bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Carinated Bowls (Form 29) from Lezoux
Authors: Oswald Felix
Published: May 2006

So little is known of the importation into Britain of carinated bowls (form 29) made by Lezoux potters that the examples illustrated on the accompanying plates may enable their work to be more readily recognised. These specimens (with the exception of fig. 13, nos. 2, 8 and 9, in the St. Germain Museum) were obtained by me some years ago during a visit to Lezoux, when, by the kindness of Madame Plicque, the widow of Dr. A. Plicque, I was able to acquire the remainder of his collection, which was excavated by him about forty years ago, and the bulk of which is now in the St. Germain Museum.
Bowls of Acaunissa from the North of England
Authors: Oswald Felix
Published: May 2006

Since the publication of my article on the work of the potter Acaunissa, Mr. E. B. Birley, F.S.A., has discovered two more signed specimens of his bowls from Corbridge, as well as examples from York and Kirkby Thore, which were undoubtedly executed by Acaunissa. This additional material greatly increases our knowledge of his style and of his figure-types. Moreover, not merely can the period of his activity be determined by the character of his designs, but the shape, texture and execution of his decorated bowls enable this date to be determined more closely. Hence Acaunissa's ware becomes chronologically important for excavators of Roman sites, especially in the north of England, for no trace of his work can be detected farther south. Perhaps this may indicate that his ware came all the way by sea from Gaul to Newcastle, and not first of all to London.
The Urbanization of the Ituraean Principality
Authors: Jones A. H. M.
Published: May 2006

In a previous article I discussed the urbanization of the territory of the Jews. In this I propose to treat the administrative development of the territory of another backward people of Syria, the Ituraeans. The history of the two peoples is somewhat similar. The princes of the Ituraeans, who like the Maccabees were at the same time high-priests, like them took advantage of the disintegration of the Seleucid kingdom to carve out for themselves an independent dominion at the expense of the neighbouring tribes and cities. Their progress was similarly checked by the Roman conquest, and their principality was similarly curtailed and divided, until eventually it was absorbed into the regular provincial administration.
Geographical Factors in Roman Algeria
Authors: Sherwin-White A. N.
Published: May 2006

This paper is concerned with the geographical setting of Roman Algeria and the relation between human settlement and geographical factors, and will contain some comments on the writing of Roman provincial history. The present may be a suitable moment for those who are no longer occupied directly with scholarship to review the first principles and method of provincial history writing, which were perhaps not altogether sound in the published works, and particularly in the general histories, of the pre-war decade. There were two main types of study. The first were monuments of learning and minute scholarship, but tended to convey no general impression at all. The second type were so broad in outline as to be mainly false, a fault particularly marked in the various economic histories and general surveys of the Roman Empire. It is extraordinary that for Roman Africa, with its tens of thousands of inscriptions and superficial ruins and its dozens of town sites, there still exists no coherent or detailed study of part or whole except Toutain's old and excellent account of Tunisia published in 1896. Instead, scholars have concentrated either on particular town sites or on the military frontiers and military stations. The military studies are all linked to Cagnat's monumental work about the Roman Army in Africa. The result is that there exists a coherent body of knowledge about this great topic.
The Patria of Tacitus
Authors: Gordon Mary L.
Published: May 2006

Italicus es an provincialis? The question has remained unanswered to this day. A majestic silence conceals from us the origins of Tacitus. It is sometimes assumed that he was ‘by birth a noble,’ because he has the great manner and writes contemptuously of upstarts. But this might be in part explained from the nature of his subject and of his sources. The maiestas populi Romani likewise pervades the public odes of Horace, the freedman's son, and the Roman tragedies of Shakespeare; while the sources of Tacitus were imbued with the gravitas and even the superbia of the senatorial aristocracy.
A Note on the Date of the Syrian Governorship of M. Titius
Authors: Corbishley Thomas
Published: May 2006

The traditional date for the Syrian governorship of M. Titius, ‘about 10 B.C.’, is derived from a passage in Josephus, where he is referred to in connection with Herod's supposed ‘third journey’ to Rome. The circumstances of this third journey have caused considerable perplexity to those who have investigated the details of the reign of Herod the Great. The trouble is due to a confusion in Josephus himself, who can be shown to be narrating a series of events as occurring after, which in reality refer to the years immediately before, 12 B.C. The ‘third journey’ was never undertaken or, indeed, contemplated, and the context in which the name of Titius occurs is to be dated to 12 B.C. and not later.
Three Caistor Pottery Kilns
Authors: Atkinson Donald
Published: May 2006

When in the spring of 1929 the Norfolk and Norwich Archaeological Society was about to begin excavations on the site of Venta Icenorum (Caistor-next-Norwich) Sir George Macdonald prophesied, in an article in The Observer, that among the results of the work would be a useful increase in our knowledge of the Roman pottery of the East Anglian area. It is not inappropriate, therefore, that an account of three pottery kilns found at Caistor in 1930 and of the pottery associated with them should be included in a publication dedicated to Sir George.
The Irish Analogies for the Romano-British Barn Dwelling
Authors: Richmond I. A.
Published: May 2006

