There is no more likely factor of dispute in a peace treaty than its definition of an inland frontier, even when the terms of the treaty are directly known: one has not to look far for instances where a topographic reference has proved to be equivocal. The terrain itself, of course, may be to blame. Only a continuous river line provides a clear demarcation of territory; a mountainous area or steppe or desert land, often by its nature sparsely populated, may lack the local place-names to give precision to a frontier. In the second century B.C. the Romans experienced this difficulty in North Africa and Asia Minor. But the modern scholar is even more at a loss, in two ways. First, his knowledge has geographical gaps, and the ancient names may have changed: one has only to think of the debt that we owe to the epigraphic work of men who have scoured Asia Minor for the evidence identifying ancient sites. Secondly, the literary texts have suffered corruption, in greater or less degree, during the course of their manuscript transmission. It is necessary to combine the study of topography, inscriptions, and text. Further—with reference to the present subject—the Romans imposed peace and what may be called a ‘protectorate’ in Asia Minor, however loosely.

One of the most revealing single items of evidence on the political character of the Empire is an anecdote told by Dio about Hadrian; a woman approached the Emperor on a journey and demanded his attention; Hadrian said he had no time and moved on—καὶ μὴ βασίλευε shouted the woman after him, ‘then stop being Emperor’. The point is clear; the ideology—and the practice—of the Empire was that the Emperor was personally accessible to his subjects in a way which now seems incredible, and which most books on the Empire tend to ignore, or regard as trivial. One may recall, for instance, Maecenas struggling to get through the crowd surrounding Augustus as he gave judgement, the advocati trying to hold Claudius by physical force on the tribunal to hear their pleas, or the story of how a muleteer of Vespasian was bribed to stop and shoe a mule, giving time for a litigator to approach.

One of the smallest of the papyri in the files of cohors XX Palmyrenorum stationed at Dura-Europos in Syria Coele appears to be one of the most interesting. It is P. Dura 81, which is dated, on similarity of style to another document, to c. A.D. 251:

On the fourth line J. F. Gilliam the editor comments: ‘Following -athon it appears that o was first written and then corrected to i. Possibly these letters are part of a name, perhaps the nomen of Marcellus. Mathoni would be possible, though surprising.’

However, the reading is almost certainly correct as it stands. A Marcus Aurelius Atho Marcellus is attested by two inscriptions as being procurator Mauretaniae Caesariensis at some time between A.D. 246 and 249. I suggest that he is the same person as the man mentioned at Dura for four reasons: Atho is the only example of this nomen to be found in PIR2; the combination with Marcellus; they are both procurators of high rank; they are contemporary.

At the root of many doubts that obscure our understanding of the manner and timing of Tiberius' accession to the principate there lies a chronological puzzle whose solution is perhaps not altogether beyond conjecture. On what date fell the dies imperii of the new emperor? Three (perhaps four) precise, but incorrect, answers are provided by Josephus, Dio and Tertullian. The difficulty is not removed by the brief or tendentious narratives of Velleius, Tacitus and Suetonius which offer us no such date, or of Dio himself. It is the purpose of this paper to argue that Tiberius accepted the principate at the hands of the Senate on a date between 1st and 3rd September, A.D. 14, and that his reluctance to do so is unlikely to have been a consequence of the receipt of news of the Pannonian revolt.

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.

The site of Choma has been a long-standing puzzle. Its approximate location in the north of Lycia, in the general neighbourhood of Elmalı, has long been known; the ancient notices leave no doubt on this score. But for the exact position no real clue had hitherto been found. The following inscriptions were discovered, copied and photographed by Harrison in 1963, and were collated, and squeezes taken, by Bean in 1965. They resolve the problem definitively and satisfactorily, including as they do not only tombstones and other monuments erected by persons expressly designated as Chomatitae, but also an honorific decree of the Council and People of Choma.

The inscriptions are in and around the villages of Hacımusalar and Sarılar, which lie close together about 13 km. south-west of Elmalı, on the way to Gömbe, the ancient Comba (Fig. 3). About 1 km. south-east of Hacımusalar and east of Sarılar is a large prehistoric mound (hüyük), conspicuous in the dead-flat plain (Pl. I, 1).

