The stamps on Roman tiles found in Gloucestershire are sufficiently numerous and varied to make it worth while publishing an illustrated list of them with full details. They fall into two categories.

(A) Tiles stamped R P G (no. i below), = Rei publicae Glevensium, R P G I I V M E T P G, = rei publicae Glevensium duoviris M et P G (no. 2), R P G Q Q I V L FLOR ET C C R S M, = rei publicae Glevensium quinquennalibus Iulio Floro et C …. (no. 7), and also with other names (nos. 4-6), have been found in Gloucester, in the Roman cemetery at Barnwood near by, and at the Roman villas of Hucclecote and Ifold, near Painswick (fig. 3), and it has been suggested that their distribution should serve as a clue to the extent of the territorium of the colonia of Glevum in the surrounding country. They were first discussed by Haverfield and interpreted by him as municipal tile stamps, the R P G standing for ‘res publica Glevensium’ while the other letters indicate the names of the magistrates of the colonia who, in the municipal government, corresponded to the consuls of the Roman Republic.

This paper is concerned with the geographical setting of Roman Algeria and the relation between human settlement and geographical factors, and will contain some comments on the writing of Roman provincial history. The present may be a suitable moment for those who are no longer occupied directly with scholarship to review the first principles and method of provincial history writing, which were perhaps not altogether sound in the published works, and particularly in the general histories, of the pre-war decade. There were two main types of study. The first were monuments of learning and minute scholarship, but tended to convey no general impression at all. The second type were so broad in outline as to be mainly false, a fault particularly marked in the various economic histories and general surveys of the Roman Empire. It is extraordinary that for Roman Africa, with its tens of thousands of inscriptions and superficial ruins and its dozens of town sites, there still exists no coherent or detailed study of part or whole except Toutain's old and excellent account of Tunisia published in 1896. Instead, scholars have concentrated either on particular town sites or on the military frontiers and military stations. The military studies are all linked to Cagnat's monumental work about the Roman Army in Africa. The result is that there exists a coherent body of knowledge about this great topic.

The Romans of later times knew very little about the origins of their coinage. Thus, Pliny the Elder could assign the first issue of bronze to Servius Tullius, and the mint-master of Trajan could mistake denarii of somewhere near 200 B.C. for issues of Horatius Cocles and Decius Mus. Apart from isolated notices in metrological and other writers, we have a limited amount of coherent tradition, notably in Pliny the Elder, Varro and Festus, which increases in value as it approaches the Empire. But, even here, we do not find the sure ground on which we should choose to construct our system. The tradition, we all agree, has some relation to facts, and therefore some value: but it is impossible to trust it blindly—it must be checked and criticized and, if need be, adapted to fit the evidence of the coins themselves.

Many sections of the Vita Aureliani are clearly based upon earlier sources of considerable historical value, which, unfortunately, are no longer extant. These sections lie embedded in large quantities of matter which do not possess the historical virtues to which they pretend but which, nevertheless, seem to have been written with a purpose. This article is an attempt to disentangle these two elements in the Vita; to reconstruct and discuss the sources followed by the historical parts; and to examine and determine the purpose of the others.

The writer of the Vita, as every one must admit, was not a good or original historian. He did nothing but copy or distort statements in the sources which he used. From this it follows that, in any attempt to separate his worthless additions from the passages which deserve consideration as sources for the history of Aurelian, we must adhere to one or other of two canons of criticism. These may be stated as follows:

(a) Passages which can, by comparison with relevant passages in other authorities, be traced to the sources used by the Vita and the other authorities, or which can be shown to give the kind of information which these sources may have contained, must be supposed to be derived from them.

(b) Statements which are intrinsically plausible, or which can be supported by inscriptional or other good evidence, must be accepted as being derived from these early lost sources, even though the connexion cannot be traced.

