The collection of four Latin bucolics ascribed to one Martius Valerius was only published in the twentieth century; they have been widely considered as twelfth-century compositions. Picking up on suggestions proposed by François Dolbeau, this study presents evidence that Martius drew directly on the bucolics of Theocritus, and that his poems are late antique, not medieval, literary productions, probably written in the sixth century. Such a conclusion will require a revision of the history of post-Virgilian Latin bucolic poetry.

In his collection of passages περὶ ἀνδρείας Stobaeus (Ecl. 3, 7, 12) quotes a poem in five Sapphic stanzas by Melinno and, in introducing it with the words Μελινοῦς Λεσβίας ἰςε ῥώμην, blunders. The poem, as Grotius saw long ago, is addressed not ἰςε ῥώμην, to physical strength, but ἰςε ῥώμην, to Rome, and has in fact nothing to do with ἀνδρεία. Nor is there any good reason to think that the authoress came from Lesbos.

Livy i, 18, 6, describing the accession of the second King of Rome, provides food for much thought on the part of those who are interested in the religious ideas of early Italy, and gives us the material for a brisk controversy which is far from being settled. Despite therefore the familiar contents of this passage, I quote the part of it which is most important for our purpose.

Accitus … de se quoque deos consuli iussit. inde ab augure, cui deinde honoris ergo publicum id perpetuumque sacerdotium fuit, deductus in arcem, in lapide ad meridiem uersus consedit. augur ad laeuam eius … dextras ad meridiem partes, laeuas ad septentrionem esse dixit.

Numa then is facing south ; the augur is facing east. Both are engaged in the same important ceremony. Why do they not look the same way, but at right angles to each other, and what is the significance of their respective attitudes ?

Some fifty miles north-east of Jerusalem, on the rugged plateau between the Jordan and the desert to the east, lies a ruined city whose striking remains have attracted the interest of hardy travellers ever since the beginning of the last century—Jerash, the ancient Gerasa, in Transjordania. This district was the Decapolis of the Romans, though its cities numbered more than ten. Since that time war and the centuries have obliterated all trace of many of them; but Jerash, with its temples and theatres, its paved and colonnaded market and streets, its almost intact walls and its many Christian churches, is still beautiful and imposing. None the less, it is only very recently that its full significance has begun to be realised. Heretofore it has been usual to assume that Jerash attained prosperity and importance only under the Antonines, beginning with Trajan's annexation of Arabia in A.D. 105–6, and his assignment of Jerash to that province. This opinion was supported by the fact that the inscriptions supply dates of the second century or later for most of the public buildings; but a reconsideration of the archaeological and epigraphic evidence shows that the present plan of the city and the present form of the public buildings are due merely to alteration and rebuilding under the Antonines. From the materials which we now have it is possible to reconstruct a good picture of the flourishing and active city of the first century—further, to show that this prosperity was itself not new, but firmly based on a long and continuous past.

Artemidorus, quoted by Strabo xii, 7, 2, enumerates the Pisidian cities as follows: Selge, Sagalassos, Petnêlissos, Adada, Tymbriada, Krêmna, Pityassos, Amblada, Anaboura, Sinda, Aarassos, Tarbassos, Termêssos. Some of these names are doubtful, and the list is short. Aarassos is otherwise unknown; Tityassos is a more common form of Pityassos, but variation between initial P and T through TW is characteristic of Anatolian words; e.g. Perseus was the herofounder of Tersos-Tarsos, now Tersous. It is proposed here merely to register some recent discoveries.

Amid all the disputes and controversies that have centred on the Roman army of the Empire since Mommsen's day, one important chapter in that army's history has remained curiously free from question; however many legions Augustus retained, whenever this legion was raised or that destroyed, all writers are in agreement that Vespasian, early in his principate, cashiered some of the mutinous legions of the Rhine armies.

The great majority of writers are agreed that the legions so dismissed were I, IIII Macedonica, XV Primigenia, and XVI Gallica; though Hardy, following Grotefend and Schilling, suggested that XV might have survived even into Trajan's principate: to-day, however, no one maintains this view, which was the outcome of a failure to account for Vespasian's apparent reduction of the number of legions.

It is with considerable reluctance that I offer a few comments on the possible significance of the Flavian reliefs discovered between 1937 and 1939 close by the Palazzo della Cancelleria in Rome. For the interpretation of monuments such as these is largely subjective; and, in a matter on which any student may claim as good a right to his own opinion as any other, the use of space in this Journal to make suggestions which few may think convincing needs special justification. That justification must be found in the encouragement to ventilate the ideas which follow (ideas first aired before the Anglo-Swedish Classical Conference at Lund in August, 1947) given me by various friends—particularly Dr. Arvid Andrén, Professors Axel Boëthius and Einar Gjerstad, Dr. P. G. Hamberg, and Professors A. D. Nock and A. W. Persson. None of these gentlemen should be assumed to agree with any of my conclusions, but to all of them my hearty thanks for useful discussion are due and are hereby offered. Furthermore, it must be made plain that these remarks are not intended even to touch on the problems connected with the development of Roman art in the Flavian age to the evidence for which these friezes are a most notable addition. They are confined to the question, What are the reliefs about ?

A corrected version given by Zangemeister, CIL xiii, 7945, of an inscription from Iversheim, near Münstereifel, previously misread (see ILS 2459; cf. Corrigenda, vol. Ill, ii, p. clxxviii), discloses a possible connection with an inscription from the fort of Birrens in Dumfriesshire, CIL vii, 1062 (PSA Scot. xxx, 133, no. 6). The Birrens inscription is a dedication to Brigantia by an Amandus who describes himself as arcitectus. The Iversheim inscription mentions a Val(erius) Amandus who as discens (architectus) carried out structural work there under Iulius Castinus, legate of the Legion 1 Minervia, duobus Augg. cos. A clue to the identity of the Augusti is given by an inscription from Aquincum, CIL iii, 10471, which shows that Castinus was legate of Lower Pannonia in the joint reign of Severus, Caracalla and Geta (cf. Dio, lxxviii, 13, 2).

Scholars have long discussed whether the Golden Gate is a monument of Theodosius I, as the inscription which formerly adorned it strongly suggests, or whether if was built at the same time as the walls under Theodosius II. The inscription must in the latter case apply to a minor rising of the Primicerius Iohannes in 423. However, Schneider, the last scholar who has examined the walls, points out that they were nearly complete in 422, when a rescript assigned to travelling soldiers the lower stories of the towers. Iohannes' rising was not crushed until 425; and not even Schneider has maintained that the Golden Gate was built later than the walls.

It seems more natural to suppose that the inscription refers to the conquest of Maximus by Theodosius I. In this case the gate may be assumed to have been comparable to the triumphal arches of Roman colonies, and to have stood on the original pomerium. Its existence may account for the line of the wall, which joins the Sea of Marmara after the shore has turned south-west; for the line of the fortifications is thus made considerably longer without much gain of interior space.