According to tradition Rome was founded by Romulus in 753 B.C. and was ruled by seven kings until the expulsion of Tarquin the Proud in 509. Later writers, particularly Dionysius of Halicarnassus and Plutarch, attribute a considerable volume of legislation to these kings, especially to Romulus, Numa Pompilius and Servius Tullius.

The story of this legislation is doubted by modern scholars in two ways. First it is maintained that at such an early time law would not be created by legislation. Secondly it is claimed that law such as is described for the period could not then have existed, but is either an invention of the history writers or is the law of a later period which has been pushed back in time. The doubts are so profound that it has been said we know as good as nothing about law before the decemviri.

By considering monetization across the Iron Age and Roman periods and across the whole of Temperate Europe some major developments become apparent. The spread of coinage in the Iron Age bears some relationship to the eventual extent of the Roman Empire. Coins stand in the archaeological record for systems of doing things, for ways people relate to each other and to things, and for ways of conceptualizing the world. They provide a useful way to approach the meeting of the worlds of the Iron Age and of Rome. Material forms of being Roman became increasingly important as a dimension of Roman identity. The commercialization implicit in Rome's ‘Cultural Revolution’ was underpinned by the extension of Roman-style monetization. In this light the monetization of Temperate Europe emerges as a process of considerable importance.

The first commercial contact of the Greeks with Etruria is certainly earlier than the foundation of the Greek colony at Cumae. Vulci, Chiusi, Terni, Bisenzio, Vetralla, Capodimonte, Leprignano, Veii, Falerii, Tarquinia, Cerveteri, have produced evidence of the importation of Greek pottery of a style considerably earlier than that of the contents of the earliest Greek graves of that colony.

The general conclusions which can be derived from this evidence for the history of Greek commerce with the Western Mediterranean have been discussed elsewhere; it is the particular significance of it as evidence for the earliest Hellenization of Italy that I wish to consider here.

The four inscriptions from Roman Cyrene published below, illustrate aspects of the city's life in the first, the later second and the early fifth centuries A.D. Taken together they suggest that there may be a case for modification of theories that Cyrene was declining throughout the Roman period, whether gently from the Augustan period or sharply after the Jewish Revolt of 115, to be moribund by the end of the fourth century.

What the Roman tradition, literary and artistic, has to tell us of the heavenly spheres is of Greek and Oriental origin, and it would be futile to go behind hellenized Rome: early Roman religion, though it had an extensive worship of heavenly gods, ignored the universe entirely. An examination of the Etruscan tradition leads to different conclusions. It offers, roughly speaking, three larger complexes to such an examination. One is the bronze model of a liver from Piacenza, used for extispicy and divided into many sections. The second is the doctrine about lightning, mainly to be found in Pliny and Seneca. The third is a list of gods, distributed among the sixteen regions of the heavens, in Martianus Capella (fourth-fifth century A.D.). The aim of this paper in its first part is to analyse this third complex (with occasional reference to the other two).

A wide variety of objects may function as money in the different uses which this possesses—for payment, for storing wealth, for measuring value and as a means of exchange. In the Roman world coined money was clearly dominant over other forms of money in the first three uses, and I want here to explore the extent to which it served as a means of exchange, partly because this is the most distinctive function of money and one for which coined money or a token substitute is essential to achieve any great versatility, partly because the problems involved seem particularly complex. It is not sufficient simply to discuss how coined money was used as a means of exchange. Attitudes to the process are equally relevant. Nor should the absence of ancient discussions of monetary theory mislead us into minimizing the practical importance of coined money in the ancient world.

This article examines the Contra Andromachum, the open letter in which Gelasius of Rome (A.D. 492–496) condemned the continued involvement of members of the now Christian élite in the Lupercalia. It is suggested that the Pope's argument is less straightforward than has been supposed: the current status and recent history of the festival are left unclear, and the Pope's allegations about the motives of its sponsors are of dubious credibility. Of more significance is the public aspect of the festival, and in particular the opportunities it provided for those who organized it to advertise a connection with the heritage of Rome.

In dealing with so wide-ranging a subject, a remark of an American scholar, Mr. Hoey, on the intimate connection between the titles pius, felix, and invictus provides a convenient starting-point.

