In 1987, nine groups of graffiti written in Safaitic were published from Pompeii's theatre corridor (VIII.7.20). Safaitic, a south Semitic script used to record a dialect of Old Arabic, had never previously been documented in the West, and the appearance of these inscriptions at Pompeii since their publication has largely remained a mystery. I argue that Pompeii's Safaitic graffiti were inscribed by nomads from the Ḥarrah who had been incorporated into the Roman army, and who marched into Italy with Legio III Gallica during its campaign to install Vespasian as emperor.

In 1962 the late Professor Kraft put forward a new interpretation of the letters SC on the aes coinage of the principate, claiming thereby to remove the difficulties that sprang from the traditional interpretation of the formula. In brief, his theory was that the letters S(enatus) C(onsulto) did not refer to a senatorial decision authorizing the coinage (meaning ‘geprägt auf Senatsbeschluss’), as had been generally assumed as a matter of course; rather, the reference was to the type-content of the coinage: to the decision by which the senate had voted Augustus the honours depicted on the coinage itself (the oak-wreath of 27 B.C.). Although the late H. Mattingly reacted to this theory with scepticism, it was supported by C. H. V. Sutherland, who adduced in its favour further arguments from Augustan issues in the provinces. There discussion has stopped. However, there are reasons for not leaving the problem at this stage, as the solution of Kraft can hardly be the right one; instead, it should be possible to suggest another one harmonizing better with the evidence.

The appearance in 1998 of F. E. Romer's English translation of Pomponius Mela's De Chorographia has helped to raise further the profile of this previously rather obscure author. Indeed, since the publication a decade previously of the Budé edition by Alain Silberman, interest in Mela seems to have grown quite steadily. Important contributions in German by Kai Brodersen have widened our appreciation of Mela's place within ancient geography as a whole, and his role within the history of cartography has been the subject of a number of shorter pieces.

One element common to all these works, however, is a continuing tendency to disparage both Mela himself and the work he created. This is typified by Romer, for whom Mela was ‘a minor writer, a popularizer, not a first-class geographer’; one ‘shocking reason’ for his choice of genre was simply poor preparation, ‘insufficient for technical writing in geography’. Similar judgements appear in the works of Brodersen and Silberman. Mela's inaccuracies are, for these critics, typical of the wider decline of geography in the Roman period. Perhaps such negative views sprang initially from a sense of frustration: it was counted as one of our author's chief defects that he failed to list many sources for his work. For scholars interested in Quellenforschung it makes poor reading. Yet, quite clearly, the De Chorographia has also been damned by comparison. Mela's work has been held against the best Graeco-Roman learning on geography during antiquity—against Strabo, Ptolemy, or Pliny—and it has usually been found wanting. Set against the achievements of his peers, his work does not stand close scrutiny. Thus, for most scholars, the text has been read as a failed exercise in technical geography, or a markedly inferior document in the wider Graeco-Roman geographical tradition.

Orthodox historians have tended to dislike attempts to think counterfactually about the past, on the grounds that ‘virtual history’ offers little more than entertainment and degenerates too easily into banal trivialities. In addition, it provokes fears about the offending historian's commitment to the truth and the consequent effect on his readers’ historical memories; a recent essay in the New Statesman, deploring the increasing presence of counterfactual history in the syllabus for national exams in British schools, condemned it as an agent of ‘collective amnesia’. E. P. Thompson was more trenchant: ‘unhistorical shit’. Yet popular and professional interest in counterfactual history continues to grow, spawning a recent radio series and a number of books on the ‘what if?’ theme. It seems, then, an opportune time to reconsider the famous passage of counterfactual history in Livy's Ab Urbe Condita, the Alexander digression at 9.17–19, a passage which, it so happens, one popular website lists as the first example of the genre. This paper offers, after a brief survey of previous scholarship (Section II), an account of Livy's allusions both to his sources and predecessors and to his own text (Section III), followed by an integrated reading (Section IV) which will argue more fully that the passage embodies central Livian ideas about the utility of historical writing, that it is thematically tightly woven into its place in Book 9, and, finally, that it offers a powerful critique of one-man rule which has important consequences for our understanding of the historian's view of Augustus.

Lincoln occupies a commanding position on the north side of the gap made in the north-south limestone escarpment by the River Witham as it turns in its course towards the Wash. The escarpment is part of the continuous upland link between the Humber and the Severn, forming a natural boundary to prehistoric occupation in south-east England; to the north-west lies the damp, low, midland area, the human penetration of which was never in early times on an extensive scale.