The History of Livy is extraordinarily full of references to the gods and their worship. In this way it differs strikingly from the writings of Sallust and Tacitus, not to mention the Commentaries of Caesar. This fact has been interpreted in various ways. Kajanto has argued that, the frequent references to religious matters notwithstanding, events in Livy's History are mainly determined by human beings, not by gods and fate. Bayet sees in Livy a pure agnostic who has grasped the importance of the religious factor in history. On the other hand, Stübler maintains that Livy was traditionally orthodox and supplemented tradition with a belief in the mission of the emperor Augustus as a god and son of a god to save Rome. An intermediate position is taken up by Walsh who sees in Livy a Stoic who can continue to respect traditional beliefs and practices because they have been given a symbolic place in a comprehensive philosophical system.

In the late Republic and early Empire special courts were established by statute, largely by Sulla and Augustus, to deal with the following crimes: treason, adultery, murder, parricide, embezzlement, forgery of wills, public and private violence, corrupt practices in elections, extortion, injury, and interference with the corn-supply. It is commonly thought that at least some of these quaestiones were still active in the Severan period. In a recent article Kunkel granted that the courts for treason, extortion, embezzlement and ambitus (which included bribery at elections) probably lasted for only a short time under the Principate. But he considered that the quaestio or iudicium publicum was nevertheless a living institution in the time of the classical lawyers, and, in particular, that the evidence was good for the continued operation of the quaestio de adulteriis. The case for the existence of the quaestio de adulteriis may well be stronger than the case for the existence of other quaestiones; but it is still weak. In the following pages the thesis will be put forward that all the quaestiones were defunct in the Severan age.

Mr. Graham's article on the division of Britain in the early third century usefully collects much of the relevant evidence. He concludes that Herodian is wrong in claiming that Britain was divided in A.D. 197, and suggests that no division took place until the reign of Caracalla. But he fails to take into account the possibility that a division was indeed made in 197, on different lines from those which applied later.

The one piece of new evidence produced to help in refuting Herodian is an Ephesian inscription which mentions embassies to the emperors Severus and Caracalla in Upper Germany and Britain. The grounds are that, in the wording of the inscription, Germany is qualified as τὴν ἄνω, while Britain is not qualified. But Germania without qualification would be too vague to be allowed to stand; it could even lead to confusion with free Germany. Britannia, on the other hand, is clearly merely a geographical description.

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.

In the accounts of contemporaries imperial Rome looms as the largest and most magnificent capital of its age, and it is only natural, therefore, that modern scholars have attempted to determine with some precision both the size of the city's population and the way in which that population was housed. The evidence relating to the two closely connected problems is both archaeological and written : the ruins of ancient houses which still exist in Rome and the literary works which deal in part with the number of inhabitants or the buildings in the capital.

The remains of several relatively well-preserved antique structures in Rome lend substance to Guido Calza's assertion that the apartment-house was the most common form of domestic architecture in the imperial capital. The ruins of one such dwelling (Plate VI, 1) are embedded in the city walls built by the Emperor Aurelian in the third century A.D. Located just south of the Porta Tiburtina, the remains comprise the garden facade of a four-storey brick building which originally contained apartments whose plans varied from floor to floor. This variation in the layout of flats within the building may be traced today in the placement of windows on each level.

Two important recent studies have independently tried to show that Polybius was consistent in his use of accurate Olympiad chronology in his introductory books I and II. Werner uses his demonstration as a means to his reconstruction of the early years of the Roman Republic, Pédech uses his as part of his attempt to show that Polybius, throughout the whole of his work, consistently used accurate Olympiad dating. As the arguments of each are independent and have a different ultimate purpose, it will eventually be necessary to discuss each separately. But before starting the discussion it is important to make the purpose of this article clear. The view under discussion seems to me to be fundamentally misconceived and the arguments used to support it either inconclusive or erroneous. Whatever the case may be elsewhere in his work, I can find no indication that Polybius, in his two introductory books, consistently used any system of chronology apart from that which he was able to find in his various sources. The few Olympiad dates which he does give refer without exception to the beginning or end of series of events, and are given in the form of synchronisms as an attempt to make his terminal points fixed and comprehensible to his readers.