In A.D. 530 the Emperor Justinian gave orders that a commission of lawyers should take the 1,500 libri containing the works of the Classical Roman jurists, and condense them into a single work, the Digesta or Pandectae. His purpose was that the result should be a coherent whole, stripped of repetition and contradiction. Fortunately for us, what they actually produced was something which is quite different, and belongs to a type which is familiar to all modern students of the Ancient World: a sourcebook. For what the commission in fact did was to arrange the work by topics, and under each topic to assemble a series of examples of legal reasoning extracted from the surviving works of Classical jurists. Nearly all of these jurists had worked in the Antonine and Severan age, with a few belonging to the period of the Tetrarchy.

The English Magister Gregorius, and the Spanish Jew, Benjamin ben Jonah of Tudela, lived towards the end of the twelfth century Our knowledge of the former's description of Rome is due to G. McN. Rushforth, who attempts to date his visit to Rome more precisely but has to admit that this is not possible. He can only say that it took place in the latter part of the twelfth or the earlier part of the thirteenth century. The visit of Rabbi Benjamin can be fixed more exactly. He mentions Alexander III as Pope : he made his entry into Rome on the 23rd of November, 1165, and was driven out again in 1167 but returned in 1177. On passing through Bari he mentions that the city had been destroyed by King William of Sicily (1156) It was rebuilt by William the Good in 1169, so that his visit to Rome must have been before this. When he travels to Lesser Armenia, he names as its ruler Thoros, who died in December 1167 or February 1168. As by this time he had travelled through Greece and Constantinople, and along the coast of Asia Minor to Lesser Armenia we may reasonably date his visit to Rome in the year 1166.

If this note should prove persuasive, the credit will not belong to me; if not, I must accept the blame for publishing something not published by its author.

Recently I acquired an offprint of Cumont's article ‘La plus ancienne géographie astrologique’ (Klio ix, 1909, 263–273) which deals with the doctrine that divides up the various countries among the signs of the zodiac. On p. 265, where the list of Paulus Alexandrinus (which I reproduce below in the left column) is given, I found a marginal note (here on the right) in the hand of the late Professor F. C. Burkitt:—

Burkitt's opinion obviously was that, if we want to understand this list of the Acts, we must turn to astrological geography. This seemed a convincing suggestion and became even more convincing when I found how this passage had puzzled the commentators. Some of them felt that the writer meant to say ‘the whole oecumene’, but they could not explain why he mentions just these countries. What follows is intended to show that Burkitt's suggestion is sound.

The exchange of beneficia — gifts and services — was an important feature of Greek and Roman society at all periods. Its prominence was reflected in the number of philosophical works that analysed the phenomenon. From the fourth century B.C. onwards, εὐεργεσία and χάρις became subjects of moral discourse. Xenophon, particularly in his Socratic works and the Cyropaideia, and Aristotle, in his rhetorical and ethical writings, already anticipate much of what the Hellenistic schools were to elaborate. One of Aristotle's followers gave the first clear formulation we have of the idea that ‘the giving and interchange of favours holds together the lives of men’. Aristotle's successor Theophrastus wrote the first treatise we know of to deal wholly and specifically with the subject of χάρις. His On Gratitude (περὶ χάριτος: D.L. 5.48) had a long line of successors, including Epicurus' On Gifts and Gratitude (περὶ δώρων καὶ χάριτος: D.L. 10.28) and Chrysippus' Stoic treatments of the subject, both as part of a general work On Duties (περὶ κατορθωμάτων) and in a separate work On Favours (περὶ χαρίτων) (SVF 3.674; 2.1081 ).

In a recent review of Professor A. C. Johnson's Roman Egypt to the Reign of Diocletian, Dr. J. G. Milne, after issuing a very apposite warning against too implicit reliance on the evidence of papyri and inscriptions, remarks:

‘The well-known rescript of Tiberius Julius Alexander is often quoted as proof of the misgovernment of Egypt under Nero and the reform under Galba: but the date of its issue, when news of the death of Nero could only have reached Alexandria by exceptionally speedy transmission … and certainly no communication could have been received from Galba, makes it probable that the rescript was really a manifesto of the anti-Neronian party at Alexandria, headed by the prefect, which was designed to paint the administration of Nero as black as possible and to hold out bright hopes for the future; and its value as economic evidence is about that of a modern election address.’

