Kyle Harper's book The Fate of Rome marks the thunderous entry of Nature into the world of ancient history of the twenty-first century. This is not the first book devoted to questions of climate and diseases in the ancient world, but its publication nonetheless represents a turning point. From now on, whether they work on political, social, economic, or even religious history, ancient historians will no longer be able to ignore these factors in their own writings. That is not to say that all the theses of the book, especially its natural determinism, should be accepted uncritically.

It is a striking fact that the years in Gibbon's life about which we know least—the years 1765–72, between his return from the Grand Tour and the commencement of his History—are precisely those in which we are most interested, if we wish to study the genesis of his great book. The years 1758–64 are covered with increasing fullness in the journals which Gibbon began to keep in August 1761. From this source, for example, we can trace in detail the somewhat complex evolution of his first published work, the Essai sur l'Etude de la Littérature—detail enhanced by reference to the manuscript draft which survives. Again, for the period 1773–87 we know exactly what Gibbon was doing: his intellectual course was finally settled, and the six ample quartos of the Decline and Fall provide the best possible comment on that course, supplemented and confirmed by increasingly full correspondence and the terse outline in Memoir E of the autobiography. But between these two periods we have only meagre and uninformative letters; one apparently unimportant publication, the Critical Observations on the Sixth Book of the Aeneid of 1770; and the help we can glean from Memoirs C and D of the autobiography. These were Gibbon's Dark Ages, and it is this obscure passage in his life which I wish to lighten.

Some fifty years ago, three labourers in the employment of the late Mr. Rigg of Brough House were digging soil near the summit of Huntcliff, and stumbled upon some ancient walling and other remains. The find was reported to and inspected by Canon Greenwell and the late Canon Atkinson, and was duly chronicled by the latter as Roman, but nothing was done to pursue the enquiry. Quite lately, however, the present writers secured at an auction sale, for the sum of threepence, the remains then unearthed; they also came upon Mr. James Bell, who had superintended the digging and was able to point out its exact spot, and they determined to dig further.

Ovid's narrative of Phaethon's failed attempt prematurely to emulate his father in his unique expertise can be read as a reflection on the virtues and limits of Lucretius' philosophical poetry. The paper suggests that, while he gives much credit to the De Rerum Natura's literary quality and its striving for the sublime, Ovid also critiques the hubristic connotations of Lucretius' rejection of divine authority and agency from the workings of nature. The second part of the article explores how this particular version of the myth touches upon issues of poetic authority, political positioning, and Oedipal competition.

There are two approaches to universal history: a structural one and one which may be called ‘real’ or ‘practical’. The former compares and draws general conclusions; it is theoretical history. The second is concerned with causality, relating dispersed occurrences, where possible, by determining their interdependence and establishing priorities in time. There can be no doubt, however, that an understanding of the whole of the history of mankind, from its earliest beginnings to the recognizable process of total acculturation in our present world, is the ultimate, if unattainable, goal towards which all its efforts are directed. Certain aspects of this ‘real’ or ‘practical’ universal history are the subject of this paper. The Ancient Historian can advance several arguments to justify his special claim to a universalist point of view. Three observations will be selected and briefly considered anew.

The main roads that led north from Rome into Etruria have received surprisingly little attention from students of classical topography. With the exception of the Via Flaminia, which has been the subject of a characteristically detailed study by Ashby and Fell, the course of none of these roads has been systematically worked out on the ground. Martinori's monograph on the Via Cassia (and Clodia) is little more than a compilation of facts about the places along its presumed route; and Lopes Pegna's recent articles, though a useful contribution, are concerned rather with the problems raised by the study of the Classical itineraries than with their topographical implications. And yet for two millennia these roads have played a major, often a determining, part in the history of the regions through which they pass They have become a part of the essential pattern of life, and it is perhaps for that very reason that they have so often been taken for granted.