The first observation I would make is to call your attention to the consecutive (and almost causal) connection of these adjectives : because the Emperor is pius the gods will render him felix (for felicitas is their gift to their favourites) and his felicitas is best demonstrated in his being invictus. Nearly every nation of antiquity believed and hoped that its gods would bring it success : the Roman People, with seven centuries of expansion and increasing power to look back on, were convinced that their scrupulous attention to the due performance of the proper rites had won them this success, that their pietas had secured to them victoria; if the Emperor could be termed pius felix invictus, it was because he summed up and incarnated there the Roman People.

It has for a long time been recognized that a sharp decline in the prosperity and strength of municipal life in the Roman Empire took place during and shortly after the reign of Diocletian, and this has been attributed largely to his bureaucratic administrative system and heavy increases in taxation, with their consequent pressure upon the urban middle class—the curiales. Of the essential correctness of this view there can be no doubt; and apart from possible new evidence there is little more to be said on that phase of the subject. But there are other aspects of this important problem which seem to have received less attention than they deserve. Bureaucracies and crushing taxes have not always destroyed the middle classes of the countries in which they have existed, as the case of France under the Old Régime clearly proves; so there must be other contributory factors which helped to produce this result in the case under consideration. Some of these have been dealt with ; but one at least—the continuance under the new system of a type of internal municipal government suited only to the most prosperous period of the system which it replaced—seems to have been largely, if not entirely, ignored by investigators. Diocletian not only tried to make the municipia of his empire efficient agents of the central government, but in addition attempted to render them once more the energetic and prosperous organisms which they had been before the Military Anarchy ; and, as his efforts in the end contributed powerfully to produce exactly the opposite result, this portion of his work is worthy of note, if for no other reason than to serve as a warning for would-be benevolent despots in other ages.

This article begins with a review of the traditional dates for Palladas (c. A.D. 360–450) and the current consensus of most scholars (c. A.D. 319–400). The first of these relies almost exclusively on the dubious manuscript lemmata and the second on an interpretation of Palladas' epigrams pertaining to the rise of Christianity and the weakening of the pagan cults, which are supposed to be Theodosian in date. Both timelines are difficult to reconcile with two external clues, which together suggest that his floruit must have been earlier than the second half of the fourth century. Further analysis reveals that the important pagan-Christian epigrams are full of Constantine's political and religious propaganda post-324. Another line of inquiry establishes a new set of dates: c. A.D. 259–340.

The composition of the Roman Senate from the death of Nero in A.D. 68 to that of Alexander Severus in A.D. 235 changed in respect to both the social classes and the geographical areas from which new members were drawn. Detailed studies have been, and continue to be, made of the membership of the Senate during different reigns within these limits and it is the purpose of this paper to draw together into a general picture the results of the following such studies: —

Inscriptions found at Pisidian Antioch disclose the careers of several senators. They afford various instruction, the prime specimen being ‘] P.f. Stel. Sospes’. The stone was discovered by Hamilton, and it will be a suitable tribute to epigraphists if one reproduces the copy made by the careful and exemplary Sterrett.

P·F·STEL·SOS

TI·FETIALI·LEG·AVG

PRO·PR·PROVINC·GAL

PISID·PHRYG·LVC·ISAVR·

PAPHLAG·PONTI·GALA

PONTI·POLEMONIANI

ARM·LEG·LEG·XIII·GEM

DONAT·DON·MILITARIB

EXPEDIT·SVEBIC·ET·SARM

COR·MVR·COR·VALL·COR

AVR·HAST·PVR·TRIB·VE

XILL·TRIB·CVRAT·COLO

NIOR·ET·MVNICIPIOR·PRAE

FRVM·DAND·EX·S·C·PRAETOR

AED·CVRVL·Q·CRET·ET·C

TRIB·LEG·XXIII·PRIMIGEN

IIIVIR·A·A·A·FF·

THIASVS·LIB

The document touches large fields of imperial history, not mere dates and detail in the record of a single senator. Hence abundant debate, and it goes on. Economy and clarity counsel a direct approach to the text. The last two posts held by Sospes offer some prospect of precision.

