Rome, the association in Livy's reports of its corn tithe with that of Sicily indicates that an essentially similar system was used there too. In the Spanish provinces therefore the Romans had few precedents in their own experience on which to draw.
Multiple-Correspondence Similes in the Aeneid
Authors: West David
Published: May 2006

Similes in the Aeneid, like Homeric similes, have commonly been thought of as similes à queue longue, as similes which have one point of comparison with the narrative and a large ornamental development. The purpose of this paper is to show that almost all the similes in the Aeneid contain many details which correspond to details in the surrounding narrative. Correspondences involving explicit details in both simile and narrative I call bilateral correspondences. Sometimes there occurs in a simile a detail for which we should clearly supply in our imagination a corresponding detail for the narrative; similarly we should sometimes imagine a detail for the simile to correspond with some detail in the narrative: these I call unilateral correspondences. Sometimes there occurs a correspondence which does not fit the main comparison: this I call an irrational correspondence. To establish and study these three types of correspondence, we shall take as our sample the second book of the Aeneid and look at every simile in it. Then we shall take some similes from other books and see if this approach helps us to understand the text of the Aeneid.
Propertius and Antony
Authors: Griffin Jasper
Published: May 2006

In a recent article, ‘Augustan Poetry and the Life of Luxury’, JRS 66 (1976), 87, I argued that much recent scholarship has misjudged the Augustan poets in certain important respects, because it has been thought in principle possible to separate ‘literature’ and ‘life’, as if they were clearly distinguishable entities; in reality, the two affect each other in a ceaseless mutual interaction. That argument was developed as a general treatment of the βίος φιλήδονος as presented in Latin literature, and as lived in reality in a society in which Greek and Italian elements, poetical motifs and real behaviour, were inextricably intermingled.

The present paper is devoted to a more particular enquiry into one poet and one type of historical figure. I argue that Propertius' presentation of himself in poetry as a lover—romantic, reckless and obsessed—is closely related to the figure in history of Mark Antony. That historical figure is itself to be seen in a long tradition of great lovers of pleasure, in which the actual lives of real men can be seen to be shaped and coloured by the influence of ‘literature’. The argument of my earlier paper does not depend for its validity upon the acceptance of the present one, but they both pursue the same approach.
A New Military Strength Report on Papyrus
Authors: Thomas J. D. , Davies R. W.
Published: May 2006

The document which forms the subject of this article is from the collection of papyri in the Brooklyn Museum, New York. It is published here by kind permission of the Museum authorities in advance of its appearance as no. 24 in the Catalogue of Brooklyn Museum Papyri, which is being prepared by Dr. John Shelton. We are very grateful to Dr. Shelton for drawing our attention to this papyrus and for generously allowing us, because of its exceptional importance, to publish it separately in this article.

The papyrus contains a Latin document relating to a unit of the Roman army stationed in Egypt. It is written in three columns on the recto of a piece of papyrus measuring approximately 27 × 18 cm. The verso, which according to Dr. Shelton contains a Greek private letter, has no apparent connection. Although the papyrus shows damage on all four sides, it is probable that the right-hand edge is preserved in lines 12 f. of the third column (see the notes ad loc). As it can be demonstrated that not much is lost at the left of the first column, what survives is likely to be the greater part of the original width. All three columns are incomplete at both top and bottom, and the loss here is much harder to estimate. Format and date are discussed in detail in section iv. It is here sufficient to say that it belongs in or near the year A.D. 215, and that in content it closely resembles two known papyri classed as pridiana, which have recently been re-edited as RMR 63 and 64.
Princeps and Equites
Authors: Brunt P. A.
Published: May 2006

From the first Augustus employed Equites in military and civil posts (Dio LIII 15). The number of such posts multiplied in the course of time, and finally in the third century Equites supplanted senators in positions of the highest responsibility. In general ancient authors almost ignore the inception and development of the equestrian service. Dio makes Maecenas advocate the use of Equites by arguing that the emperor needed numerous assistants and that it was advisable that as many persons as possible, evidently from the higher classes, should feel that they had a share in the government (LII 19; 25). Modern scholars offer various explanations. It is clear that there were too few senators to fill the army commissions that went to Equites. Some equestrian posts were also below senatorial dignity. But others equalled or surpassed in importance those still reserved to senators. On one view the emperors, aiming at greater efficiency, found among the Equites more professional expertise; on another, they could better rely on the political loyalty of the lower order. Stein combined these theories: Augustus ‘called to life an admirable profession of officials (Beamtenstand) which performed its functions with distinction and which could at the same time unlike the senate never threaten the Princeps’; it was ‘an efficient and willing instrument of the autocrat’. For Hirschfeld its triumph in the third century marked the culmination of ‘the three hundred years’ long struggle between senate and emperor’. Individual emperors to whom the creation of particular posts is assigned (often with little justification) are supposed to have deliberately furthered this process. I can find no deep design nor overall plan, either in the arrangements made by Augustus (some of which were suggested by practices of the previous generation), or in those of his successors, but only a series of expedients to meet varying needs and the development of precedents, which ultimately produced the appearance of a system.
The computer and the Historia Augusta: A Note on Marriott
Authors: Sansone David
Published: May 2006