This verdict is so contrary to the impression I had formed when preparing my chapter for volume x of the Cambridge Ancient History that I felt bound to re-examine the evidence ; and this Congress offered a convenient opportunity for presenting my conclusions. I must confess that, apart from one unpublished papyrus, I have no new evidence to submit ; but a re-statement of existing knowledge may be useful.

The Exhibition of 1938, held in honour of the bimillenary of the birth of Augustus (‘Mostra Augustea della Romanità’), magnificent though it was, represented only one phase in a continuous scheme for displaying by means of monuments the full extent of the Roman dominion—its origin, growth, development and the abiding effect of its culture on the modern world. Hardly has it closed but a grandiose scheme is shaping rapidly for reconstructing it on a vast and permanent basis. This new ‘Mostra’ will form part of the International Exhibition of the year 1942— the ‘E. 42’, as it is already commonly called—a large model of which has now been set up in a pavilion outside the Exhibition grounds together with numerous plans and views of details.

The decision to produce maps covering the whole of the Roman Empire at a uniform scale of 1/1,000,000 was first made at a meeting of the International Geographical Union at Cambridge in July 1928. The proponent of the idea was O. G. S. Crawford, then Archaeology Officer of the Ordnance Survey, and since he was also mainly responsible for its early development, the model adopted was that of the second edition of the O.S. Map of Roman Britain, but the physical base chosen was that of the International Map of the World, which was then in production. Considerable progress was made in the 1930s—it was in 1934 that the title Tabula Imperii Romani was adopted—but wars interrupted matters and it was not until 1957 that the work was formally taken over by the Union Académique Internationale. Professor G. Lugli became the first President of the Permanent Committee of the TIR, to be succeeded in 1968 by Professor J. B. Ward-Perkins; on his death in 1981 the Presidency was assumed by Professor E. Condurachi, with Professor G. Carettoni as Vice-President taking over most responsibility for the western half of the Empire.

The ‘foundation’ in the juridical sense, ‘the establishing of an institution, together with an endowment or provision for its perpetual maintenance’, is a conspicuous phenomenon of the Hellenistic and imperial periods. Though ancient foundations vary widely in form, purpose, and organization, two kinds predominate. One, of which the fullest examples are Hellenistic, is funerary. The founder forms an association, or endows one already formed, for the cultivation of his and his family's memory by means of ceremonies conducted at the family tomb. The organization is essentially private, and those responsible for the conduct of the foundation are the members of the constituent association. An elaborate and perfectly preserved example is that of Epicteta of Thera, dated about 200 B.C. The other notable form is characteristic of the civic revival of the principate. Here the founder establishes an endowment of which the direct or indirect beneficiary is the city, or some subdivision of the citizenry such as the boule or gerousia. This foundation is essentially public, and the responsibility for administering it rests with the city officials. This type is illustrated by one of the longest of all known foundation-deeds, the dossier relative to the foundation of C. Vibius Salutaris dated to A.D. 104. As well as other kinds of foundation, such as those endowing libraries, salaries for schoolmasters, the maintenance of freeborn boys and girls (the alimenta), there are also hybrids between the two principal types already described. Thus T. Flavius Praxias of Acmoneia provides both for a college of six of his freedmen, presumably intended as a funerary association similar to Epicteta's, and for the boule and archontes of Acmoneia to see to the overall management of the foundation, including the protection of the freedmen.

The results of the air reconnaissance here summarized continue from earlier surveys already described in this Journal. The weather was not particularly favourable for archaeological reconnaissance during any of these four summers, while the period May to October 1968 was, over much of England, one of the wettest of this century. In Scotland, however, the summer of 1968 was comparatively dry with correspondingly favourable development of crop marks.

