Any knowledge of the municipal system evolved in Italy after the Social War must turn, however we might wish it otherwise, upon the four bronze inscriptions found respectively at Tarentum, Veleia, Ateste and Heraclea. They have been much discussed, and it may seem that there is nothing more useful to be said; but the present state of opinion leaves room for doubt. To Mommsen and scholars of his generation they were at least ingenuous documents, but poorly engraved and in places obscure and inexplicable. Even that was challenged by Gradenwitz, who in a remarkable series of articles turned upon them an eye sharpened in the pursuit of interpolation in legal texts, and declared that at least two—the Lex Rubria and the Tabula Heracleensis—were products of inept draftsmen who inserted glosses and interpolations in defiance of style and sense. A. von Premerstein went further; like the Spanish charter from Urso, the Heraclea inscription was an unfinished draft of Caesar's published, after his murder, by Antony with reckless additions of his own; and more recently, the same has been urged by G. Beseler, F. Schulz and others of the Lex Rubria. The internal problems of these inscriptions are thus met by questioning their evidential value, but this seems, like a conjuror's explanation, to raise deeper mysteries than it solves.

It has become the accepted view that a certain group of ‘viri militares’ can be identified among the legates who governed the consular military provinces in the Roman empire. The question of these ‘specialist soldiers’ is relevant to the understanding of how appointments to military commands were made, and, more generally, to the political history of the empire. For it can be argued that ‘viri militares’ were important not only because they were responsible for the defence of the empire and could raise revolts with their armies, but also because, as a group, they were particularly influential with the emperor. And so Professor Sir Ronald Syme, to whose work we owe most for the concept of ‘viri militares’, speaks of a ‘paramount oligarchy’ that was ‘drawn in the main from the men who govern the armed provinces of Caesar’. Now, Syme recognized a wide variety of factors that might influence the selection of consular legates. However, his theory of ‘viri militares’ tends to be repeated without qualification as accepted doctrine, and in the hands of those who do not mark his caution lends itself to a rather schematic approach and mechanical solutions. This incurs the danger to which Syme himself has adverted: ‘Historians in all ages become liable through their profession to certain maladies or constraints. They cannot help making persons and events more logical than reality’.

This paper, a companion to one printed in vol. XLI of the Journal, describes discoveries made by air reconnaissance during the eight summers 1945–52 in the southern half of Roman Britain. The area concerned, extending from the English Channel to Yorkshire, embraces the whole of the civil district of the province and the highland regions of Wales and the Pennines that were throughout much of the Roman occupation under direct military control (pl. VIII). There is a broad difference, too, in the terrain of these two parts. The civil district corresponds to the lowland zone of Britain, which includes the most fertile soils and to-day the largest proportion of arable land. In Wales and the Pennines grass and moorland predominate. This difference is reflected in the results obtained by air reconnaissance. In the Midlands and the south, structures of the Roman period do not commonly survive above ground in open country, and by far the largest number of new discoveries have come from observation of crop marks, revealing features otherwise hidden. In Wales and the Pennines the aerial camera has recorded military remains, already known as they are visible on the surface as earthworks; and here additions to knowledge have come when such a site happened to be under a cereal crop rather than grass, or when earthworks were seen that escaped previous notice on the ground. The scale of the flying has varied much from one year to another in the period under review. In 1945 and 1946 the flying over southern Britain only amounted to a few hours; there were rather more in 1947, but most of the results here described were obtained in the years 1948–1951. This period included the exceptionally dry summer of 1949, when many features were seen that have not been visible at any other time.

This paper discusses the widely held view that politics in fifth- and sixth-century Italy were largely driven by rivalry between the two great families of the Anicii and the Decii, supposedly following distinctive policies (pro- or anti-eastern, philo- or anti-barbarian, etc.). It is probable that individual members of these (and other) families had feuds and disagreements from time to time, but there is absolutely no evidence for continuing rivalry between Decii and Anicii as families, let alone on specific issues of public policy. Indeed by the mid-fifth century the Anicii fell into a rapid decline. The nobility continued to play a central rôle in the social and (especially) religious life of late fifth- and early sixth-century Italy. Their wealth gave them great power, but it was power that they exercised in relatively restricted, essentially traditional fields, mainly on their estates and in the city of Rome. The quite extraordinary sums they spent on games right down into the sixth century illustrate their overriding concern for popular favour at a purely local level. In this context there was continuing competition between all noble families rich enough to compete. Indeed, the barbarian kings encouraged the nobility to spend their fortunes competing with each other to the benefit of the city and population of Rome.