A good deal of attention has recently been paid to the Romano-British House of the type known as ‘basilican’ or ‘basilical,’ the long barn-like building with a fairly broad central nave and a pair of side-aisles, often bratticed off so as to form separate rooms, which sometimes extend right across the body of the hall. So far as we know the distribution of this type in bulk is restricted to the south of England. But it does occur so far north as Mansfield Woodhouse, in Nottinghamshire. On the Continent it is rare: but the examples are widely distributed, in such a way as to suggest that all is not yet known about the way in which these houses spread. Most of these houses, however, are situated in Britain, and here they are sometimes alone, but quite often associated with the smaller type of Roman villa, serving as outbuildings or servants' quarters.
The Corbridge Lanx
Authors: Brendel O.
Published: May 2006

The Corbridge lanx, a silver dish of excellent workmanship, unusually well preserved, is one of the most interesting relics of Roman antiquity as yet discovered on English soil (pl. viii). Its admirers, however, after more than two centuries, are faced with the problem, still unsolved, of satisfactorily understanding and explaining its puzzling decoration. Of the two lines of research hitherto adopted the first is mystical or allegorical, and is attracted particularly by the mysterious objects close to the undoubted figure of Apollo, though it exaggerates their mysterious character in every respect; and the explanation of them as illustrating a systematic cosmological antithesis between heaven and earth, in the style of Neo-platonism or of the Emperor Julian, has not so far proved likely to lead anywhere. The simpler and more definite interpretation of the second group is based on classical legend, an interpretation well justified by the undoubted presence of at least three Olympian deities. Yet the attempt to deduce a Judgment of Paris from no more than the joint presence of Artemis, Apollo, and Athena was from the first a difficult line to pursue; for of the normal characters in the scene only Athena is shown, while the presence of Apollo and Artemis is a positive drawback. Cogent proof is absent here also. Despite the light meanwhile thrown on numerous details, there is nothing to change in the statement made by Roger Gale in 1735, that a gathering of deities is represented, while their relation to any given legend, if such exists, is certainly still to seek.
An Imperial Estate in Galatia
Authors: Anderson J. G. C.
Published: May 2006

Tentative suggestions which conform to the conditions of a scientific hypothesis may play a useful part in furthering the slow and unending process of rediscovering antiquity. Proof or disproof of them must naturally await the discovery of fresh evidence, and such evidence may never come; but if it does, its appearance is doubly welcome when it furnishes proof. It is nearly forty years since my travels in Anatolia took me into the angle of north-western Galatia, lying between north-eastern Phrygia and the southern boundary of Bithynia, which ran along the watershed between the middle Sangarius and its chief tributary the Tembrogius or Tembris. The southern side of this watershed, immediately to the west of the junction of the two rivers, is an infertile and thinly populated district, but farther west, towards the Phrygian border, the mountain slopes open out into a broad plain which runs down to the Tembrogius; near its head are the two villages of Upper (or Great) and Lower Igde-agatch. Westward of this plain and separated from it only by a low ridge is a pleasant valley, watered by an affluent of the Tembrogius.
The Municipal Legislation of Julius Caesar
Authors: Cary M.
Published: May 2006

This article has been suggested by a notable new book, H. Rudolph's Stadt und Staat im römischen Italien, in which the author propounds original solutions to several problems of the Roman administration of Italy. His principal contribution to this subject is a theory which assigns to Caesar a leading part in the reformation of the municipal constitutions.

According to Rudolph a first step, but only a short one, in the reorganisation of Italy after the Social War was taken by Cinna, who instituted the quattuorvirate as the universal type of magistracy in the newly enfranchised municipalities. The next step, by which Sulla concentrated the higher jurisdiction of Italy at Rome, was longer, but in a backward direction.
Archaeological Discoveries in Italy and the Mediterranean During 1930
Authors: Ashby Thomas
Published: May 2006

Work continues in Rome with the same energy as before, and a fresh impulse may be said to have been given to it by the publication of the new ‘Piano Regolatore’ for Rome, which is providing for the growth of the city to double its present size so that it will have a population of two millions. There is no doubt at all that numerous demolitions are necessary, if the scheme is really to be carried into effect.

That the necessity is regrettable, few will deny; but it cannot be too often repeated that the fundamental mistake was made long ago, when modern Rome was allowed to grow upon every side of the old city, instead of being put on the high ground to the east of it, as Quintino Sella and Haussmann had suggested. The old city must, therefore, inevitably be traversed by important arteries of traffic (pls. I, II); and we can only hope that as little as possible of beauty and interest will be removed, as we are assured will be the case. And critics of the scheme, whether benevolent or not, must do their best neither to minimise nor to exaggerate the importance of what must inevitably disappear.
A Portrait of Tiberius
Authors: Hinks R. P.
Published: May 2006

The bronze head of the Emperor Tiberius, here reproduced (pl. vl) from new photographs, was found in 1759 near Mahon, in the island of Minorca. The exact spot is not recorded; but as the Duc de Crillon damaged the megalithic buildings at Trapuco, two kilometers from Mahon, while erecting a defensive wall round his guns, that may have been the finding-place. The head was acquired by the Marquis de Lannion, the Governor of the island; after his death it was bought by the Comte de Caylus, who gave it to the French king. It is now in the Cabinet des Médailles of the Bibliothèque Nationale.

