This brief and summary survey of a large and complicated problem falls into three main parts: (I) Prolegomena, or general considerations; (2) remarks on the topography and history of the Vatican zone in ancient times; (3) an account of the pre-Constantinian shrine of St. Peter beneath the high altar of the Vatican Basilica.

Whatever the devices that operated or the forms and pageantry on public show, access to the consulate was carefully regulated by the Caesars from the beginning. History discloses no sign of any senator reaching the fasces against the will and wish of Caesar Augustus. If later writers speak of the ruler as having ‘given the consulate’, it is an abbreviation rather than a misconception.

It is notoriously difficult, in all or nearly all military history, to disentangle the conscious purposes and previous plans of the commanders from the results of pure chance or the improvisation of the moment; probably few wars have ever worked out entirely according to plan, and even an accurate analysis of the chief factors in the success of any particular campaign would, to those who really knew the facts, appear as an over-simplified diagram. Yet there is a correct use of diagrams, and we need not be ashamed of trying to pick out the true strategical significance from even the most complex military events, provided we are honest with ourselves. In attempting such a task with regard to the Jugurthine War, we must take very special care to notice the limitations that surround us : our results can be, at best, hypothetically sound, since our authorities are neither complete nor notably trustworthy in such important matters as personal impartiality and chronological detail. We have no contemporary source. Sallust is notoriously partisan, on the political if not also on the military side; he is, moreover, open to the suspicion, to put it mildly, of choosing for detailed description the more picturesque rather than the more vitally important episodes; and comparison with Orosius (who almost certainly derives from Livy) suggests that one battle, if not more, may have been altogether misrepresented.

This paper considers the interplay of Latin and Greek in the workings of both State and Church in sixth-century Constantinople, and the way that these two languages are represented in the written records of each. The richest source of evidence is provided by the Acts of the Church Councils and Synods, because at the end of a session, or of a multi-authored document, it was the custom for those involved to make a one-sentence statement of assent in their own handwriting. These processes also leave room for reflections of the use of Syriac (but not for items of actual Syriac text), but of no other language.

Since the time of Edward III, St. George has been the patron-saint of England, and his fight with the dragon is familiar wherever the gold sovereign has been in circulation. As a special guardian of soldiers, this hero of the Faith has won a world-wide fame: his achievements have inspired innumerable artists and have produced, a whole literature of edifying stories in many tongues. But the oldest legend of the Cappadocian martyr is so wild a fable, so utterly devoid not only of truth but of plausibility, that the great wonder-worker himself has sometimes been regarded—in my opinion wrongly–as purely mythical. The paucity of authentic information in the hagiographical writings increases the value for the historian of such popular traditions as are connected with his cult.

Let us start by considering a remarkable text. At the very beginning of the second half of his account of the reign of Nero, Tacitus tells at some length a tale about the emperor and a dream (Ann. 16.1-3): one Caesellius Bassus, ‘origine Poenus, mente turbida’, dreamt that there was a cavern full of treasure on his estates. He was so confident about the dream that (without identifying the cavern) he sailed from Africa to Rome, where he convinced the emperor; Nero accordingly expected new revenue and spent still more extravagantly. Later, before the disappointed and desperate Caesellius committed suicide, ‘posita vaecordia’, he expressed surprise, claiming that his dreams had never before been false (‘non falsa antea somnia sua … admirans’). An alternative version said that he did not commit suicide but merely had his property confiscated. Tacitus is in any case most disapproving, and tells the story at unusual length with the obvious intention of suggesting that Nero was as insane as Caesellius.

The Tabula Hebana already has a bibliography more than six pages long, in which figure the names of most of the eminent scholars of Europe. It may seem, therefore, both superfluous and presumptuous to add to it. But very few of the studies hitherto produced have attempted to deal with the political implications of the document, and of these few only one, Professor Tibiletti's monograph, Principe e magistrati repubblicani, has tackled them seriously. As will appear, I owe much to Professor Tibiletti's acute analysis of the procedure laid down in the Tabula, but as I differ profoundly on several points from his interpretation of the political background, I have thought it worth while to propound my views.

It is almost accepted doctrine that Augustus throughout his reign systematically gerrymandered the elections, those at any rate for the higher offices, especially the consulate. What I may call the prosopographical school of historians, in particular, assume that the consuls were de facto the nominees of Augustus, and regard the consular fasti as a barometer of his personal policy or that of the narrow group which controlled affairs. I would challenge this view. The liberty of the elections was, I would agree, to some extent limited by the predominant influence of the Princeps, but the evidence, I maintain, strongly suggests that genuine electoral contests continued, not only for the lower offices, but for the praetorship and the consulate, with which alone the Tabula Hebana is concerned.

In Deuteronomy Rabba Ki Teze section 2, (ed. S. Liebermann, p. 103) we read the following passage: ‘R. Abba b. Kahana said: …. It is like unto a king who hired for himself workers and put them into his orchard, without revealing to them the wages for looking after the orchard, so that they should not pay no attention to that for which they would be paid little and concern themselves only with that for which they would be paid much. In the evening he called for each of them. He said to the first, “Under which tree did you work ?” The worker replied, “Under the pepper-tree.” “The rate for this one is one gold piece (= aureus),” [said the King]. He called to the second and asked him, “Beneath which tree did you work ?” “Under that one,” he replied. He (the King) said, “This is a perach-lavan tree [literally, a white-flower tree], and the rate for it is half a gold piece.” He called the last one and said to him, “Under which tree did you work ?” “Under this one,” he answered. “It is an olive-tree, and its rate is two hundred mana.”’

