In the account which I gave in this Journal of the excavations carried out in 1925 at and near the east corner of the legionary fortress, I explained that the earliest defence there had consisted of a double ditch and a clay rampart, which appeared to have been laid out in the time of Petillius Cerialis (c. A.D. 71–74); that a stone wall subsequently built along the outer margin of this clay rampart probably dated from the reign of Trajan (about 108–9); that at some time this wall was destroyed, and that a second wall, built immediately inside the line of the wall which it replaced, belonged to the period of Commodus or Septimius Severus. Those conclusions were drawn from the evidence of trenches cut on either side of the corner. Of the corner itself enough was uncovered to prove that the tower here, as was to be expected from the date of the adjacent work, was of the internal type usual in the first three centuries. The complete excavation of the corner was the main task of 1926.

It is generally recognized that Rome of the early Republic offers a good example of the correlation between military and political organization. The ordering of the Roman citizenry in centuries, classes and age-groups was in origin and essence a military system. The Comitia Centuriata was the exercitus urbanus—the army on parade in the Field of Mars.

But by the third century B.C. the Roman army and the centuriate assembly were manifestly two different systems, even if vestiges of their interconnection lingered on. The process whereby this differentiation had come about is, unfortunately, not so clear. The traditional accounts of early Roman history generally failed to devote much attention to questions of that order. Yet the effort to tackle and, if possible, solve this complex of problems can hardly be evaded. The answers given, or assumed, by modern historians are bound to determine how the whole history of early Rome is interpreted and represented.

This article tackles a relatively under-studied aspect of the Christianisation of the Roman aristocracy. It considers the influence of Christian norms on a key stage in the elite male life course: service to the state. Drawing on the letters of Isidore of Pelusium, Augustine of Hippo and Theodoret of Cyrrhus to imperial officials, this article argues that a Christian rhetoric of office-holding had developed across the Mediterranean by the first half of the fifth century. It traces these authors’ varying expectations of how the religious identities of elite Christian men would shape their political agency. Their letters demonstrate the diffusion of Christian political ideas within the imperial state — and the terms on which Christian affiliations and traditional public careers were understood to be compatible — under the Theodosian dynasty.

At first glance, L. Licinius Sura and Q. Sosius Senecio have many points of resemblance. Both were men of erudition and culture, like their mutual friend the younger Pliny. Both stood close to Trajan and participated in the two Dacian wars. Both received the rare honour of a public statue from the emperor. Together they gave their names to the year 107, sharing the fasces as consules ordinarii.

So many are the similarities, in fact, that the two are difficult to think of as separate and defined characters. There is another and graver reason for juxtaposing their careers. Sura's is often assumed to be largely known from an acephalous inscription found in Rome in the sixteenth century: that view goes back to Lipsius, but was first forcefully argued by Borghesi. In recent years doubts have been voiced, in the first place by Professor Syme: not Sura, but possibly Sosius Senecio. It is time to argue that the ignotus is indeed Sosius, and to draw the consequences for the early years of Trajan's reign.

Two poets addressed by Propertius in his first book are in fact pseudonyms. Ponticus was formed on the model of Horace's Alpinus to designate someone who embodies the antithesis of the poet's Callimachean sensibilities. Bassus is none other than Horace himself, who was then in the course of writing iambics. In the eleventh epode, Horace responded in kind by creating the pseudonyms Pettius, Lyciscus and Inachia, all of which derive from aspects of Propertius' first book. This exchange between Horace and Propertius has echoes in their later work. We conclude by examining why Ovid seems to treat Ponticus and Bassus as real poets in the Tristia.

Modern students of Roman Britain have been taught to recognize the sharp line of cleavage, both social and regional, which intervened between the military and the civil zones of the province. Such recognition is essential both as a corrective to the indiscriminate marchings and counter-marchings of the earlier historians and as a safeguard against confusion in dealing with a comparatively restricted geographical area. The general validity of this distinction, however, is now so widely accepted that it is permissible to modify it in detail without risk of misunderstanding.

The gold fibula shown on plate I is at present in my collection in Boston. It is said to have come from near Cervetri, a statement which admits of little doubt when one considers that technically it resembles closely the gold objects found in the Regulini-Galassi tomb. The date is thus accurately determined as earlier than the middle of the seventh century B.C. How much earlier, it would be difficult to say. The fibula shows evident signs of wear, and could easily have been in use half a century before finding its final resting-place in the tomb of some Etruscan matron or maid. In point of style it is superior to any of the gold objects with animal representations hitherto found in Italy. This point will be discussed more fully in the course of this article.

This article examines marriage as a pathway to free status for enslaved women in the early imperial Roman world, arguing that women manumitted for marriage to their former owners experienced a qualified form of freedom. Analysis of a funerary altar from early imperial Rome alongside larger bodies of legal and epigraphic evidence shows that in this transactional mode of manumission, enslaved women paid for their freedom by foregoing certain privileges, including, to varying degrees, the ability to enter and exit the marriage at will and the separation of their property from that of their husbands. Through a close examination of one mode of manumission and the unequal unions that resulted from it, this paper offers further evidence that freedom was not uniform, but varied in its meaning depending on who achieved it and by what means.

Discovered by a lucky accident, a Roman bronze head of remarkable quality was unearthed in 1969 in the village of Boleč near Belgrade (Plates V–VII).

Roman portraits in the Danubian provinces, where they are of above-average quality, invariably represent emperors or members of the imperial family. In the case of this bust, the type of beard and the general style show that we are dealing with a personage of the Severan period. The appearance of the beard may suggest a certain resemblance to the emperor Pupienus, but the identification does not bear further inspection, since his portraits differ from the new head significantly in most other details.