The bronze is covered with a black patina, and is well preserved. The eyes are made of sheet-silver. The head is life-size, 38 cms. high.
Some Aspects of Byzantine Civilisation
Authors: Baynes Norman H.
Published: May 2006

At the outset the question may well be raised whether there is any real justification for the inclusion of a paper on such a theme in the programme of a Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies. Is Byzantine civilisation—in any true sense of the word—Roman at all? To judge from not a few modern studies of the life of the East Roman Empire, the answer to that question could only be in the negative. Take what is perhaps the best known brief presentment of Byzantine history—that of Professor Diehl of Paris—and the reader will not long be left in doubt. The preface proclaims the character of the Empire: Byzantium very quickly became, and was essentially, an oriental monarchy. In the sixth century, before Justinian's accession, one could well believe that the dream of a purely oriental empire was near its realisation.
Cornutus Tertullus and the Plancii of Perge
Authors: Jameson Shelagh
Published: May 2006

The origo of C. Iulius P. f. Hor…………‥ Cornutus Tertullus, friend and colleague of the younger Pliny, has always been a matter of speculation. B. Stech thought he might have come from Africa; Professor Syme, observing the name of the dedicator of the stone which records Cornutus' career, C. Iulius Pla[n]cius Varus Cornutus, suggests Perge in Pamphylia. Professor Syme further remarks on the existence of a C. Iulius Cornutus at Perge, who set up a bilingual dedication to Nero. These names are also borne by C. Iulius Cornutus Bryonianus, ἀγωνοθέτης at the Varian games at Perge.

Groag remarked that one would not normally expect to find the praenomen of Cornutus Tertullus' father, Publius, coupled with the nomen Iulius. Cornutus Tertullus might, then, have been adopted, possibly by the C. Iulius Cornutus who set up the dedication to Nero: the gap in his nomenclature, as it appears in the inscription set up by C. Iulius Pla[n]cius Varus Cornutus, could have contained his original nomen.
Italian Aims at the Time of the Social War
Authors: Brunt P. A.
Published: May 2006

The Social war broke out when Rome refused to grant the allies' demand for citizenship. Any explanation of this refusal is conjectural; on this subject I have nothing new to say. This paper is concerned rather with the attitude of the Italians. I shall argue, like Professor Gabba, that they sought a share in political power, though not only, if at all, for the reasons he suggested; and that their desire to become Romans reflects the success of Rome in unifying them in sentiment and was stimulated by the Cimbric war and by the career of Marius and other novi homines of his time.
Posidonius
Authors: Nock Arthur Darby
Published: May 2006

Crescit occulto velut arbor aevo fama Marcelli: so it was with Posidonius from 1878 for forty years, with no voice raised to the contrary save by A. E. Housman in his caustic asides. Had we not found a figure lesser in dimensions than only Plato or Aristotle, the principal intellectual influence of two succeeding centuries, the fountainhead of Neoplatonism ? In retrospect the element of exaggeration is clear, and yet the quest must not be counted as labour in vain; for there came of it a great enlargement of the frontiers of scholarship. So in the familiar fable the sons did not find the buried treasure for which they dug, but their digging bore rich fruit.
The Date of Vegoia's Prophecy
Authors: Heurgon Jacques
Published: May 2006

Among the collection of documents on limitation in the ‘Corpus agrimensorum Romanorum’, a very rare and strange piece of writing has been handed down as it were by miracle: the fragment, in Latin, of an Etruscan prophecy which is supposed to have been delivered by Vegoia to Arruns Veltumnus. Vegoia was an Etruscan ‘nymph’ to whom a part of the Etruscan revelation was attributed. There were libri Vegoici, which were kept together with the libri Sibyllini in the temple to Apollo on the Palatine. As Egeria had inspired Numa, so Vegoia had communicated the secrets of Etruscan discipline to Arruns Veltumnus, who seems to have been a seer or a prince from Clusium.
The Tabvla Hebana and Propertivs II, 31
Authors: Last Hugh
Published: May 2006

The publication 1 of the fragment at first missing from the upper left-hand corner of the tabula Hebana (AE 1949, 215) so far confirms some conjectures which I made in a talk at Cambridge in 1951 that I am moved to print the briefest note about a point which does not seem so far to have been mentioned elsewhere.
The Origin of some Pantheon Columns
Authors: Scaife C. H. O.
Published: May 2006

In the early spring of 1937 I first visited the fort and quarries of grey granite (pl. V) at Mons Claudianus (Gebel Fitery) between the Nile at Qena and the Gulf of Suez at Sofaga, 33° 297prime; E., 26° 48′ N.—visited and described by Wilkinson, James Burton, Schweinfurth, and others, —and made notes and photographs of one very large column (pl. V, 3) and a part of another (8 ft. 6 in. and 7 ft. 9 in. diameter at the bottom and top respectively, and 59 ft. long), lying in the quarry from which they were hewn, and of the fragment of another of similar dimensions abandoned by the roadside on the way down from the quarries to wady level. There were several other columns, lying in the wady, of smaller dimensions (from 20 ft. long and 3 ft. diameter to 30 ft. long and 3 ft. 6 in. diameter).
De Brevitate Vitae
Authors: Griffin Miriam T.
Published: May 2006

