Four of the Saxon-shore forts—Richborough, Pevensey, Portchester and Burgh Castle—are now under the control of H.M. Office of Works. The first of these is being excavated by the Society of Antiquaries and any finds made by H.M. Office of Works are published in the Society's Reports; H.M. Office of Works is carrying out repairs to the masonry of the other three, and at Pevensey and Portchester the mediaeval moats have been cleared out and walls, etc., of the same period uncovered. During these operations certain discoveries of interest connected with the Roman occupation of the sites have come to light and I am taking this opportunity of placing them on record.

The first decade of the twentieth century ended with a substantial sum of important discoveries in the Forum to its credit. Between 1898 and 1903 Giacomo Boni's intensive work had resulted in sensational finds—the Lapis Niger, the republican Comitium and the archaic cemetery ; he had finished excavating both on the north side of the Forum, uncovering the front of the Basilica Aemilia and the Curia, and to the south, where the shrine of the Fountain of Juturna had returned to light, together with the approach from the Forum to the Imperial Palace and the series of early Christian paintings in S. Maria Antiqua. Excavation of the House of the Vestals was also brought to completion. Interest in republican and archaic development had led to investigation beneath the paving of the Forum itself (Equus Domitiani, Lacus Curtius, underground galleries and ritual wells and pits), and to a search for the ancient track of the Via Sacra, with exploration of its shops and wells of Republican date. A mass of information and material collected as a result of these excavations has unfortunately, although scrupulously catalogued, remained largely unpublished. Aerial photographs made at this time give a clear picture of the Forum valley during the first years of the century : one vast excavation stretching from the Vulcanal to the Arch of Titus.

Editors, and other students, of the text of Tacitus have of late been taken up with the problems of the two codices unici and perhaps have tended to neglect the contributions made by their predecessors. If this be true, Dr. J. Ruysschaert has rendered a service to scholarship in publishing a book on Juste Lipse et les Annals de Tacite: une méthode de critique textuelle au XVIe siècle. It is safe to say that up to the nineteenth century a commentary on the text of Tacitus in the main consisted of comments by, and on, Lipsius. Much of this lore was gathered together in I. Bekker's Variorum edition of 1831 and, augmented by G. H. Walther's more unorthodox notes and a critique of them, in Ruperti's four volumes of 1832–39. At that time, however, a breach in the tradition occurred and the Corpus Lipsianum (if this name may be applied to the lore in the Variorum editions) became less known than it deserves.

New light has been thrown during the last year on the question of the date of the Castra Peregrinorum owing to the discovery, by French excavators in Tunis, of an inscription of the reign of Trajan, wherein a Princeps Peregrinorum is mentioned. In view of this fresh evidence, it seems desirable to complete the account of the remains of the Castra Peregrinorum itself by re-assembling all that is known about the body of troops quartered in those barracks.

Gabinius, tribune of the plebs in 67, procured for Pompeius the great command against the Pirates, defying the ‘principes’ and incurring the bitter resentment of the Optimates. When the Imperator wanted to have Gabinius as one of his legates, men of ill will duly brought up impediments. Cicero rebukes them in the oration for the Lex Manilia the year after. Their conduct, he says, is an affront to Pompeius. Other commanders who by contrast went out to rob the provinces have taken with them any legates they liked—‘cum ceteri ad expilandos socios diripiendasque provincias quos voluerunt legatos eduxerint’. It is also an affront to Gabinius, whose law has ordained ‘salus ac dignitas’ for Rome and the whole world. Nor can any objection hold against Gabinius. Cicero goes on to name four senators who had employment abroad as legates in the year following their tribunates— ‘C. Falcidius, Q. Metellus, Q. Caelius Latinianus, Cn. Lentulus, quos omnis honoris causa nomino’.

Vesper adest: iuvenes, consurgite: Vesper Olympo

expectata diu vix tandem lumina tollit.

surgere iam tempus, iam pinguis linquere mensas:

iam veniet virgo, iam dicetur hymenaeus.

Hymen o Hymenaee, Hymen ades o Hymenaee !

Cernitis, innuptae, iuvenes ? consurgite contra:

nimirum Oetaeos ostendit noctifer ignes.

sic certest; viden ut perniciter exiluere ?

non temere exiluere: canent quod vincere par est.