The mint of Republican Rome was located on the Capitol somewhere in the vicinity of the temple of Juno Moneta. This is one of the best known but perhaps worst attested pieces of topographical information concerning the Republican city of Rome. The evidence that the coins of the Roman Republic were made there is exiguous to say the least. Indeed, there are only two literary sources that explicitly site the mint at Juno Moneta's temple. The first is Livy's account of the condemnation and execution of M. Manlius Capitolinus, the hero who had previously saved the Capitol from assault by the Gauls. Livy mentions that the people passed a law to the effect that no patrician would thereafter be permitted to live on the Capitol or the Arx, for Manlius' house had stood on the site where, Livy says, now stands the aedes atque officina Monetae, the temple and the workshop of Moneta. The second is contained in the Suda (s.v. Μονήτα), in a passage to be discussed below. These are the sole threads of evidence on which the location of the mint of Republican Rome hangs. Nevertheless, despite an attempt to impugn Livy's reputation for topographical accuracy, they should suffice.

The frequent use of the first person singular in the text of this article makes it necessary that we should explain how the work has been divided between us. Mr. Fell, who was resident for two years at the British School at Rome, first as Craven Student of the University of Cambridge, and then as Gilchrist Student of the Faculty of Archaeology, History and Letters, is responsible for Section A (The Via Flaminia in History), and Dr. Ashby for Section B (The Topography of the Via Flaminia from Rome to Narni). In Section C the description of the road from Narni to Forum Flaminii by Terni and Spoleto is the work of Dr. Ashby, while from Narni to Forum Flaminii by Bevagna it is the joint work of both writers: but the concluding portion of the road was studied and described by Mr. Fell alone. The whole article has, however, been carefully read by both of us.

This paper makes two arguments. The first is that Trajan deliberately orchestrated the dedication of his Column on 12 May, the anniversary of the dedication of the Temple of Mars Ultor, to coincide with the beginning of a new war against Parthia in a.d. 113. The second is that although most modern commentators focus on the function of Mars Ultor as avenger of Caesar, the evidence of his actual invocation from the late first century b.c. through the third century a.d. more strongly supports another interpretation: as agent of vengeance against foreign enemies, and against Parthia/Persia in particular.

The pompa circensis, the solemn procession that marched to the Circus Maximus on the occasion of the ludi magni, was headed by the boys and young men of the state, those whose fathers had the census equester going on horseback and the others on foot. The object of the procession was, Dionysius says, depending on Fabius for his account, to show to strangers how numerous and powerful were the youths about to come to man's estate. The martial ceremony must have been a stirring preparation for the military service that in early times was the duty of every Roman citizen. There was further preparation for such service at Rome. Cicero tells us that in former times, for a year after the taking of the toga virilis, the young tiro was trained at Rome in exercitatio ludusque campestris. This preliminary training was restored for the young noble by Augustus who felt its importance as a preparation for the military service insisted upon for all who sought political preferment. Indeed, the old tirocinium, as Rostovtzeff has shown, seems to have been lengthened from one to two years.

In the study of social structure in the Roman world of the first and second centuries A.D. nothing is more important or more complex than the slave and freed-slave classes. Their numbers are indeterminately large and predominant in many urban and some rural areas. Most have a reasonable expectation of early manumission and enjoy a high rate of social advancement. But it is important to distinguish between the different social levels of the slave classes in general in order to isolate, if possible, those elements of exceptionally high mobility which are an example and incentive to the rest. Among the most important of these in the early Imperial period are the slaves and freedmen of the Emperor, the Familia Caesaris, itself comprising groups of differing legal and occupational status. By comparing different groups of Imperial slaves both with each other and with those of equivalent legal status outside the Familia Caesaris it is possible to illustrate the extent of social differentiation within the slave classes.

