The final settlement which began in A.D. 300 between the menacing power of Christianity and the forces of the state, was the unavoidable consequence of a long and slow development. The men who then stood at the head of the Roman Empire were compelled to become the protagonists in the last act of this great drama and, clearly as its final issue may have been indicated from the first, by the positions they adopted materially affected the course of the drama.

As all know, the climax was reached with the conversion of Constantine. Quite recently, however, so eminent a Byzantine scholar as H. Grégoire has disputed the belief that the Battle of the Mulvian Bridge was won in the sign of the Cross, and, as more than one serious student has accepted his view, we shall have to follow in rather closer detail his brilliant description of the political developments of these years. We shall readily admit with him that the account of Eusebius in the Vita Constantini, i, 28–30, is a highly-coloured romance and panegyric, marred by rehandling and later interpolation, and quite inconsistent with the information of Lactantius: yet, despite all this, it has a definite kernel of history in it, as I hope soon to show.

More than a local military interest attaches to an inscription found in the fort at Birdoswald during the excavations of 1929, which records the restoration of the praetorium, the principia and the bath-house under Aurelius Arpagius, vir perfectissimus praeses, in the period A.D. 297–305. It sheds a fresh ray of light on the evolution of Diocletian's provincial re-organization, while another ray comes from the East in the shape of a fragmentary inscription which Sir William Ramsay copied at Laodiceia on the Lycus in 1926 and has. kindly placed at my disposal. A companion stone from Hierapolis, on the other side of the valley, was published with a few comments by Prof. Judeich in Altertümer von Hierapolis, 1898, p. 87, no. 43, from which it is reproduced in IGRR, iv, no. 814, but its significance has not been perceived. The two inscriptions supplement each other in a happy manner. They clearly relate to the same governor, whose name was afterwards erased.

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.

Many years ago it was the fortune of the writer to be present as a listener at a conversation between the architect, Sir Rowand Anderson, then at the height of his reputation, and a civil engineer of good standing in his profession. The Tay Bridge was the subject, and Sir Rowand was trying to make his interlocutor see that the existing bridge lacked one little touch, the addition of which would be of incalculable value but the absence of which made the bridge the most depressing thing of the kind that these islands hold. It must be explained that the bridge makes no pretension to be anything else but a pure work of utility and the following is its simple scheme. Starting from each bank of the Tay long ranges of girders, supported on simple metal piers, approach each other to within a short distance, the interval corresponding to the width of the main stream of the river. To give ample head room for the river traffic the trains are carried across the space of this interval on a special girder of suitable length, which is laid across this central gap, each end of it resting on the top of the other girders first described. In this position the bottom level of the special girder corresponds to the top level of the other girders, and the trains when they pass along this bottom level are at a greater clear height above the water than elsewhere on the bridge and so there is a free water-way for craft with masts.

Since the antiquaries of the eighteenth century—Hunter, Gordon, and Horsley—identified the forts on Hadrian's Wall with the stations per lineam valli by means of inscriptions found in them, further epigraphic material has accumulated, as a result of which all the forts except those at Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Rudchester, as far west as Birdoswald, have produced evidence of the regiments assigned by the Notitia Dignitatum to the stations Segedunum-(C)amboglanna. But, in a number of instances, there have also come to light inscriptions set up by regiments that do not occur in the Notitia, or that are placed elsewhere in that list; the purpose of the present paper is to consider the significance of these inscriptions.

Four of the Saxon-shore forts—Richborough, Pevensey, Portchester and Burgh Castle—are now under the control of H.M. Office of Works. The first of these is being excavated by the Society of Antiquaries and any finds made by H.M. Office of Works are published in the Society's Reports; H.M. Office of Works is carrying out repairs to the masonry of the other three, and at Pevensey and Portchester the mediaeval moats have been cleared out and walls, etc., of the same period uncovered. During these operations certain discoveries of interest connected with the Roman occupation of the sites have come to light and I am taking this opportunity of placing them on record.

The products of a highly civilised community must always tend to drift across its political frontiers to less advanced peoples beyond. In the early centuries of our era the output of Roman workshops, following perhaps the older amber routes, was finding its way north of the Rhine and reaching Scandinavia. The same process was going on in Caledonia. The troops marching northward carried their supplies with them, and on the sites of their forts the excavator unearths their pottery and glass, their vessels of bronze, their ornaments, tools and weapons,—the familiar things of provincial Roman civilization. But out beyond the limits of the forts and camps the same products from time to time come to light—picked up near the lines of communication, gathered from the sites of native dwellings, or found far out among the hills or by coasts where the Roman soldier never penetrated, telling their tale of traffic or of plunder.

In no other part of the Roman empire are preserved so many camps and forts of Roman troops, in none is the preservation of their remains in general so excellent as in Great Britain. Nowhere else was the survey of these monuments undertaken so early, and nowhere else has their excavation been pursued with such perseverance and care down to the present day. But nevertheless the material to be examined is by no means exhausted. We may hope that by the further systematic exploration of Roman camps and forts in England and Scotland other countries may be greatly helped in the appreciation of these monuments.

On finding that I was to share in the tribute which we are bringing to Sir George Macdonald, I vowed, as do those who mean to give of their best, the first thing that should meet me on my way home. Such vows have a way of turning out badly—or, at least, awkwardly— for the vowers, and this has been no exception to the general rule. The first subject that met me on my next appearance at the British Museum was the question of Roman coins found in Britain, and I felt, as Jephthah might have done if, instead of his daughter, his pet mongrel had come out to meet him: was the offering good enough ?

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.

No ruins of the ancient world outside Italy are more famous than the beautiful romantic remains of Queen Zenobia's city—the desert-city of caravans. No city of the Near East has yielded such an abundance of inscriptions, sculptures and fragments of painting. For more than a century and a half collectors and dealers have found in Palmyra a happy hunting ground; almost every museum has its Palmyrene bust or Palmyrene inscription or some small object such as the common clay tessera. A considerable number of the antiquities found at Palmyra have been published—most of the inscriptions in the Palmyrene dialect of Aramaic or in Greek, numerous sculptures, and many paintings found in tombs. The most important Palmyrene texts have been translated and will shortly be available to those historians who are not acquainted with Semitic languages.

No systematic survey of the methods adopted by military and civil builders in Roman Britain has yet been attempted. Nor does the present brief paper profess to fill the gap. It is merely a collection of notes based mostly upon a personal experience of varied types of Romano-British structure observed during excavation. As such, it may have a contributory value when a more comprehensive review of the subject is undertaken.

The best single collection of Roman building-material from Britain is that recovered from the factory of the 20th Legion at Holt, near Chester, and now exhibited in the National Museum of Wales at Cardiff. For the rest, building-materials and methods receive less than their due in our museums.