Caligula was dead when Seneca wrote De Brevitate Vitae. The phrase ‘modo modo intra paucos illos dies quibus C. Caesar periit …’ might suggest a date in the 40's. But, in a letter, lamenting the briefness of life, Seneca remarks on the distant events to which an old man's memory can apply modo: ‘Et tamen hoc “modo” aetatis nostrae bona portio est.’ Lipsius' theory collapses. His successors have supported other dates, principally two: 49, first proposed by Hirschfeld in 1870; 62, suggested by Dessau in 1918.
Roman Lincoln, 1953
Authors: Thompson F. H.
Published: May 2006

The excavations carried out by the Lincoln Archaeological Research Committee during 1953 dealt with two sites of a very different nature, although of the same period. Yet together they provide a useful illustration of the two principal aspects of the history of Roman Lincoln and also of two types of archaeological investigation demanded in an urban centre. The first excavation, in East Bight, was deliberately undertaken in an attempt to find answers to certain problems relating to the early military and quasi-military occupation of Lincoln and was excavated methodically and without haste; the second was a hasty examination during building operations at no. 292 High Street where a structure, apparently connected with the communal life of the town in its later period of expansion, demanded immediate investigation, without the opportunity for unhurried and detailed examination.

The first excavations of the Research Committee, in 1945–6, at Westgate and North Row (fig. 2), resolved once and for all the question of the general siting of the Claudian fortress of the Ninth Legion and, in particular, demonstrated that on north and west the legionary defences underlay those of the later Colonia. These conclusions suggested the possibility that the defences might similarly coincide on south and east also, where the line of the Colonia wall was known; but, as Professor I. A. Richmond pointed out, if this was so, the area of the legionary fortress would only have been approximately 42 acres whereas a minimum of 50 acres might have been expected.
Roman Religion 1910–1960
Authors: Rose H. J.
Published: May 2006

When, in 1911, the first volume of JRS appeared it contained among other matter an article by W. Warde Fowler on ‘The Original Meaning of the word Sacer’. This was later (1920) reprinted in Roman Essays and Interpretations, 15–24, and is characteristic of its author, not only because of its keen insight into Roman ways of thought and full acquaintance with the relevant passages in Latin authors, but in its cautious and moderate use of the Comparative Method in dealing with the history of an ancient and imperfectly known religion. A scrap of Polynesian information on the meaning of ‘tabu’ was got from R. R. Marett, whose Threshold of Religion was then a new book (1909), and whom Warde Fowler knew and appreciated. About this time, Fowler, who was meditating an elaborate edition of Plutarch, a project which his failing sight compelled him to drop, passed on to me some notes on the Roman Questions (see below, p. 163), a typical piece of readiness to help and advise a young scholar. So far as his contributions to Roman religion went, the first two decades of this century were his flowering-time. Roman Festivals of the Period of the Republic had appeared in 1899; his Gifford Lectures of 1909–10 appeared in book form (The Religious Experience of the Roman People) just in time to have a cordial and appreciative review from E. R. Bevan in the first number of JRS.
Palmyra under the Aegis of Rome
Authors: Richmond I. A.
Published: May 2006

In the most southerly group of desert routes between Syria and Mesopotamia Palmyra lies at the cross-roads. The north-eastward route from Damascus to Circesium is crossed by the eastward route from Emesa, now Homs, to Babylonia. Palmyra owes this key-position first to its precious springs and secondly to the fact that here the natural traffic lines from west to east debouch from the Syrian mountains into the head of the eastwardlooking basin of the Wadi el Khorr, a winter tributary of the Euphrates. Nor were these obvious routes the sole possibility. At Circesium the Euphrates may be crossed: at its eastward turn the lower river and its valley-dwellers become dominant—here runs the modern frontier between Syria and Iraq. Avoiding this control, caravan routes, negotiable solely by those with intimate knowledge of the waste and its people, lead direct to the heart of Mesopotamia and onwards to the Persian Gulf. As between East and West, Palmyra, an island in the desert, offered both a mart for exchange and an essential staging-point for direct through traffic. Its possessors were by nature masters of the situation; and, while they might be subject to the cultural or political influences of either East or West, their geographical isolation secured for them an independence founded upon pre-eminent experience of desert ways, which constituted them the natural masters and middlemen of the caravan routes that met and branched or crossed in their oasis.
The Later History of the Varangian Guard: Some Notes
Authors: Dawkins R. M.
Published: May 2006

The famous Varangian corps of mercenary soldiers in the service of the emperors of Byzantium is well known in its earlier days to have been recruited from the Scandinavian north. Forging their way from their own inhospitable lands the Northmen, first of all from Sweden, reached the Volga and the lands even to. the south of the Caspian; later by the ‘East Way’, called also the ‘Varangian Way’, they came down through Russia by way of the Dnieper and the Black Sea to Constantinople, first as pirates, then as traders, and finally as the most trusted guards of the imperial person. Later again they ventured on the all-sea route, the ‘West Way’, and also opened a path across Europe, either over the Alps or by way of Provence, and so through Italy: this was the ‘Southern Way’, otherwise called the ‘Way by Rome’ But in the eleventh century, in the first half of which Harald Hardrada, the most famous of all the Varangians, was in the imperial service, there was a certain change; recruits began to come increasingly from England.