Since in this parable we begin with one gold piece and then go down to half a gold piece it would appear likely that the final sum mentioned is a quarter of a gold piece. If this albeit hypothetical supposition be accepted then it follows that ¼ aureus = 200 mana, ∴ 1 aureus = 800 mana.

When we speak of the style of an author, and especially of a great author, we mean the sum total of his linguistic, stylistic and artistic means of expression; we thus do not think purely of the literary tendency or school to which he belongs, or even only of his linguistic usage, his grammar and vocabulary. None the less these last-named factors are of great importance, and it will perhaps be appropriate to start with them.

I need not remind you that the style of Tacitus, taken as a whole, bears the general impress of the so-called Silver Age in its most typical form as developed by Seneca. We all know that by that time the long Ciceronian and Livian periods had been given up; in their place we find short, concentrated sentences, often joined to one another asyndetically, and in the more important passages these sentences are condensed into telling, emphatic, sententiae. So, too, in the choice of words all commonplace and popular expressions are avoided; instead, expressions and constructions from poetry are borrowed to a much greater extent than in Cicero's time.

In western Cyprus the chief line of communication from the mountainous nature of the country has always been coastal. We may recognise three systems: the modern motor highway, the Turkish road, the Roman road. Maps published in 1885 from the excellent survey of the late Lord Kitchener are the only reputable authority for the second of these. From it the first diverges considerably, in the main through an exaggerated fondness for easy gradients (fig 10). That the Roman road and the Turkish were virtually identical is demonstrated by the evidence of certain milestones hitherto unpublished.

In speeches delivered during the years 57–55 B.C. Cicero frequently mentions the events and transactions immediately preceding his banishment. Clodius, the tribune of the year 58, was the author of all the trouble, and Clodius is the target of his passionate attacks. Here as elsewhere Cicero shows himself a virtuoso in the technique of variation, ever changing the venue of his accusations. Yet one complaint is constantly reiterated—Clodius's abrogation of the Lex Aelia Fufia. The following pages are devoted to an investigation of the fate of that law, for lack of which many of the events of this crowded period remain incomprehensible.

In a recent paper N. J. Miners has challenged the view that Gaius Gracchus' law ‘ne quis iudicio circumveniatur’ should be interpreted as part of his attempt to reform the quaestio de rebus repetundis and has maintained that it cannot therefore be used as evidence for a stage in Gaius' legislative activity when he envisaged the retention of senators as indices in this court. Mr. Miners states well the principal objection to this theory, that Gaius' law, to judge from the references to it in Cicero, pro Cluentio, was concerned with unjust condemnations, while Gaius' preoccupation, as far as the extortion court was concerned in 123–2 B.C., was with unjust acquittals. Mr. Miners shows that our scanty information about the law will bear a very different interpretation and he returns to the view of Mommsen, that it should be associated with the Gracchan law de provocatione (and perhaps even identified with it).

In the settlement of Greece after the Third Macedonian War Roman policy was at times moderate, at times harsh. On occasion the difference might represent only an individual point of view: thus the terms imposed upon Macedonia might seem generous to a Roman who contemplated the grant of ‘freedom’ to the Macedonians, the reduction of taxation and the absence of territorial aggression on Rome's part, while they might equally seem harsh to a Macedonian who felt that his sense of nationhood had been violated by Rome's creation of the four independent Republics. But towards Epirus Roman policy seems to have been marked by two successive stages, the first moderate, the second brutal. It is the purpose of this note to attempt to consider the causes which determined this change and to examine what influence the Epirote Charops exercised upon the measures which turned his country into a playground for Roman brutality and ultimately into an abomination of desolation.

A P. Decius Subulo appears twice in the extant books of Livy. The cognomen is only given on the first occasion and there spelled ‘Subolo’; and that may well be the correct original form. The word, we are told, is Etruscan for ‘tibicen’ and we may thus deduce, despite the Oscan nomen, a partly Etruscan (and perhaps priestly) origin for the family. It will have come from one of those regions of Central Italy pervaded by Etruscan influence—perhaps Campania; but nothing is known about it. We have no further reference to this P. Decius. It would be interesting to know whether he reached the praetorship: if he lived long enough, it is quite probable, to judge by others in similar positions; but we cannot tell.

The son of this man first appears in history in an unfortunate manner. Cicero tells us of a man whom Q. Opimius (cos. 154), at some time after his consulship, mocked for his effeminacy—a charge which, according to Cicero, was undeserved and which the. young man neatly returned. The impudent retort to a consular shows that the youth must have been of some social standing. Unfortunately his name is corrupt in our manuscripts; but with the help of a citation by Nonius, Cichorius has restored it with certainty as ‘Decius’. This same man—who, in the circumstances, must be the son of the senator P. Decius Subulo— was also the butt of a joke by Scipio Aemilianus, which Cicero greatly admired, but which we cannot understand, except to see that it was probably indecent.