Ever since Augustine narrated an account of his mother's death at Ostia, social historians have tried to adduce the identity of the person who erected Monica's tombstone, a copy of which is preserved in a ninth-century codex. Three members of the gens Anicii, all of whom were Augustine's contemporaries, have become usual suspects in the secondary literature. Throughout these debates the epitaph itself, a fragment of which was found in 1945, is frequently cited but rarely treated as a primary text. This article presents a new study of that epigraph and proposes that it was erected much later than previously suspected.

Towards the close of the Epitaphios of Libanius on Julian we read:–

I have mentioned representations (of Julian); many cities have set him beside the images of the gods and honour him as they do the gods. Already a blessing has been besought of him in prayer, and it was not in vain. To such an extent has he literally ascended to the gods and received a share of their power from them themselves.

The statement that Julian was made synnaos theos, or something of the sort, has many precedents. On the other hand, the assertion that he had hearkened to prayer calls for special consideration.

A scholar usually manages at some period in his life to read Xenophon's Cyropaedia, but probably rarely re-reads it. For the Cyropaedia has suffered from a change of fashion; once it was regularly read, and an admirable school commentary upon it by H. A. Holden is still purchasable. Now it is certainly not a school book, and it was mere chance brought me upon a passage which seems to raise questions about the development and propagation of a tradition, which may interest the great and friendly scholar to whom this volume is dedicated. But the topic ranges over so many territories into which I have no right to enter that I must ask him to forgive me for offering him a short essay rather than a rigorously reasoned and documented statement; I wish merely to put before him two texts, with brief observations.

In the Cyropaedia Xenophon depicts an ideal ruler. One important thing about that ruler is that he must not only be in every way a better man than those whom he commands, but must be admittedly and visibly so.

No aristocrat of the fourth century A.D. was so brilliantly successful or so widely hated as S. Petronius Probus. Greedy for public office when his peers preferred opulent leisure, more at home amid the intrigues of court than the salons of Rome, a Christian when most of his peers were still pagan, he rose to a pinnacle of wealth and power.

His unusually long career is abundantly documented by literary, legal and epigraphic sources. But the details have always been problematic. And in 1971 G. Barbieri published a new dedication from Capua that raised a whole new set of problems.

Reviewing Peter Sattler's Augustus und der Senat (1960), J. P. V. D. Balsdon remarked that the background to the events which marked the establishment of the principate is a field which has been ploughed, even deep ploughed times without number. This must be agreed, and the sceptical need go no further than Lothar Wickert's article s.v. princeps in Pauly's RE xxii, 2 (1953), esp. 2002–2004, to confirm the truth of the remark. Much of the ploughing however has been concerned with the question, ‘By what legal right did Octavian/Augustus govern before, during, and after the period in which he claimed to have “transferred the res publica into the discretionary power of the Senate and Roman people”?’ The interest of this particular question has somewhat declined recently, perhaps rightly so, in an age in which there is a score of Octavians in the world, governing by right of victory in a civil war, and the governed populations tolerate these rulers without constantly examining their constitutional credentials, because they have one all-important virtue—they have put a stop to civil war.

There is scarcely a region of the Roman west which can claim, superficially, to be better known than southern Gaul. There can be no lover of antiquities who has not visited Arles or Nîmes, studied the arch of Orange or the Pont du Gard, devoted some interest to the monuments of Fréjus, the sculptures of Nîmes, or the mosaics of Vienne, not to mention the houses of Glanum or Vaison which have been recovered from the earth by the dedication of Henri Rolland and Canon Sautel. And yet many of these famous monuments have had to wait until very recent years before becoming the subject of detailed monographs: so, the trophy of the Alps, the arch of Orange, or the mausoleum of Glanum. Others, without having received exhaustive publication, have only in recent decades been properly dated (the amphitheatres of Arles and Nîmes) or adequately described: I am thinking of the Maison Carrée.

Scholars have given much attention to the procedure for submitting private petitions to the Roman emperor. Literary sources suggest that emperors spent a lot of time answering petitions from private individuals, and papyri and inscriptions offer tangible evidence that this was so. But our richest evidence is provided by the Roman legal sources, which preserve over 2,500 of the replies written by the emperors, at least in theory, beneath the petitions themselves. The sheer quantity of these subscriptions, and the fact that some of them were addressed to petitioners of relatively humble status, have suggested that the emperors attended to their subjects in a surprisingly personal way. Even more important is the fact that subscriptions in our legal sources consist almost entirely of formulations of principle; it has been assumed that they were issued to clarify the law, for private petitioners who had questions about it.