The first actual mention of the English name seems to be in a bull issued by the Emperor Alexios in 1088 to Christodoulos, the Abbot of the Monastery on Patmos.
Consular Tribunes and their Successors
Authors: Adcock F. E.
Published: May 2006

The efforts of scholars have failed to find a generally accepted single reason for the institution of what it will be convenient to call Consular Tribunes, i.e. Tribuni Militum consulari potestate or consulari imperio or pro consulibus. The irregular oscillation between pairs of Consuls and three, and later four, Consular Tribunes which is attested for the first forty years of the institution (444–406 B.C.) appeared to Beloch, not without reason, to contain an element of irrationality and to be without parallel in ancient constitutional practice. But even those scholars who are least inclined to trust the consular Fasti would admit that, though they may contain interpolations or omissions or the misreading of names, the fact of this oscillation cannot be denied, and, moreover, that the names of magistrates of this period are, in the main, to be trusted.
Finium Demonstratio
Authors: Daube David
Published: May 2006

No apology is needed for presenting a strictly legal discourse to one who, while ranking among the most illustrious Ancient Historians alive, has by his teaching and writing made a unique contribution to the study of Roman Law. Our subject will be the role of finium demonstratio in Roman private law. There is no comprehensive modern treatment, with the result that scholars, confronted by one of the rare references to this institution, are apt to feel somewhat unsure. The difficulty is increased by the fact that in its main application, in the field of warranty against eviction, finium demonstratio partake in the tortuous evolution, classical and post-classical, of the rules concerning this warranty. The same fact, however, also adds to the interest, especially as the actual working of the system of warranty at its various stages becomes much clearer by tracing its bearing on a usage like finium demonstratio.
Julien à Macellum
Authors: Festugière A. J.
Published: May 2006

Julien, comme on sait, eut une enfance sévère et triste. Il n'a pas connu sa mere, mèrte quelques mois après sa naissance (Misop. 352 B); quand il avait sept ans (337), il a vu assassiner son père, un demi-frère aîné, un oncle et deux cousins. Il reste seul avec un demi-frére, Gallus, qui tourna en brute. Sa première éducation est due à l'eunuque Mardonius qui lui inculque une morale austère. C'est un des beaux traits de Julien que, plus tard, dans le Misopôgôn, il loue ce vieux précepteur de lui avoir, dès sa prime enfance, enseigné la vertu (Misop. 351 A ss.):—
The Style of Livy
Authors: McDonald A. H.
Published: May 2006

The immense detail of the work that was devoted to the study of Livy's style during the last century brought Livian scholarship almost to a standstill, as it were, by its own bulk. Historians still needed to analyse his subject-matter, and there was scope for examination of the manuscript tradition; but the literary critic who considered treating Livy's style, syntax, and diction could hardly expect to do more than refine on the results of his predecessors. And who, unaided, would set himself alongside Madvig or Weissenborn ? More recently, however, three separate lines of research have given us a fresh perspective.
The Roman Friends of Ammianus
Authors: Cameron Alan
Published: May 2006

The ninth book of the correspondence of Q. Aurelius Symmachus contains a number of letters lacking the names of their addressees. Otto Seeck once suggested that one of these letters might have been written to the historian Ammianus Marcellinus. This suggestion has been accepted and built upon by most subsequent writers on Ammianus, and it has come to be generally agreed that he had connections among the senatorial aristocracy of Rome; connections, according to some scholars, that led to serious distortions in his history. A. Alföldi, in an attempt to rehabilitate his fellow-Pannonian, the brutal emperor Valentinian, maintained that Ammianus, ‘body and soul on the side of the senators’ (who hated Valentinian), presented ‘his dear Roman aristocrats’ with a picture of Valentinian ‘as black as one-sided hatred can contrive’. W. Ensslin suggested that Ammianus was a supporter of the usurper Eugenius whom Theodosius crushed in 394, and that the letter in question was deliberately published without his name to protect Symmachus' family—in which he has been followed by W. Hartke, and, with added refinements, by R. A. Pack.
Two New Items in the Army List of Roman Britain
Authors: Wright R. P.
Published: May 2006

A fresh study of the diplomas found in Roman Britain for The Roman Inscriptions of Britain vol. II has produced further evidence for two new contingents. It may be helpful to other scholars if the evidence for these additions to the Army List is made available without awaiting the general publication.
The Temple of Sulis-Minerva at Bath
Authors: Richmond I. A. , Toynbee J. M. C.
Published: May 2006

