Of all the products of ancient Roman civilisation, few were more distinctive than the great villas which, especially in the last century of the republic and the first of the empire, sprang up in obedience to the owners' will, not only on the outskirts of the capital, on the lower slopes of the Alban Hills, and along the fair and salubrious shores of the gulfs of Baiae and Neapolis, but at many a remote point where pure air, fertile soil, broad views and running water, with, if possible, the proximity of a frequented highway, combined to attract the weary administrator or business man in search of repose and to offer the most fascinating of problems to the architect and dillettante.

When this interesting bust, identified and published by Sir Cecil Harcourt Smith, by whose kind permission I reproduce it here, in the Burlington Magazine 1908, was transferred to the British Museum for cleaning purposes in 1916, a close examination of it in its new state led me to think that the portrait character of this obviously Mithraic work had been overstated. The photograph in the Burlington Magazine somewhat exaggerates the prominence of the lower part of the face, which is neither so full nor so individual as the plate suggests; the low Zeus-like forehead differs essentially from the high and rounded brow of the emperor, while the parted hair, curling only at the ends, and the beard are, as Sir Cecil Smith notes, like those of a Zeus, though they are surely very different in character from the frizzed interlacing locks of Commodus. The admittedly Zeus-like character of the bust is in fact against the identification as a Commodus-Mithras, sicnce not only does the youthful god differ in every respect from the ruler of Olympus, but the one known mythological portrait of Commodus, the Commodus-Hercules in the Conservatori, far from modifying the emperor's features to suit his part, rather represents the portrait element as triumphing at the expense of the divine; so that the lion-skin is pushed back and unnaturally balanced on the crest of hair, in order to keep the latter unmodified by one lock or curl, and the polished beauty of the imperial arms supersedes the mighty muscles of the hero. Again, the features of the Salting bust are finer, straighter and less sensual than in any known portrait of the emperor, while the features of the Commodus-Hercules are presented in their most extreme form. Perhaps, then, the explanation of the bust of a portrait is untenable, and its Zeus-like character is perplexing in the case of a head intended for a Mithras.

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.

The discovery two years ago, in Amiens, of an analogue of the famous Rudge cup has raised interest among the historians of the Roman world. The new patera has been summarily described in the Comptes-Rendus de l'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres (1949, p. 125 ff.) and will be more completely surveyed in the next volume of the Monuments Piot. Nevertheless it was thought that some account of the main differences between the two vases would be appreciated by students of Roman Britain.

In 49 B.C., on 23rd January by the contemporary calendar, now running over six weeks ahead of schedule, nearly a fortnight after Caesar had crossed the Rubicon and nearly a week after the Republican exodus from Rome, Cicero at Minturnae wrote to Atticus, who had remained behind, as follows (VII, 13a, 2):

L. Caesarem vidi Minturnis a.d. VIII Kal. Febr. mane cum absurdissimis mandatis, non hominem sed scopas solutas, ut id ipsum mihi ille [sc. Caesar] videatur irridendi causa fecisse, qui tantis de rebus huic mandata dederit; nisi forte non dedit et hic sermone aliquo arrepto pro mandatis abusus est.

H. Peter briefly stated the reasonable opinion that Trajan did not draft the rescripts himself or manage the details of law and administration which they involve, that being the work of the secretary Ab epistulis. This widely accepted view was established on a firmer basis by the investigations of A. Henneman into the ‘outer and inner style’ of the rescripts. His general conclusion was that Trajan settled the more important problems himself from material prepared by his secretariat, by giving a verbal decision which the secretary worked up into the drafts which we have. These were written in a uniform chancery style, but personal interventions and comments of Trajan are recognizable within the formal texts. Henneman used two main arguments to establish the secretarial manner.

The puzzle of C. Julius Caesar's date of birth and cursus honorum has never been satisfactorily solved. The facts can be stated quite simply. All but two of the sources referring to his age imply 100 B.C. as the date of his birth, and the date of his quaestorship agrees with this; yet he held the senior magistracies two years earlier than, according to what we know of the normal cursus, that date would allow. Are nearly all the sources wrong (as Mommsen thought) ? Or did Caesar at some time get a special dispensation, which no one has bothered to mention (as the majority opinion would now hold) ? Or is there another explanation of a more general kind, fitting Caesar into a class of exceptions (as Afzelius proposed) ?

Of the five great lead-producing districts of Roman Britain, the limestone uplands of the Mendips in Somerset have yielded evidence of Roman mining activities which, however incomplete, is still the richest and fullest from a material and chronological point of view so far discovered in this country. To the Mendip mines we owe not only the earliest and latest dated specimens in the British series of inscribed pigs of Roman lead, but also the heaviest. Since the appearance at the beginning of this century of the classic article by Gowland, the full number of the Mendip pigs has been listed by various authorities, but a recent examination of two of them shows that the existing accounts need supplementing and correcting in certain important details. Furthermore, a re-examination of the remains of Roman mining in another district, in the light of the evidence thus revealed, shows that some interesting features have hitherto escaped notice.