Most of the new information has been gained in the military districts of Wales and the north. Roman military remains tend to be standardized and to form part of a system. Thus both temporary and permanent works may often be identified from a minimum of evidence without the necessity of the whole site being visible, while the geographical distribution, so far as it is known, often suggests where further reconnaissance may profitably be made. Descriptions of military sites and their full significance in the system to which they belong, call for continual reference to local geography, so that the text is best considered in conjunction with appropriate maps such as the 1 inch to a mile series of the Ordnance Survey. Nearly all the features described have been examined on the ground: except when noted otherwise, no remains are ordinarily to be seen on the surface. The records and photographs on which this account is based are housed in the offices of the Committee for Aerial Photography of the University of Cambridge.

The traditional problem of Silver Latin poetry, and Silver Latin epic especially, has been its attraction to the extravagant, the grotesque, the infinite, the absurd, in other words, its propensity for excess. Statius' Thebaid in particular has been considered guilty of this offence. Recent criticism, however, has tended to see Silver Latin poetry not simply as being excessive, but as being deeply concerned with excess—cultural, ideological, and poetic. In this paper I hope to demonstrate that such a concern is a prominent characteristic of Statius' Thebaid, by exploring perhaps the most important manifestation of excess in the poem, madness. I will argue that the Thebaid's excessiveness is fundamental and necessary, rather than detrimental, to its overall effect. But this paper, like the Thebaid, will not concentrate exclusively on excess, for it will prove to be only the starting-point for a specific interpretation of the patterns of action and madness in the Thebaid.

Professor Bury has recently put forward a new theory as to the date at which the Roman occupation of Britain came to an end. Hitherto this event has commonly been assigned to the years 407-410. When in 407 Constantine III took a great part of the British army to Gaul, he left behind ‘a civil administration and a garrison, which subsisted till 410, when the indignation of the provincials that their nominee’ (Constantine) ‘had failed both to conquer the whole West and to bring better times to Britain caused them to abandon his cause and establish a provisional government of their own.’ This government was nominally loyal to Honorius, who had authorised the Britons to rebel against Constantine's representatives; but neither Honorius nor any later emperor actually re-established his control over the British provinces.

In Roman religious law the word sacer indicated that the object to which it was applied was the property of a deity, taken out of the region of the profanum by the action of the state, and passed on into that of the sacrum. We have an exact account of it which can be traced through Verrius Flaccus to a scholar apparently of the age of Cicero, Aelius Gallus. “Gallus Aelius ait sacrum esse, quodcunque more atque instituto civitatis consecratum sit, sive aedis sive ara sive signum sive pecunia sive quid aliud quod dis dedicatum atque consecratum sit: quod autem privati suae religionis causa aliquid earum rerum deo dedicent, id pontifices Romanos non existimare sacrum.” This very explicit passage makes it plain that the state, through its religious authorities, had appropriated the word, and fixed it to a definite meaning, at some period when there were already temples in which deities could dwell and enjoy the possession of their own property, made over to them by the state to do them honour and propitiate them.

This paper investigates the figure of the lena in the elegies of Tibullus (I.5; II.6), Propertius (IV.5), and Ovid (Amores I.8). While each poet treats the character of the lena in importantly different ways, each has in common a deep interest in contrasting his own position as both lover and poet with the activities of the lena, a bawd or procuress. All three poets curse the lena, denouncing primarily her malevolent magical powers, her carmina, which are directed against them and their carmina. The lena not only preaches an erotic code which in its emphasis on remuneration and the denigration of poetry directly opposes that of the poet-lover, she also usurps his role as instructor and constructor of the elegiac puella. It is the elegiac poet's prerogative to describe and construct the elegiac mistress. By usurping his role as praeceptor, the lena threatens the poet with both sexual and literary impotence. It is precisely because the lena challenges the male poet-lover's control over these terms that she is such a potent enemy; the woman with a pen, as Pollack writes in The Poetics of Sexual Myth, ‘threatens to undermine a system of signification that defines her both as vulnerable and as victim’. If the elegiac mistress can be said to play a more masterful role as domina in Roman love poetry than in conventional Roman ideology, it must nevertheless be qualified with the reminder that she only plays a role constructed for her by elegy's first-person narrator who demands complete control over the discourse of their relationship, of the rules of the amatory game.

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.