There are published several examples of a bronze medallion of Antoninus Pius, dated A.D. 140–144, with the following reverse (fig 33):

AESCVLAPIVS in exergue.

Ship to right under arched structure; one man is visible on ship; at prow, serpent springing to right; to right, river-god facing left with right hand extended in greeting; above him, indications of rocks; above them, three buildings and a tree.

The casual observer would naturally interpret the scene as follows : “From under a bridge comes a ship in motion, from the prow of which a serpent leaps to the land; a river-god greets him; the inscription AESCVLAPIVS identifies the scene as the arrival of the sacred snake of Aesculapius at the Insula Tiberina, the Insula Tiberina being represented to the right, and a bridge across the Tiber (Pons Aemilius?) to the left; the river-god being the Tiber.”

The notes which follow, on topics connected with Roman religion, have been put together from old note-books of mine in the course of reading with care Mr. W. Warde Fowler's work which bears the title given above. Needless to say, it is always a pleasure to greet him afresh in his peculiar domain. Although the themes with which he deals are much the same as those treated in his Gifford Lectures, entitled ‘The Religious Experience of the Roman People,’ much will be found in the later volume which is fresh or freshly put. Of course the mode of presentation is excellent, and equally of course, bright as the writing is, there is no straining after novelty, such as has often led inquirers in the same field far beyond the bounds of sober judgment. Many obiter dicta are striking and are the ready fruit of long familiarity with the subject. It bristles with difficulties, and at many points there has been great diversity of opinion.

Among the monuments erected by Augustus at Rome were two obelisks, about which the elder Pliny gives fairly full information. They had originally been erected in Egypt by two different monarchs, and, when Augustus had them transported to Rome, the one was placed in the Circus Maximus, the other in the Campus Martius. Moreover, the latter was put to practical use by being an essential part of the large solarium erected by the Emperor. Somewhat earlier in the same book Pliny attributes the setting up of the first obelisk to Mespheres at Heliopolis. The king had been warned to do this in a dream. In his chapter on obelisks Isidore also attributes the institution of this form of monument to this king, whom he calls Mesfres. He further gives more precise reasons for the dedication, and then passes on to the obelisk in the middle of the Circus; though his description is somewhat obscure, it is implied that the obelisk was used for a sun-dial. This passage from Isidore is reproduced in the Liber Glossarum, together with a sentence which is not in the MSS. of Isidore, and which occurs between sections 1 and 2 of the chapter in question:– ‘unum quippe fecit pedibus septuaginta quinque, alterum septuaginta sex quos Augustus ab ultima Aegypto deportatos alterum ex his Circo, alterum in Campo Martio posuit.’

Until recent years, Roman art had not seriously engaged the attention of the historians of art. It had been regarded as a sort of supplementary chapter to Greek art. In his great history of Greek sculpture Overbeck had inserted two or three chapters on the monuments of the Roman age. Collignon in France and Ernest Gardner in England in their works on Greek sculpture only briefly touched on the sculptural monuments of Rome.

At the period when, after a process of development extending over almost five centuries, the road-system of ancient Italy had attained to its maturity, we find that Rome was connected with the central and southern stretches of the Adriatic coast by four highways, the Via Appia, the Via Salaria, the Via Valeria and the Via Traiana. All of these roads were of republican origin, though the Via Claudia Valeria (the extension of the earlier Valeria to the Adriatic) and the Via Traiana did not become viae munitae until the first and second centuries of the empire respectively. It may be desirable to begin with a brief sketch of these roads, in order to make plain the part played by my proper subject, the Claudia Nova.

The inscription of Iconium published on p. 37, no. 19, gives us our first certain example of an east-Phrygian variety of the early Christian formula against violation of the tomb, which Professor Callander and I had already restored in a small group of inscriptions.