In 1889 Hermann Dessau published a revolutionary article in which he suggested that the six authors to whom the various biographies of the Historia Augusta are ascribed were merely masks behind which lurked a single author who lived at the very end of the fourth century. Ninety years later, an attempt was made to prove Dessau's hypothesis of single authorship on objective grounds. Ian Marriott's article, ‘The Authorship of the Historia Augusta: Two Computer Studies’, presents the results of two statistical tests conducted on the text of the HA which appear to show conclusively that the work was composed by one author rather than six. Marriott's findings have been hailed by a number of scholars as settling once and for all the question of the authorship of the HA. While I agree with Marriott's conclusion, and I share the consensus view that this curious work is indeed the product of a single mind, I should like to raise some questions concerning the validity of the procedure adopted by Marriott and to suggest that the tests conducted by him are in fact not conclusive.
Politics, Persuasion and the People before the Social War (150–90 B.C.)
Authors: Millar Fergus
Published: May 2006

The purpose of this paper is to present a particular model of how Roman politics worked, and of what Roman politics before the Social War was ‘about’. In essence I want to place in the centre of our conception the picture of an orator addressing a crowd in the Forum; a picture of someone using the arts of rhetoric to persuade an anonymous crowd about something. The most important subject of oratory, and the most important fundamental right exercised by whoever came to vote, was legislation. Yet the greatest of all the extraordinary distortions which have been imposed on our conception of Republican politics in the twentieth century is that the process of legislation, and the content of the legislation passed by the people, have both ceased to be central to it. With that we have ceased to listen sufficiently to the actual content of oratory addressed to the people, to the arguments from rights, from the necessities of the preservation of theres publica, from historical precedents, both Roman and non-Roman, and from social attitudes and prejudices. In the second century above all, we can see how the prestige which the office-holding class derived from family descent and personal standing on the one hand was matched on the other by popular demands for appropriate conduct, and by popular suspicions of private luxury, of profiteering from the conduct of public affairs, and of improper collaboration with wrong-doers both at home and abroad.
Cult and Sculpture: Sacrifice in the Ara Pacis Augustae
Authors: Elsner John
Published: May 2006

On 30 January 9 B.C., two thousand years ago this year, the Senate dedicated the Ara Pacis Augustae. This paper celebrates that anniversary by putting forward a new interpretation of the altar's significance. Rather than focusing on a discussion of iconography or the identification of individuals portrayed on the altar, I shall explore the sacrificial implications of what was, after all, an important site for sacrificial cult in Rome. We may note that the earliest Roman accounts of the Ara Pacis both emphasize sacrificial rite. In theRes Gestae, Augustus comments (12.2):

Cum ex Hispania Galliaque, rebus in iis provincis prospere gestis, Romam redi, Ti. Nerone P. Quintilio consulibus, aram Pacis Augustae senatus pro reditu meo consacrandam censuit ad campum Martium, in qua magistratus et sacerdotes virginesque Vestales anniversarium sacrificium facere iussit.

On my return from Spain and Gaul, in the consulship of Tiberius Nero and Publius Quintilius [13 B.C.], after successful operations in these provinces, the Senate voted in honour of my return the consecration of an altar to Pax Augusta in the Campus Martius, and on this altar it ordered the magistrates and priests and Vestal virgins to make annual sacrifice.
Regimen Morum
Authors: Astin Alan E.
Published: May 2006

In his account of the year 443 B.C., Livy, reporting the first appointment of censors, introduced the censorship as an institution which

sprang from a small beginning but grew to such an extent that the guidance of Roman mores and discipline was in its hands (‘morum disciplinaeque Romanae penes eam regimen’), the distinction between honourable and dishonourable amongst the senators and the centuries of the equites was under the judgement of that magistracy …

This passage, with its mention of a regimen morum, is one of many which either attest explicitly or illustrate by anecdote that the censors concerned themselves with mores. In the eyes of several authors of antiquity it was this aspect which most strongly characterized the censorship, and there can be no doubt that it was a prominent and central feature.