Among the many favours for which Ausonius thanked Gratian when he was designated consul in the autumn of 378 was ‘ad praefecturae collegium filius cum patre coniunctus’ (Grat. Act. 7). This favour, he goes on to say, preceded his nomination to the consulship, and was Gratian's own gift after his father's death; ‘et tui tantum praefectura beneficii, quae et ipsa non vult vice simplici gratulari, liberalius divisa quam iuncta, cum teneamus duo integrum, neuter desiderat separatum’ (Grat. Act. 11). This prefecture was apparently that of the Gauls (Grat. Act. 40: ‘agant et pro me gratias voces omnium Galliarum, quarum praefecto hanc honorificentiam detulisti’). In later poems he alludes to his ‘praefecturam duplicem’ (Protrept. 91), in which he was, before entering upon his consulship on 1 Jan. 379, ‘praefectus Gallis et Libyae et Latio’ (Epiced. 42).

Readers of the Journal will no doubt welcome a reproduction of the highly interesting and important edicts of Augustus which came to light some six years ago in the course of the Italian excavations at Cyrene and have now been published by G. Oliverio in the rather inaccessible Notiziario Archeologico, fasc. iv, 1927, pp. 13–67. As I have busied myself with the interpretation of the documents to the extent of delivering an address on them to the Roman Society on October 25th, I repeat here the substance of what I then said, with some omissions and some additions. The purpose of my address was, not to furnish a complete commentary on the texts, but to attempt an estimate of their historical significance. In consenting to repeat it, I am well aware that pitfalls beset pioneers and that differences of view are not only possible, particularly in regard to the last edict of the series, but will no doubt find expression in the near future. But it is only by the interplay of various minds that the truth can be reached.

Mommsen left the date of the first treaty between Rome and Carthage a crux, and a crux it has remained. For many years the fires of dispute have burned fiercely, but of late they have gradually been dying down, smothered, it may be, by acquiescence in the idea that the degree of certainty for which it is legitimate to look in early Roman history is very small. Yet the question calls as imperatively for a decisive answer as ever it has done since Mommsen wrote his Römische Chronologie. It is, therefore, remarkable that the most cogent argument for the Polybian dating of the first treaty has barely been suggested, and never presented in any detail; and it is in the belief that a sixth century date can be decisively confirmed that this paper has been written.

Eleven fragments of the monumental inscription here discussed were found at Saepinum during excavations carried out over many years by the Soprintendente alle Antichità degli Abruzzi, Professor Valerio Cianfarani. My best thanks are due to Professor Cianfarani for his exceptional generosity in making the epigraphic material in his care available to Dr. A. La Regina and myself for our work on the Supplementum of CIL IX. The inscription, carved on slabs of Luni marble, in all probability belonged to a building in the forum, perhaps the Basilica. The fragments were obviously re-used at a later stage as paving slabs: they may be arranged to form four unconnected portions (Fragments A–D) of a senatorial cursus of Imperial date relating to one M. Hirrius Fronto Neratius Pansa, known to us hitherto only from fragmentary and uncertain references. Previously, in fact, we only knew of him as consular legate of Cappadocia and Galatia between 77/78 and 79/80; what appear to be indirect references to his consulship are also found in an inscription from Lugdunensis and in a graffito from Pompeii.

In no other part of the Roman empire are preserved so many camps and forts of Roman troops, in none is the preservation of their remains in general so excellent as in Great Britain. Nowhere else was the survey of these monuments undertaken so early, and nowhere else has their excavation been pursued with such perseverance and care down to the present day. But nevertheless the material to be examined is by no means exhausted. We may hope that by the further systematic exploration of Roman camps and forts in England and Scotland other countries may be greatly helped in the appreciation of these monuments.

Ten years ago I had the honour of laying before this Society a paper in which I attempted to summarise the results of the work done up to that time on the problems of Hadrian's Wall. This work had been done almost exclusively by local antiquaries, amateurs in archaeology and unsupported by any organisation more powerful than their local antiquarian societies. Even when, as had sometimes happened, professional scholars took a hand in the work, they brought little to it but what they carried in their heads: little, I mean, of the aid which might have been given by the great universities and learned societies of the country. It needed an organised staff of trained workers; it needed funds on a scale permitting the systematic solution of problems as they arose; and it needed a method of publication by which its results could be presented to the learned world and, through the learned world, to the world at large. Ten years ago, in spite of the few professional scholars to whom I have referred, there was not even the nucleus of an expert staff; the bulk of the work remained where it had always been, in the hands of the amateur and the local antiquary. The funds employed to carry it on were almost entirely local, and were raised, in great part out of the pockets of the directors themselves, as special emergencies required. And the results were published, or, I might rather say, buried, in local transactions, where it was practically certain that no professional student of Roman history would see them.