This passage is usually taken to be a description, in however informal terms, of the constitutional position which Augustus (Octavian) held in the years immediately after the end of the Triumvirate. I propose to argue that in reality it has a different meaning.

The facts are fairly simple. The second period of the Triumvirate ended with the end of 33 B.C. After that date, it seems that Octavian did not use the title Triumvir, though he probably considered his extraordinary triumviral powers as still running till he formally laid them down in 28–27 B.C. The consulship began in 33 when Octavian was consul for a few hours on 1st January. He was consul again for the whole of 31 and for all the following years continuously till midsummer, 23 ; then he finally resigned the office. The question of the tribunicia potestas is more difficult. According to Appian, Octavian received the tribunicia potestas in 36 B.C. According to Dio, a vote was then passed “that neither in act or word should any violence be offered him, and that in the contrary case (that is, if he were assaulted) the assailant should be liable as in the case of assaulting a tribune.” The Monumentum Ancyranum adds what may be a third statement to the same effect. In a mutilated passage in chapter x it records, without giving a date, that Augustus was made sacrosanct, and that he received the tribunicia potestas for life. A further statement appears in Dio (li, 19, 6) to the effect that in 30 B.C., just after Actium, Octavian received the tribunician power for life, and that this power extended even a little way beyond the pomerium. Otherwise there is no mention of the tribunician power as used by Octavian (Augustus), till he began to reckon the dates of his reign by it in 23 B.C. (Dio, liii, 17 and 32).

It is a commonplace that Britain is an island. The further truth, that it is an island which is very closely tied to the continent lying east of it, is a good deal less familiar. Geographical writers are apt, even for historical purposes, to emphasise instead those two features of the island which Mr. Mackinder in his admirable volume has called its insularity and its universality, its separation, that is, from Europe, and its central position in the world. I feel, however, that both students of ancient history, and also modern men at this particular moment, are more concerned with the peculiar relation of Britain to Europe. It is not the insularity of the island but its dependence on the continent which really matters. This dependence dates from days long before the first appearance of man; it is due, indeed, to the configuration of western Europe in remote geological periods. In those dateless days the seas which now divide our southern coast from France, and our eastern coast from the Low Countries and from Germany, were river valleys which took the drainage of a vast area extending from Wales and the Pennine hills on the north-west, to the Eifel, the Vosges and the Cevennes on the south-east. The rivers have long vanished, but their valleys, vast almost as the valley of a Missouri or a Mississippi, can still be traced in the configuration of the British and continental coasts. On each side of the sea the main rivers flow down to face each other, the main harbours of each land lie vis-à-vis and the natural entrances by which trader or soldier might wish to enter Britain open on to the main exits by which he might wish to start from the continent. Nor is it merely a matter of entrances or exits. That part of Britain which faces the continent is the lower-lying part of the great valley which I have mentioned. It is therefore fairly flat, and it offers no strategic obstacle to invaders. Its only features, its forests and its fens, are hardly large enough even to divert the march of armies and have been over-rated by writers like the late Dr. Guest and Mr. J. R. Green. The really difficult regions of Britain, the tangled uplands of Wales and west Yorkshire and the north, lie far away from the path of European aggressors. They might assist the rulers of Britain in checking an Irish invasion; they do not protect it from European influences. Britain is a land which was made to be invaded from the continent.

Some fifty years ago, three labourers in the employment of the late Mr. Rigg of Brough House were digging soil near the summit of Huntcliff, and stumbled upon some ancient walling and other remains. The find was reported to and inspected by Canon Greenwell and the late Canon Atkinson, and was duly chronicled by the latter as Roman, but nothing was done to pursue the enquiry. Quite lately, however, the present writers secured at an auction sale, for the sum of threepence, the remains then unearthed; they also came upon Mr. James Bell, who had superintended the digging and was able to point out its exact spot, and they determined to dig further.

The Rev. G. E. White of Anatolia College, Marsovan, to whom we owe the knowledge of several interesting inscriptions of Asia Minor, has laid us under a fresh obligation by sending copies of two epitaphs recently discovered in the district where he lives. These texts will be of interest to students of the Roman empire, and we take the opportunity of publishing them without delay in these pages.

The following pages contain the results, not devoid of interest, if meagre in quantity, of various short visits to the valley of the Caystrus in Central Phrygia, and to the hills which bound it on the north and south. This valley formed the meeting-place of five great Anatolian roads, the northern and central trade-routes from the east, the highways to the west coast down the Maeander valley or past Akmonia or Eucarpia and Sardis, and the road to the Bosporus by way of Dorylaeum. Naturally therefore the valley of the Caystrus was traversed by many generals or governors or other persons known to history, and, little as history has recorded of the state of the valley at different periods, enough has been gleaned from various writers to enable us to fix the main features of its ancient topography. It was traversed from west to east by Cyrus the Younger and Xenophon in 401 B.C. Alexander the Great crossed it from south to north on his way from Celaenae to Gordium in 333 B.C. The battle of Ipsus was fought somewhere near its eastern end in 301 B.C. The plunder-laden army of Cn. Manlius Vulso moved slowly over it, proceeding northwards, in 191 B.C. Cicero travelled through it on his way from Synnada to Philomelium in 51 B.C. To cut short a long list, this valley was the scene of a fierce battle between the emperor Alexius I and the Turks in A.D. 1116; the account given by Anna Comnena of this campaign is the fullest record we possess on the ancient topography of the Caystrus valley, and it throws some light on places in the hills to the north.