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.

The Nerva Inscription in Beroea still lies, where Delacoulonche first reported it, on the right hand of the entrance to the Orta Cami. During a visit to Beroea in 1936, in the company of Mr. C. F. Edson of Harvard University, I was enabled to gather some fresh information about this dedication.

The slab of marble which bears the inscription is embedded in the ground on its side, so that the left half of the inscription has not been seen since the building of the Mosque, the raising of the heavy marble flags of the entrance being a formidable task without some mechanical aid. A rough-surfaced margin surrounds the smooth inscribed field. The lettering is elaborate Imperial, with many ligatures. H. 116 m. Exposed W. at top 0.53 m. Exposed W. at bottom 0.50 m.

This survey is intended primarily to assess the impact on Roman studies in general of recent work in Roman epigraphy — whether newly published inscriptions, revised editions, or texts that have been reconsidered or newly analysed in the light of specific themes. We mean to draw attention to those epigraphic studies that make a significant contribution, in particular, to Roman history. Hence the considerable space we devote below to the newly published Senatus Consultum on Cnaeus Piso, of which any future study of the reign of Tiberius (or of the relations between senate and emperor in the early Principate) will have to take account. Other highlights include a centurion's own reflections (in verse) on his unit's building works at Bu-Njem in Tripolitania; a major revision of the inscribed texts of Roman laws; the first known letter of Lucullus; and a new text from Messene orchestrating the city's responses to the death of Augustus. At the same time, in this introduction, we note one or two developments in recent epigraphic practice. Though these aspects are necessarily more technical, we include them in order to help readers to find the epigraphic data they might need (publication is increasingly diverse, and in an ever wider range of media); and then to assess the texts, the dates, and the conclusions the epigraphists are offering. ‘What you get’ in epigraphy is not necessarily ‘what you see’.

That the lex Clodia of 58 B.C. repealed either in whole or in part the lex Aelia Fufia of c. 153 B.C. is adequately attested by our ancient authorities and universally admitted by modern scholars. The crux of the question is: was the lex Aelia Fufia wholly abrogated by the lex Clodia, and, if not, precisely what part of the former law was repealed by the legislation of Clodius? Despite the statement of Cicero—‘mitto eam legem, quae omnia iura religionum, auspiciorum, potestatum, omnes leges quae sunt de iure et de tempore legum rogandarum, una rogatione delevit’—which is obviously rhetorical and biased, no one, so far, as the writer knows, holds the view that all clauses of the lex Aelia Fufia were repealed by the lex Clodia. This inquiry, therefore, is an attempt to determine how much of the lex Aelia Fufia the lex Clodia repealed.

The Tabula Hebana ( = TH) has brought fresh evidence about the honours decreed for Germanicus after his death in A.D. 19. These clauses of the tablet, in contrast to the central, legal, clauses, have been unduly neglected in the discussion. I do not claim that they are as important as the legal clauses; but I feel that they are worth greater attention than they have so far received and that at least one of the two honours which I propose to discuss in this article, the provision of the empty curule chairs (1. 50 ff.), is of considerable interest. My answer to the question it raises need not be the right one; but often questions are more important than the answers.

In a paper on Justus Lipsius and the text of Tacitus's Annals, published in the last issue of this Journal, the present writer did not touch upon the difficult question of interpolations. It has been asserted that ‘there are not many glosses in Tacitus’. This can hardly hold for the Histories and Annals XI–XVI, that is, for the works contained in the Second Mediceus. In fact, the two codices unici differ in this as in other respects. As for the Med. no. II, that is, for Histories and Annals XI–XVI, I still feel convinced by W. Heraeus's and C. D. Fisher's arguments. Arguments are indeed hardly needed in a case like Hist. II, 98, where a snatch of verse has been thrust into the text, cutting one Tacitean word in two. There are not a few cases where interpolation of glosses can be proved, and the whole subject might usefully be gone over again in its own context.

Now that my excavation of Margidunum (Castle Hill, Nottinghamshire) has come to an end and the site has been filled in, it may be opportune to give a detailed account of the last three buildings I explored; for they not only furnished results throwing light on the entire history of the camp but exhibit many unusual features of general importance. They form a material addition to the plan of one of the earliest forts of the Claudian conquest situated on the eastern edge of the Trent Valley, some 25 miles SW of Lindum (Lincoln) on the Fosse Way, the first strategic frontier across Britain; and the pottery found in excavating these buildings adds materially to the chronology of Romano-British pottery over a period of 350 years.

In the collection of ancient sculpture at Pawlowsk, near Leningrad, there is a Roman sarcophagus which has never been published (plate I, a-c), though long known to students of ancient sarcophagi. A certain amount of information as to its history is supplied to us from the following sources. Stephani appends to his description of the sarcophagus in Die Antiken-Sammlung zu Pawlowsk, 1872, p. 24, no. 42, a short notice of its previous career. ‘Der Sarkophag ist in Rom im Mausoleum des Augustus, worin bekanntlich. nähere und fernere Verwandte der kaiserlichen Familie bis gegen die Zeit Hadrians beigesetzt wurden (Becker, Handb. der röm. Alterth. Th. I, s. 639), gefunden und gelangte zunächst in die Sammlung Lyde Brown—Cat. L. Br. 1779, sarcofaghi, no. I, “un bellissimo e ben conservato sarcofago, largo quattro piedi e mezzo, ornato con sei maschere di Fauni e Satiri e con festoni e putti di ottimo gusto; fu trovato nel Mausoleo d'Augusto.”’ On the negative side we can trace the history of the sarcophagus still further.

When we consider the information concerning the history of the earliest days of Rome which ancient authors have handed down to us, we have to ask ourselves : which parts of it are acceptable and which are not ? What, after all, do we really know about early Roman history ?

Modern scholars view these problems from very different psychological standpoints. Some of them ask why we should refuse credence to a venerable tradition which has been given an artistic form of great beauty by writers of genius, and which is full of lessons of political and moral importance. Others, however, seized with the full frenzy of the critic, and with uncompromising devotion to logic, discard all, or practically all, the tradition. Whatever the cost, they intend to reach the truth. These two conflicting tendencies prevail turn and turn about in accordance with the views dominating in different periods or with the different temperaments or ages of individual scholars.