Tacitus described tribunician power (tribunicia potestas, trib. pot. hereafter) as the title of the highest pinnacle (sc. of power) in the Roman world (summi fastigii vocabulum), and Augustus counted his years of trib. pot. from 23 B.C. So much may be stated with confidence and without dispute. In 23 B.C. however trib. pot. was introduced quietly, so quietly that the exact date of the law by which it was conferred (if it was conferred in 23 B.C.) is unknown; and the title itself made so little impact on contemporary opinion that the reaction of the common people of Rome, for whose protection Tacitus says Augustus took the power, was negative—so negative that they spent the next five years trying to re-elect Augustus to the consulate which he had resigned at or about the time that the era of trib. pot. began. We must conclude that the conferment of trib. pot. (if there was any ceremony at all in 23 B.C.) was not made the subject of a great celebration designed to win popular acclaim for this new institution (if it was a new one), nor was it immediately advertised widely as a new formula for the government of the Roman world.

Cumae was the first city founded by Greek colonists on the mainland of Italy. It attained pre-eminence for a time in the Bay of Naples and its influence was exercised over a wide area for more than 500 years. Yet the detailed phases of its long history are still very nebulous and patchy. References in ancient writers deal mainly with its contacts with the rising power of Rome. Little excavation has been carried out on the site (apart from the cemeteries) and the published information is mostly of a general nature, more suited to tourist appreciation than to that of serious students. Serious students do not lack interest in the problems presented by Cumae, but they may perhaps lack familiarity with its topography. Whatever its faults of scholarship may be, this present study is at least the product of eight years' residence and assiduous delving into the archaeology of the Cuma/Bacoli Peninsula.

The story of Cumae is naturally divisible into two stages; the Greek and the Roman. Most accounts begin with a discussion about the date of its foundation, and where the colonists came from. But it is not the date that interests us here in this enquiry; it is the reason why exploring sailormen not only visited here but chose Cumae as their trading station, when there were apparently more attractive sites at Misenum and other places round the Bay of Naples; to say nothing of all the sites they will presumably have passed by on their voyage from Greece.

Prostitution, it seems to be generally agreed, was a phenomenon firmly embedded in imperial Roman society. It has, however, yet to achieve a similar level of scholarly integration. Moves are undoubtedly being made in this direction. Several topics which have a direct bearing on patterns of prostitution, or in which prostitution is implicated, such as the complex hierarchy of male and female, the patterning of erotic desires and pleasures, the acquisition and dissipation of wealth, and the organization of urban life, can certainly be described as major preoccupations in present enquiries into the Roman world; and a couple of monographs on the subject, or aspects of it, have recently appeared. None the less, there is as yet no study that can really bear comparison with any of the substantial historical works on prostitution in a range of other times and places that have been published in the last two decades. In particular, there has not been any serious effort to take the perspective of the prostitutes themselves into account, which is one of the most emphatic developments in the new historiography of prostitution emerging elsewhere.

When Vespasian sought to give new vitality to the decadent aristocracy of Rome by admitting the local gentry of the Italian towns to the senate, he was drawing upon a class which was destined to play an important part in the government and defence of the Empire. The municipal nobility, first of Italy and later of the provinces, not only managed the affairs of all the smaller communities, but also came to fill most positions of authority, both military and civil, in the imperial administration. To understand the Empire, therefore, we must know something of this aristocracy, and must study it in that local setting which our literary authorities despise. Here Pompeii affords valuable evidence, through the comparative abundance of the material presented, and through the tragic definiteness of its chronological lower limit. It is true that this evidence, for all its copiousness, is defective, since a large part of Pompeii remains unexcavated; and our lists of magistrates and of candidates for office are compiled from casual finds, not from official sources, so that negative evidence cannot safely be used. It is true also that Pompeii, owing to its unusually favourable economic conditions, is less representative of other Italian municipia than could be wished. Within these limits, however, a study of its ruling Ordo should throw some light upon the character of these bodies in and even beyond Italy.