Hymen o Hymenaee, Hymen ades o Hymenaee !

Non facilis nobis, aequales, palma parata est:

adspicite, innuptae secum ut meditata requirunt.

non frustra meditantur: habent memorabile quod sit.

nee mirum, penitus quae tota mente laborant.

nos alio mentes, alio divisimus aures;

iure igitur vincemur: amat victoria curam.

quare nunc animos saltem eonvertite vestros:

dicere iam incipient, iam respondere decebit.

Hymen o Hymenaee, Hymen ades o Hymenaee !

The concept of the genre is a problematical one, not least because each critical tradition uses the notion in different ways. My own approach is related to the needs and interests of the cultural historian; it will thus at least serve to clarify basic points of methodology if I first try to define what I mean by the genre. For me the genre takes its origin in the literary expression of basic social needs, and the differences between the genres begin as differences in both the occasion of performance and the purpose of performance. Thus to take classical examples, a tale of heroic exploits, a wedding song, a lament, a hymn to the gods, a drinking song, are performed on different occasions and therefore have different characteristics, different accompaniments of dance, ritual, music or action; but a particular event in each category will have similarities with other events in that category, and therefore appropriate conventions and appropriate metrical patterns will emerge. Similarly the purpose of the event will affect its presentation in a variety of ways: a hymn to the gods may praise or call for aid, a public speech may seek to expound a policy or to secure a condemnation. In this sense, and to this extent, I find myself in agreement with Francis Cairns: ‘The genres are as old as organized societies; they are also universal. Within all human lives there are a number of important recurrent situations which, as societies develop, come to call for regular responses, both in words and in actions.’

These notes are designed to supplement, rather than to supplant, existing accounts of the Parthian campaigns of Trajan. I have therefore not tried to include an account of such matters as did not seem to me to be essential for an understanding of the main course of events and which are adequately and picturesquely reproduced elsewhere. But it is not too much to say that the times, places and purposes of Trajan's campaigns are alike obscure. The evidence is, of course, fragmentary; it is scattered, and much of it is of inferior quality; but since the scope of general histories has not allowed their authors to present a detailed argument, their handling of these important campaigns has of necessity been somewhat cursory. There is thus some reason to look at the evidence again. The first of these notes reviews the difficulties of the chronology, and continues with a partial reconstruction of the sequence of the campaigns based on the chronology adopted. The second discusses the antecedents of the war and attempts to probe the causes which were at work both before and during the campaigns.

A good deal has been written about the origin and recruitment of centurions, but their language use has not been analysed as an index to their literacy, culture, educational levels, and (in some cases) bilingualism. This paper will be about the sociolinguistics of the centurionate. I take as my starting point two poems from Bu Njem in the African desert, one of which has only recently been published for the first time.

The military outpost of Bu Njem (Golas, Gholaia) lay 200 km south of Cape Misurata in the desert of Tripolitania. The fort, the construction of which began some time after 24 January 201, was garrisoned by a uexillatio of the legio III Augusta, and later by a numerus collatus. From here there survive ostraca of various kinds dated mainly to the 250s, but in this paper I am going to deal with the unlikely topic of poetic activity within the camp. Curiously, we have poems set up on stone in the name of two centurions, both of them acrostichs which spell out the centurions' names. The first, in iambic senarii and dated 202–3, has the name of Q. Avidius Quintianus, the second, dated to early 222, that of M Porcius Iasucthan; Iasucthan is of Libyan origin. This poem, on a charitable view, is composed in hexameters. The poems provide remarkable evidence for the cultural and linguistic level of centurions, if one can make the assumption that the texts were the responsibility of the two centurions themselves.

The altar here published is in the possession of Mr. G. A. Warren of Streatham Hill, to whom I am very much indebted for permission to make this publication. It belonged formerly to a Mr. Morgan and passed into Mr. Warren's possession in 1892. Mr. Morgan is no longer alive, and enquiries I have made about the origin of his collection have had no result. I have therefore nothing to say about provenance.

The altar has the shape which is usually given to such monuments of late Republican and Imperial times, except that there is no moulding above, and the reliefs are not sunk in panels. It dates perhaps from the second century A.D. and seems to be Roman.