The Roman remains at Bath, dominated by the stately thermal establishment, have always been associated in geography and in archaeology with the goddess Sulis-Minerva. The famous pediment of her temple, found when the eighteenth-century Pump Room was built, has long been accounted one of the most remarkable manifestations of Romano-British art; its richly carved reliefs have always invited restoration; and they at once received it, somewhat sketchily from Englefield and most ingeniously from Samuel Lysons in 1802 (pl. XXIII). So convincing, indeed, was the main outline of Lyson's reconstruction that it held the field and remained the basis of all subsequent proposals, including that so carefully elaborated by the late A. J. Taylor. The discovery of the stones carried with it the site of the temple; for the blocks cannot have fallen far. It lay below the Pump Room, on the north side of the sacred pool whose copious hot springs were enclosed by the Romans in an irregular polygonal basin. The sanctity of the spring, which seems only later to have been roofed, is proved by the many coins and the leaden tablet inscribed with a curse which it contained, but, unlike many sacred pools, for example, that of Nemausus at Nîmes, it was not itself frequented by bathers. It could be viewed from the Baths through three great open windows on its south side; and these were of some architectural pretensions, the central member having a true arch, and the flanking pair (of which one survives (pl. XXIV, 2)) joggled flat arches, while the corridor within was furnished, as was no other part of the Baths, with fluted pilasters (pl. XXIV, 1).
The Lex Valeria Cornelia
Authors: Brunt P. A.
Published: May 2006

The Lex Valeria Cornelia of A.D. 5, known to us only from the Tabula Hebana of 19, provided that the senators and those Equites who were enrolled in the judicial decuries should henceforth vote in ten centuries, named after the dead princes, C. and L. Caesar, for the ‘destinatio’ of consuls and praetors. In 19 these same voters were redistributed into fifteen centuries, and in 23 into twenty centuries; the new units were named after Germanicus and Drusus respectively.

Professor Tibiletti has virtually established that these ‘destining’ centuries were an integral part of the comitia centuriata. Candidates who received the majority of their votes were credited with all of them, before the remaining centuries voted. Furthermore, the ‘destining’ centuries must have taken over the role of the old centuria praerogativa; before A.D. 5 the vote of that century, composed of iuniores of the first class, was declared before the proceedings were carried further and the Comitia had been apt to follow its lead.
Denarius and Sestertius in Diocletian's Coinage Reform
Authors: Sutherland C. H. V.
Published: May 2006

Widely ranging arguments, and often equally wide perplexity, have now for a long time been aroused by the internal monetary problems of Diocletian's coinage reform, as a glance at any recent bibliography will show. Two primary factors connected with the reform are now generally recognized: first, that gold and silver coins of the reformed series were marked with their weight as bullion by numerals which defined them as fractions, respectively, of the gold and silver pound (Ξ = 60 on gold, and XCVI = 96 on silver), and secondly that by A.D. 301, when Diocletian issued his Maximal Edict, the prices for an enormous variety of commodities were quoted in terms of the ‘denarius communis’, of which the Edict rating (which was, it should be emphasized, a maximum rating and by no means necessarily general) gave 50,000 as the price of a pound of gold. What has remained most in dispute is the denominational value of Diocletian's new large copper coin (with laureate head on obverse and Genio Populi Romani reverse, weighing about 10 gm.), now commonly termed the ‘follis’, and its relationship both downwards with the new and smaller radiate-obverse copper piece and upwards with the XCVI silver. Interpretations have varied very widely indeed, and the 10 gm. coin has been equated with as little as 2 ‘denarii communes’ at one end of the scale and as much as 20 or 25 at the other.
Les Otages Barbares au Debut de L'Empire
Authors: Aymard André
Published: May 2006

Exiger des otages ou en donner, afin de garantir des engagements reçus ou pris, est un fait courant pendant toute l'Antiquité — pour ne pas parler des temps qui l'ont suivie. Rome a fréquemment appliqué cet usage. Plus qu'aucun autre Etat antique? Les données brutes de la statistique conduiraient à l'affirmer. Mais elles demeurent sans portée, puisqu'elles ne peuvent pas se pondérer en fonction de la durée de chaque Etat, de l'activité de sa politique extérieure, de l'abondance et de la précision des détails fournis par nos sources sur cette politique. De toute façon, le recours aux otages n'était fait pour surprendre aucun de ceux que les hasards de la diplomatie ou de la guerre plaçaient au contact des Romains. Bien avant de connaître ceux-ci, tous connaissaient déjà le procédé, au moins pour l'avoir vu utiliser autour d'eux et, la plupart, pour l'avoir eux-mêmes utilisé à l'occasion. Il n'en a guère été de plus normal ni de mieux admis dans la pratique des rapports internationaux.
A New Edition of the Marble Plan of Ancient Rome
Authors: Bloch Herbert
Published: May 2006

Few monuments of Ancient Rome can command more interest and fascination than the Marble Plan of the city of Rome. Early in the third century this colossal map was put up in panels on the wall of a building in the Forum Pacis at the behest of the Emperor Septimius Severus or his Praefectus Urbi. It is a unique document not only because no other plan of a major Roman city survives, but also because the city which it depicts is Rome, at the height of her development as the capital of the world. Although only a fraction of the Plan has come down to us, these fragments are invaluable for our knowledge of individual buildings as well as of the city as a whole; hence its appeal to students of architecture and urbanistics, of archaeology and history.
Mint and Fiscal Administration Under Diocletian, his Colleagues, and his Successors A.D. 305–24
Authors: Hendy Michael
Published: May 2006