The theme ‘capax imperii', immortalized by Tacitus’ verdict on the Emperor Galba, runs through his writings, and imparts a unity to the record of conspiracies and civil wars. It emerges quickly in the Annals. Augustus, so an anecdote alleges, discussed the matter when his end was near, and made play with the names of three men. M. Lepidus, he said, had the capacity but no desire; Asinius Gallus was eager but not good enough; Arruntius, however, was not unworthy and might make a bid. Moreover, according to; Tacitus, some versions named Cn. Piso instead of Arruntius. There it might rest, a happy invention, or at least an unverifiable report, did not the story raise a problem of historical identity. Who was the Lepidus whom the dying Princeps rated so highly, Marcus or Manius ? The Codex Mediceus has ‘M. Lepidum’: all modern editors alter the praenomen and read ‘M'. Lepidum’.

This passage is only the beginning of the trouble. Two Aemilii Lepidi of consular standing recur in the Annals and annoy the conscientious reader. They are not at all easy to keep apart, despite the operations of scholars since Justus Lipsius. Those operations have been considerable. Following Lipsius' lead, Borghesi and Nipperdey evolved a doctrine about the two Lepidi which won rapid and general acceptance, with hardly a murmur of dissent anywhere, and it now stands canonical both in editions of Tacitus and in the works of reference. It involved an alteration of the manuscript reading, easy and trivial to all appearance—the substitution of the abbreviated praenomen M'. for M. That change was made, not only in the passage in Book I about the ‘capaces imperii’, but in seven other, places, no less. In consequence Marcus Lepidus dwindles miserably and is all but blotted out, whereas Manius is augmented and exalted. The time has come to challenge the legitimacy of the procedure, and to look at the results.

It was in January or February of 54 B.C., to judge by his brother's extant letters, that Quintus Cicero left for Gaul to serve as a legatus in Caesar's army. By June he was already wondering whether or not to return. Cicero urbanely replied to him late in July (QF II, 15. 2–3):

‘Verum attende nunc, mi optime et suavissime frater, ad ea dum rescribo quae tu in hac eadem brevi epistula πραγματικѽς valde scripsisti. De quo petis ut ad te nihil occultans, nihil dissimulans, nihil tibi indulgens ingenue fraterneque rescribam, id est, utrum <ad>voles, ut dixeramus, <an> ad expediendum te, si causa sit, commorere. Si, mi Quinte, parva aliqua res esset in qua sciscitarere quid vellem, tamen, cum tibi permissurus essem ut faceres quod velles, ego ipse quid vellem ostenderem; in hac vero re hoc profecto quaeris, cuius modi illum annum qui sequitur exspectem. Plane aut tranquillum nobis aut certe munitissimum … [he goes on to refer to his own popularity, the gratia of Caesar and Pompey, and Clodius' powerlessness] … Haec ita sentio, iudico, ad te explorate scribo; dubitare te non adsentatorie sed fraterne veto. Qua re suavitatem equidem nostrae fruendae causa cuperem te ad id tempus venire quod dixeras, sed illud malo tamen quod putas magis e 〈re〉 tua; illa enim magni aestimo, ἀμφιλαφίαν illam tuam et explicationem debitorum tuorum …’

For over fifty years the standard source for the form and meaning of ancient Celtic names has been Holder's Altceltischer Sprachschatz. As usual with such encyclopaedic works, the result has been to endow it in the eyes of non-specialists with an authority sometimes greater than it deserves, fine piece of scholarship though it was in its day; for there is a good deal in Holder which Celticists now know to be mistaken. He made much use of the opinions of Stokes, Rhys, and Arbois de Jubainville; and these are by now often out of date. It is important that historians should realize this. The study of British place-names has made remarkable progress of late years, but the Celtic side of it has not kept pace with the rest; for place-name scholars very rarely have any first-hand knowledge of Celtic historical grammar. Hence even in the best recent works on our place-names the Celtic etymologies are sometimes unsound, because the authors put too much reliance in obsolete or untrustworthy authorities. The present article is a short list of addenda and corrigenda to Holder and other such works, in respect of a few Romano-British names whose Celtic etymologies seem particularly to need revision. The forms taken as the starting points are those given in the Ordnance Survey Map of Roman Britain; or, failing that, in Holder. References to Ptolemy are from C. Müller's edition, Paris, 1883; to the Antonine Itinerary from Otto Cuntz's, Leipzig, 1929 (also to K. Miller, Itineraria Romana, Stuttgart, 1916); to the Peutinger map from Miller's edition ibid.; to the Notitia Dignitatum from O. Seeck's, Berlin, 1876; and to Ravennas from J. Schnetz's, Leipzig, 1930.