When a Roman historian came to compose the orations that convention permitted him to include within his pages, all the arts of rhetoric were at his disposal. But in one signal sphere the historians renounced the procedure that Cicero had enjoined in theory and displayed in practice, the employment of the rhythmical clausula. Or rather, in reaction against the Ciceronian cadences they favoured other rhythms, not least the spondaic. The tendency is as true of Livy as it is of the patently anti-Ciceronian Sallust. Tacitus too, though in less marked degree, follows the historians' practice—a liking for the dispondaic ending and no disinclination for the heroic clausula (), but also a considerable fondness for the ditrochee. According to Zielinski the following patterns (C2 (+ C22esse uideatur) + C3 + T24 + M3 ( + M23)) account for almost 75 % of all Cicero's final clausulae (actually 73·8%): the figures for the historians are Sallust 28·3%, Livy 25·9%, Tacitus 44·8 %. The intermediary position that Tacitus adopts is not without its advantages. When Petillius Cerialis addresses the Treviri and Lingones as a bluff soldier, unaccustomed to public speaking, he can emphasize his pretence of artlessness by the heavy spondaic endings of his first two sentences —and similarly at the end of the chapter.

This paper is meant to strengthen Hermann Dessau's contention that one man composed the Historia Augusta, not six as the collection itself attests. In the first and positive part I have gathered the soundest of his arguments together with any other evidence that seemed cogent, and supported the whole with representative citations from the text. The next three sections expose basic weaknesses in the defence of multiple authorship offered by his opponents. I will show how criticism based upon linguistic differences and upon contradictions between Scriptores fails, or at least has so far failed, to confirm the traditional view; and I will also insist upon the shallowness of that compromise which postulates far-reaching interpolation rather than original falsification. The paper ends with some suggestions about argumentation which I hope will win the sympathy of anyone else who must deal with the problem of authorship.

Philippus Arabs ruled the Roman world for five years, A.D. 244 to 249. It is an obscure reign, even for the period: the Augustan History offers no life of Philip, the other literary sources are scanty and dubious. The political historian might turn, like Gibbon, to general criteria—‘the knowledge of human nature, and of the sure operation of its fierce and unrestrained passions’. For economics and administration nothing will serve but more evidence. It seems worthwhile, therefore, to assemble the papyrus documents which reflect Philip's régime in Egypt; and to ask whether any coherent picture emerges from them.

This enterprise has its own dangers. The documents from Egypt represent chance finds, on a few sites, in the remoter half of the country. They are oppressively numerous, yet negligible in comparison with the bulk now lost. They allow vivid glimpses of administration at work, but for the most part at the lower levels and in individual cases. Chance survival, local particularism and official incompetence play a large part.

A century and a quarter of controversy is a dubious distinction for any historical problem. When opinion has been so divided as on the hastiferi and when direct evidence, though double what it was, is still restricted to a few inscriptions, it would be wise for any new appraisal to set itself a limited goal. This paper aims to reconsider the office of the hastiferi in the light of the important discoveries within the sanctuary of Magna Mater at Ostia. The most I hope to achieve is to block out the main lines of a possible solution. Finality is out of the question.

The willingness of the Romans to adopt foreign military practices and to modify, and hereby strengthen, legionary organization, equipment, and tactics is well-documented and thas been discussed frequently by modern scholars. One manifestation of this pragmatic approach, however, has not received the attention it deserves—viz. their attempts during the Empire to develop an effective cavalry. In this effort the Romans employed a variety of cavalrymen and cavalry tactics, but one of the most interesting and certainly one of the most enduring products was the mailed cavalry. The origin, development and success of this force—which became a prominent branch of the Roman army after the first century A.D.—cannot be analysed without some reference to earlier experiments with cavalry equipment and tactics in the Mediterranean area. The Romans did not invent the heavy-armoured horseman: on the contrary, the innovators were the Assyrians, whose monuments uniquely illustrate the evolution of cavalry technique in antiquity. Delineation of the Assyrian development is instructive, for they were required to solve many of the technical and tactical problems which later confronted the Romans. Moreover, the tactics employed and the cavalry types created by the Assyrians are remarkably similar to the later Roman. To facilitate comparison of the Assyrian and Roman experience, in the following assessment the equivalent Greek and Latin terminology has been supplied for each phase in the Assyrian development.