In a short article in the Zeitschrift für Numismatik for 1887, entitled ‘Die fünfzehn Münzstatten der fünfzehn diocletianischen Diöcesen’, Mommsen drew attention to what he considered to be a parallelism confirming his conclusions on the date of the Laterculus Veronensis and the origins of the diocesan system. It was not, in its details at least, one of his more distinguished contributions, and its shortcomings were mercilessly exposed by Mispoulet in a communication to the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres in 1908. Mispoulet's verdict—that no parallelism between mint and diocese had existed under Diocletian, and was indeed not to be expected—was accepted by Seston in 1946 in his monograph on Diocletian and the tetrarchy, and despite the occasional subsequent comment implying limited support for Mommsen this verdict seems to have won general acceptance.
The Tax Law of Palmyra: Evidence for Economic History in a City of the Roman East
Authors: Matthews J. F.
Published: May 2006

In the year A.D. 137 the council of the city of Palmyra in Syria agreed to revise and publish the tariff and regulations according to which dues were levied on goods brought into and exported from the city and services provided within it. This was done in order to avert in future the disputes that had arisen between the tax collectors and the merchants, tradesmen and others from whom the taxes were due, and to make the situation absolutely clear the council ordered to be inscribed and displayed in a public place both the new regulations and the old ones which they superseded. The result is one of the most important single items of evidence for the economic life of any part of the Roman empire, and, especially in the taxable services mentioned in the regulations, a vivid glimpse also of the social life of a great middle-eastern city. In ordering the publication both of the old and the new regulations, the council also caused to be preserved crucial evidence for the development of the administrative position of Palmyra in the Roman empire, the old regulations being an accumulation of pronouncements and agreements affecting the city over a period of many years. And lastly, being inscribed both in Greek and in the dialect of Aramaic used in Palmyra and its region, the inscription is an important document in the relations between Classical and local cultures in an eastern province of the empire.
The Present State of the Tabula Imperii Romani
Authors: Rivet A. L. F.
Published: May 2006

The decision to produce maps covering the whole of the Roman Empire at a uniform scale of 1/1,000,000 was first made at a meeting of the International Geographical Union at Cambridge in July 1928. The proponent of the idea was O. G. S. Crawford, then Archaeology Officer of the Ordnance Survey, and since he was also mainly responsible for its early development, the model adopted was that of the second edition of the O.S. Map of Roman Britain, but the physical base chosen was that of the International Map of the World, which was then in production. Considerable progress was made in the 1930s—it was in 1934 that the title Tabula Imperii Romani was adopted—but wars interrupted matters and it was not until 1957 that the work was formally taken over by the Union Académique Internationale. Professor G. Lugli became the first President of the Permanent Committee of the TIR, to be succeeded in 1968 by Professor J. B. Ward-Perkins; on his death in 1981 the Presidency was assumed by Professor E. Condurachi, with Professor G. Carettoni as Vice-President taking over most responsibility for the western half of the Empire.
Corythus: the Return of Aeneas in Virgil and His Sources
Authors: Horsfall Nicholas
Published: May 2006

The Italian town of Corythus, which Virgil makes the home of Dardanus and the cradle of the Trojan people (Aen. iii, 170; vii, 209; ix, 10), has long been identified with Cortona, between Arezzo and Chiusi. It is the purpose of this paper to suggest that this identification is false; in reviving an alternative suggestion, which has not been current since the Renaissance, I hope to show too that the vexed question of whether or not the story is a Virgilian innovation admits of a decisive answer. The Aeneid itself provides our earliest evidence; it is remarkable that Virgil's own topographical indications, oblique, but not obscure, should have been so completely ignored by earlier writers on the topic.

From his ancestral throne, King Latinus addresses the Trojan embassy (vii, 195 f.): ‘dicite Dardanidae (neque enim nescimus et urbem et genus, auditique advertitis aequore cursum’. He speaks of Dardanus, ancestor of Aeneas, as ‘his ortus ut agris’ (206): the old story relates that, ‘Corythi Tyrrhena ab sede profectus’ (209), Dardanus made for Samothrace, and then Troy (207 f.). The location of Latinus’ city is indeed left uncertain, but we are clearly to envisage it as standing somewhere between the Tiber mouth and Ardea. That is about 120 miles from Cortona—enough to impose a great strain on his (206). It would be far more satisfactory if we could discover a Tyrrhenian location for Corythus that was easily reconcilable with ‘his … agris’. The fama which Latinus relates is obscurior on account of anni (205) and not because the story has percolated with difficulty through the length of Etruria.
Rutilius Namatianus, St. Augustine, and the Date of the De Reditu
Authors: Cameron Alan
Published: May 2006

One of St. Augustine's purposes in writing the De Civitate Dei was to counter the view which became current in pagan circles after Alaric's sack of Rome that Christianity was responsible for the disaster. To this end he quoted, introduced with the refrain ‘Ubi ergo erant illi dii ?’, many examples of similar disasters which the old gods had apparently been unable to ward of f in the pre-Christian period (III, 17 f.). In 1905 A. Dufourc pointed out that Rutilius Namatianus devotes a number of eloquent lines in his De Reditu to precisely the opposite claim, that Rome had risen with renewed and increased strength from each of these disasters (the Gauls, Samnites, Pyrrhus, Hannibal). Dufourc suggested that Rutilius had read Civ. Dei I–III, and that the De Red. was a pagan reply to Augustine's thesis. Little attention was paid to this suggestion at the time, but in 1948 P. Courcelle adduced further parallels between the two works, and claimed that Rutilius had read not only Civ. Dei I–III, but IV and V as well.
Hadrian and Lucius Verus
Authors: Barnes T. D.
Published: May 2006