When L. Aemilius Paulus visited Delphi after the crowning victory of Pydna his eye rested on a lofty pedestal, upon which his vanquished enemy, Perseus, was intending to set up a golden statue of himself. He determined that his own figure should occupy the vacant place, and his orders to this effect were carried out. No trace of the statue (or group) has been recovered, but there are considerable remains of the sculptured frieze, representing the cavalry skirmish which formed the prelude to the battle of Pydna, and it has been possible to reconstruct the monument in the Museum at Delphi with the surviving blocks and a free use of plaster to fill the gaps (fig. 54 and plate xx).

In the first half of the eighteenth century, five pieces of Roman silver plate were discovered in south Northumberland under circumstances which suggest that they belonged to some service or hoard. The proof that they are thus connected together, though very strong, is not absolutely conclusive, and the service or hoard which (if the proof be accepted) they comprised is of no great magnificence; it cannot be set beside the 66 pieces found in 1830 at Bernay near Berthouville, in Normandy, or the 70 pieces found just outside Hildesheim, near Hannover, in 1868, or the 108 pieces dug up at Boscoreale, near Pompeii, in 1895, or the vessels weighing some 2,700 ounces discovered at Trier about 1628, or even the 39 pieces found at Chaourse, near Troyes, in 1883.

The importance of Lycophron's Alexandra for the history of the relations between Rome and the Hellenistic world hardly needs emphasis. The date of the poem depends on the interpretation of 11. 1229–30, where the Romans are described as γῆσ καὶ θαλάσσησ σκῆπτρα καὶ μοναρχίαν λαβόντεσ. It seems, therefore, necessary to inquire whether these lines imply a real world-power of the Romans, as many, following Niebuhr, have said, or whether they repeat a formula applied to several States with no pretence at literal truth. We have first to reconsider some other Hellenistic texts.

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.

There are no direct visual representations of the city in Etruscan art, any more than there are in Attic art. Indeed the civic aspect of the Etruscan world is in general particularly elusive; even in inscriptions, references to political and social structures are rare and brief. In the case of Athens, the study of the imagery of Attic vase-painting as a unified and structured system of representations has revealed hitherto unsuspected significations. It is true that the basic places and occasions of social, institutional, political and religious life are not themselves portrayed; yet the social categories and essential functions of the city are displayed, through the medium of a kind of anthropological description.

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.

To historians of the ancient world, the closing of the Athenian Neoplatonic school by the emperor Justinian stands as one of the best known, and most debated, events of the later Roman Empire. To some, it is an event of little consequence with only an ephemeral impact upon subsequent developments. To others, it represents nothing less than the death of classical philosophy. Nevertheless, this modern scholarly interest belies ancient attitudes. The only direct statement about the end of Athenian philosophical teaching comes from the Chronicle of John Malalas, and all other ancient sources, including those that rely upon Malalas, are silent about the incident. This silence hints at a fact that this study will make clear. To contemporaries, the closing of the Athenian school was an unremarkable occurrence that represented neither a tyrannical use of imperial power nor an attack upon the valued cultural tradition of philosophical teaching. Like all else in the later Roman world, it occurred within the confines of a political system that, when working properly, matched imperial initiative to the specific needs of a province or city. As a result, the causes and significance of the closing of the Athenian school are best appreciated by understanding how the event developed out of its local political setting.