A remark on p. 117 of this Journal for 1936, made by Mr. A. H. M. Jones in a review of The Bucheum has reminded me that I have never given my reasons for the view taken by me in CAH x, 36, regarding stela no. 13 from the Bucheum, reasons which could not of course be given in CAH itself; and, as readers of my chapter will find no reference there to any of the other stelae, I am glad of the opportunity of stating why that is so. Sometime before 1932 Professor Glanville brought stela no. 13 to my notice (I think it was exhibited somewhere) and with it a translation, which I used in writing my chapter. Late in 1932 I had some correspondence with Mr. Fairman, who was about to return to Egypt; he told me there was a whole series of stelae and kindly lent me his notes.

This article will explore the familiar polarity between history and rhetoric by comparing two rather different accounts from the early Empire. The treatment of history in the rhetorical theory of Dionysius of Halicarnassus and the curious work of historical theory by Lucian will be contrasted to open up some new areas of debate. Although the relationship between rhetoric and history has been the subject of numerous studies, none have given much weight to one central aspect of the juxtaposition: the dialectic between rhetoric and aesthetics, and the place of that dialectic in ancient historical theory. Since scholars generally agree that ancient historiography exists, like all other forms of ancient writing, within a culture where rhetoric provides all educational resources, and thus acts as a substitute for aesthetic theory, this is not in itself surprising. A close reading of these particular texts, however, produces a more differentiated view of what rhetoric might mean to those seeking to define historiography. Dionysius and Lucian are both concerned with the relationship between rhetoric and wider issues of moral and social education. But because rhetoric is not philosophy, but rather a system concerned above all with the formal qualities of spoken utterance, these moral issues become closely implicated with aesthetic concerns. More startlingly, they do so in each author in a significantly different way. The interweaving of moral and aesthetic may at first sight seem strange; we are accustomed to think of the aesthetic and the moral as operating in rather different spheres, at least when it comes to literary production.

The poll-tax (λαογραφία as it was called in Greek), was one of the most important of the many taxes levied by the Romans on their Egyptian subjects. In his work on Taxation in Egypt, Mr. S. L. Wallace states: ‘There are more receipts for payment of λαογραφία extant than for any other tax paid in money.’ The view prevailing among papyrologists during the earlier years of the present century was that it was an impost which marked the inferior status of the Egyptians. They were dediticii, subdued by force of arms, and moreover excluded from the possibility of obtaining the Roman citizenship except in so far as they could succeed in first procuring admission to the citizen body of Alexandria. Thus, in his Grundzüge, published in 1912, Wilcken writes: ‘[Die Ägypter] wurden wieder zurückgeworfen in die niedrige Stellung, die sie unter den ersten Ptolemäern eingenommen hatten. Zwar hatten sie auch damals schon eine kopfsteuerartige Auflage zahlen müssen, aber abgesehen davon, dass die von Augustus eingeführte Kopfsteuer (λαογραφία) neu und wahrscheinlich strenger organisiert wurde, waren die Ägypter jetzt als peregrini dediticii als die Pariaklasse gebrandmarkt.’ When, therefore, P Giss. 40 restored to us, though in an unfortunately fragmentary form, the actual text of the Constitutio Antoniniana, and one clause of this famous edict was construed by the editor as excluding the dediticii from Caracalla's gift of the Roman citizenship, it was naturally concluded, alike by the editor and by all other scholars, that the Egyptians as a mass did not receive the citizenship but continued as (to use Wilcken's expression) a pariah class.

It is the purpose of this paper to consider a few of the more outstanding contributions towards the solution of this familiar problem propounded since the publication in 1898 of Sir Samuel Dill's book on Roman Society in the last century of the Western Empire (2nd edn., 1899). It may well appear somewhat surprising that I should venture to speak on such a topic, since my own work, such as it is, has been concerned rather with the history of the Byzantine Empire. And yet for a student of Byzantine history the problem has a special interest: he is forced to consider that problem not merely as a West European issue, but rather to compare and contrast the historical development in the western and eastern provinces of the Empire. He is compelled to raise the question: why was it that the Roman Empire failed to survive in Western Europe while it endured for a further millennium in the East ? The very fact that he is primarily interested in the history of the Byzantine Empire enables him to approach the Western problem from a different angle and to treat that problem in a wider setting and not in isolation.