At the age of sixty the emperor Hadrian cast about for a successor. His first choice was L. Ceionius Commodus, his second T. Aurelius Fulvus Boionius Arrius Antoninus. Both being adopted in turn by the ailing emperor, the former died before Hadrian while the latter survived to succeed him. Modern scholarship has indulged in long speculations about the motives of Hadrian and the political intrigues of his final years. This paper will not attempt to add to such speculations but will examine the precise details of the dynastic settlements of 136 and 138 upon which they are based. For due weight has not been given to certain relevant and important statements in the Historia Augusta, and as a result the facts have been misrepresented. Moreover, since some of these statements occur in the Vita Veri, the excellent worth of which has too often been denigrated, an analysis of that will be necessary. The partial interdependence of the historical and the literary problems dictates the separate yet combined treatment adopted here. The first part of this paper will discuss the biography of Lucius Verus in the Historia Augusta, the second the dynastic plans of Hadrian. The evidence and arguments employed in each part will, it is hoped, both confirm and be confirmed by the thesis advanced in the other.
Illyris, Rome and Macedon in 229–205 B.C.
Authors: Hammond N. G. L.
Published: May 2006

In JRS LVI (1966) I gave a description of the Aoi Stena which was based on autopsy, and I discussed the campaigns of Rome against Philip V of Macedon in the years 200 to 198 B.C. In this paper I am concerned with the area farther north which Rome acquired in 229 B.C. and with the actions which took place there before 200 B.C. Many scholars have discussed Rome's early activities in Illyris but practically none of them has trodden the ground. My knowledge of most of the area may help me to advance more down-to-earth views of the extent of Rome's sector in Illyris and of Roman and Macedonian policies. I include some new evidence on the position of Dimallum.

The salient feature of Central Albania is the belt of coastal plain which extends from north of Lesh (Lissus) to north of the Gulf of Valona (see fig. 1). The widest and richest part of this plain is in the Myzeqija, which extends southwards from Kavajë. The Myzeqija in particular is integral to the economy of Central Albania, the area which was called Southern Illyris in the third century B.C. The transhumance of sheep has always been practised in this part of the Balkans, and the coastal plain of Albania with months of very heavy rainfall in October and March affords exceptionally fine pasturage for the winter period.
Vota Pro Salvte Imperatoris in an Inscription at Ulpia Traiana Sarmizegetusa
Authors: Mǎrghitan Liviu , Petolescu Constantin C.
Published: May 2006

The evidence for the first town founded in Dacia after the Roman conquest is recorded in an important epigraphic document: ‘[Ex] au[ctoritate Imp(eratoris) Cae]saris divi Nerv[ae f(ilii) Nervae] Traiani Augusti condita Colonia Dacica per [D(ecimum) Terenti]um Scaurianum [leg(atum) eius] pr(o) pr(aetore)’. From the reign of Hadrian onwards, the town bears in inscriptions the name of Colonia Ulpia Traiana Augusta Dacica Sarmizegetusa, sometimes given in a simplified form; in the third century A.D., during the reign of Severus Alexander, the title of ‘metropolis’ is added. Sarmizegetusa was the seat of the governor of the province of Dacia, and then of Dacia Superior, and finally became that of the general governor of the three Dacias (legatus Augusti pro praetore trium Daciarum, consularis Daciarum III). Throughout the Roman period, Ulpia Traiana was the political, cultural and religious metropolis of Dacia.
Antigonea in Epirus
Authors: Hammond N. G. L.
Published: May 2006

The region in which Antigonea is to be sought is one of the most spectular in Europe. Its modern capital, Argyrokastro, is built on the steep and bare limestone mountainside to the west of the river Drin, which runs northwards through a narrow alluvial plain, enclosed on either side by roughly parallel ranges of great height. At this latitude the mountains of the Kurvelesh on the west, attaining heights over 5,000 feet, and the mountains of Llunxherië on the east, surpassing 6,000 feet, are relatively far apart; but as one proceeds northwards, the mountains converge and pinch the valley of the Drin between their towering masses. Here the Drin runs deep in a gorge, cut by its own waters in a shaley flysch formation, which is rich in springs, thickly wooded and deeply fissured. The modern road, which stays on the west side of the river, descends quite steeply through the gorge of the Drin. Below Lekel one enters an open flattish area, some 500 feet above sea-level, in which the Drin and the Bencë, emerging from an impassable limestone gorge, join the great river, the ancient Aous. The central point of the open area is Tepelenë, built beside the river. Below Tepelenë the Aous valley is relatively open, and the going is easy on foot, but the modern road climbs westwards and crosses the limestone mountain-sides on its way to the Bay of Valona. Above Tepelenë, or rather above Dragot, the Aous comes through a magnificent gorge, cut aeons ago by a much greater river. The floor is fairly level and bare of trees, and the river is confined in its conglomerate bed. The steep faces of the limestone mountains tower above one on either side, until one emerges from the gorge—the Aoi Stena—at Kelcyrë, where the countryside is open, undulating and wooded.