It is a commonplace that Britain is an island. The further truth, that it is an island which is very closely tied to the continent lying east of it, is a good deal less familiar. Geographical writers are apt, even for historical purposes, to emphasise instead those two features of the island which Mr. Mackinder in his admirable volume has called its insularity and its universality, its separation, that is, from Europe, and its central position in the world. I feel, however, that both students of ancient history, and also modern men at this particular moment, are more concerned with the peculiar relation of Britain to Europe. It is not the insularity of the island but its dependence on the continent which really matters. This dependence dates from days long before the first appearance of man; it is due, indeed, to the configuration of western Europe in remote geological periods. In those dateless days the seas which now divide our southern coast from France, and our eastern coast from the Low Countries and from Germany, were river valleys which took the drainage of a vast area extending from Wales and the Pennine hills on the north-west, to the Eifel, the Vosges and the Cevennes on the south-east. The rivers have long vanished, but their valleys, vast almost as the valley of a Missouri or a Mississippi, can still be traced in the configuration of the British and continental coasts. On each side of the sea the main rivers flow down to face each other, the main harbours of each land lie vis-à-vis and the natural entrances by which trader or soldier might wish to enter Britain open on to the main exits by which he might wish to start from the continent. Nor is it merely a matter of entrances or exits. That part of Britain which faces the continent is the lower-lying part of the great valley which I have mentioned. It is therefore fairly flat, and it offers no strategic obstacle to invaders. Its only features, its forests and its fens, are hardly large enough even to divert the march of armies and have been over-rated by writers like the late Dr. Guest and Mr. J. R. Green. The really difficult regions of Britain, the tangled uplands of Wales and west Yorkshire and the north, lie far away from the path of European aggressors. They might assist the rulers of Britain in checking an Irish invasion; they do not protect it from European influences. Britain is a land which was made to be invaded from the continent.

So far as extant writings go, Gaius is the first to assert that Rome was owner of the soil in the provinces. It seems, however, to be the general belief that the doctrine of state-ownership was invented long before the Empire. Mommsen attributed it to Gaius Gracchus, basing his view upon the Gracchan censoria locatio in Asia. Klingmüller, who has more recently examined the evidence, believes that the theory is even older; that in fact Rome had from the earliest times claimed ownership of conquered territory. Rostovtzeff, rejecting Klingmüller's arguments, asserts that Rome adopted the theory from the Hellenistic practices found embodied in the Hieronic law which Rome used for the collection of tribute in Sicily.

The reign of Hadrian marks the beginning of a new epoch in Roman administration and in the history of Roman Law. Hadrian's visit to Britain is immortalised by the Wall which he built from Tyne to Solway. Its construction is characteristic of the Emperor's willingness to renounce further conquests and even to abandon land which had been Roman. The Wall marked the limit of the districts which he was prepared to retain and administer. It followed, not the shortest and easiest route, but a line beyond the fortified area whence a look-out could be kept over the barbarians outside, and its object was the completion and definition of the fortified frontier region whereby it became easier to civilise and to pacify the country which lay to the south. Hadrian's aim was to bring order and peace to the land bounded by the new frontiers of the Roman world. Thus Hadrian may be sharply contrasted with his predecessor Trajan, the soldier on the throne, who owed his elevation to his successful wars in the Rhine region, and who as Emperor extended the frontiers of the Empire on the lower Danube and in the East. On Hadrian's accession the Empire was more powerful than ever before or afterwards, but its financial and military resources were strained to the utmost, and indeed frequently had been overstrained. The small peasant owners and small towns, sources of Roman culture and prosperity, had begun to suffer and disappear.

In cube tombs the mouldings which exhibit the greatest variation are the ‘lip’ and the ‘bell.’ It has been said above (J.R.S. XV, p. 22) that the ‘bell’ is the dynamic element of the upper part of the decorated façade.

Generally the depth of the ‘bell’ is equal to its height. When the former exceeds the latter, the crowning member naturally recedes, and the whole appearance of the upper decoration is less heavy. In the contrary case it becomes heavier. The large band is almost always somewhat high and is proportional to the height of the ‘bell.’