The battle of Bovillae on 18th January, 52 B.C., which led to Clodius' death, was literally treated by Cicero in a letter to Atticus as the beginning of a new era—he dated the letter by it, although over a year had elapsed. It is difficult to exaggerate the relief it afforded him from fear and humiliation for a few precious years before civil war put him once more in jeopardy. At one stroke Cicero lost his chief inimicus and the Republic lost a hostis and pestis. Moreover, the turmoil led to a political realignment for which Cicero had been striving for the last ten years—a reconciliation between the boni and Pompey, as a result of which Pompey was commissioned to put the state to rights. Cicero's behaviour in this context, especially his return to the centre of the political scene, is, one would have thought, of capital importance to the biographer of Cicero. Yet two recent English biographies have but briefly touched on the topic. It is true that, in the background of Cicero's personal drama, Caesar and Pompey were taking up positions which, as events turned out, would lead to the collapse of the Republic. However, Cicero and Milo were not to know this, nor were their opponents; friendly cooperation between the two super-politicians apparently was continuing. Politicians on all sides were still aiming to secure power and honour through the traditional Republican magistracies, and in this pursuit were prepared to use the odd mixture of violence, bribery and insistence on the strict letter of the constitution, which was becoming a popular recipe. In retrospect their obsession with the customary organs of power has a certain irony. Yet it is a testimony to the political atmosphere then. Their manoeuvres are also important because both the instability caused by the violence of Clodius and Milo, and the eventual confidence in the rule of law established under Pompey's protection, helped to determine the political position of the boni associated with Pompey in 49 B.C. Cicero's relationship with Milo is at first sight one of the more puzzling aspects of his career. What had they in common, except that Milo, like most late Republican politicians, was at one time associated with Pompey? Properly interpreted, however, this relationship may not only illuminate Cicero's own attitudes but illustrate the character of the last years of Republican politics.

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.

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.

The article offers a re-edition of a Latin stilus tablet found in 1917 at Tolsum in the Netherlands, the region inhabited in Roman times by the tribe of the Frisii, and first published as a contract of sale for an ox. The re-edition, with readings based on new techniques of digital image capture, establishes the date of the text (A.D. 29) and shows that it does not concern the sale of an ox, but is more probably the second half of a loan-note for a sum of money now lost, between a debtor whose name is lost and a creditor named Carus (or perhaps Andecarus) who was a slave of Iulia(?) Secunda, herself perhaps the wife of a tribune of Legion V named T(itus) Cassius

The subject is the Roman occupation and control of the river Danube between the river Inn and the Black Sea, with a special emphasis on recent research and discoveries. Themes examined include the pattern of recent research and publication in the dozen modern states that now exist in the area; the construction of strategic roads linking the upper and lower Danube basins with the rest of the Roman world; military history and the creation of the military cordon along the river and the civil and military settlements associated with this. Recent research on social, economic, and cultural themes is also reviewed. Detailed accounts of major roads to the Danube and sites along the river are provided in two topographical appendices.

‘Le salut, pour l'histoire économique de l'antiquité, ne peut venir que de la mer’—heady talk, but typical of its time. It may well be that the decade of the’ 70s will come to be seen as the high summer of amphorae studies and it is, perhaps, no accident that such great claims have been made in a report on a wreck at Port-Vendres which is closely dated by the stamps on a remarkable series of ingots and also has an exceptional series of painted inscriptions on the amphorae of the cargo. Few wrecks have produced information of such quality.

Juvenal is charged with misogyny. The evidence brought against him is Satire 6. A secondary charge is that of unstructured composition. This paper will attempt to show that the case is unfounded. My contention is that the poem is shaped by contemporary discourses about marriage, in particular the treatment of marriage in rhetoric. The understanding of the poem's ideological grounding thus gained will provide a basis for exploring the complex interrelationship of author, speaker, addressee, and audience in the poem.

At the central point of Horace's epistle to the Pisones (ll. 220–50 out of 476) is a lengthy passage on the history and composition of satyr-plays. At the central point within that passage (ll. 234–5), with emphatic use of the vocative and the first-person pronoun, Horace presents himself and his addressees as actively involved in writing satyr-plays:

non ego inornata et dominantia nomina solum

verbaque, Pisones, satyrorum scriptor amabo.