In 1933 the Moyses Hall Museum at Bury St. Edmunds was reorganised to deal with local history. Its Committee decided to dispose of much material from abroad, and the cippus here discussed was purchased by the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. There is no record of its previous history.

I. Description of the Cippus

The cippus (Museum number 1933,1946) consists of the upper half of a rectangular limestone block with relief carving upon each of its four sides. The top surface, upon which are the marks of a large flat chisel (about 2·0 cm. wide), is between 28·5 and 29·0 cm. square. The block widens slightly below, and its present lower edge measures from 30·5 to 31·0 cm. in width; its height is about 25·0 cm. At a distance varying from 6·2 to 6·4 cm. from the top of the block is the lower edge of a flat moulding 3·0 to 3·5 cm. wide, projecting about 0·5 cm. Above this is a narrower, shallower moulding, whose width is less than 1·0 cm. The block is hollowed out from beneath to 16·5 cm. from the present lower edge. The walls vary from 3·0 to 5·0 cm. in thickness, and, whereas the inner vertical surfaces are smooth, the inner horizontal surface has the rough marks of a punch. The preservation of the lower half of the block is inferior to that of the upper, and at each corner, just above the lower edge of the cipppus, there is the slanting cut of a saw for a few centimetres into the stone.

Shortly before reaching Rieti, coming from Rome, on the left (west) side of the Via Salaria, between km. 83.9 and 84, can be seen two round-topped cippi of ordinary tufo bearing nothing but an inscription, identical in both cases and datable by the form of the lettering to c. 50 B.C. (pl. III). The text runs:

C. GAVIVS. C. F. Q.

CARPVS

The left-hand cippus, more or less battered, has lost the initial C; the right-hand one, on which the inscribed zone is covered with white paint (not plaster) has a scar before CARPVS, which might suggest that something has been lost (e.g. [eu] CARPVS); but this is excluded by its companion, which is well preserved at this particular point.

I think that the two cippi were erected in order to delimitate a funerary area, which might be buried behind them; the slope of the mountain is here rather steep and consists of friable stone.

The inscription is, to the best of my knowledge, unpublished. It is not to be found in CIL IX, nor is the person mentioned in P.-W., s.v. Gavius. Ashby's paper in PBSR, iii, p. 7 ff. stops shortly before the bivio di Poggio San Lorenzo (km. 61.9), and it is not recorded either by Persichetti (Röm. Mitt., xxiv, 1909, pp. 215–216) or by Martinori (Via Salaria, 1931, p. 83). It is probable that the pieces, although they do not appear in the indexes of the Fasti Archaeologici, were uncovered during some recent work for enlarging the road.

The name and date of the little round temple in the Forum Boarium at Rome (popularly known as the ‘Temple of Vesta’) are long-standing problems of Roman topography. Its identification is still quite uncertain. On the chronology, however, general opinion seems to have hardened and, for reasons which are discussed below, most scholars appear now to believe that the building is Augustan, rejecting the attractive theory of Altmann and Delbrueck that it was erected some time in the later second century B.C. The present article is not concerned at all with the problem of identification, nor does it attempt the full and detailed study of the design and construction without which a definitive solution of the problem of dating is clearly impossible. Its purpose is twofold: to draw attention to some significant features of the architectural design and decoration, and to illustrate and discuss some surviving fragments which can be shown to belong to the lost entablture, but which seem hitherto to have escaped attention.

The foundations of the temple were first exposed by Valadier in the early nineteenth century, in the course of restoration work undertaken to free the building of later accretions and to consolidate the ancient remains.

Although the church of SS Quirico e Giulitta near the Forum of Augustus received its present aspect in the first half of the eighteenth century, it is mentioned in the eighth century and the building incorporates ancient elements (which seem to be even earlier than the eighth century) in sufficient quantity to afford a good idea of the main outlines of the original building. It had an unusual plan, but it has received scant attention from students of medieval Roman architecture. The relevant historical data has been collected by A. Rava and L. Montalto in two useful articles but both of these ignore important archaeological evidence; and although the architecture of the church has been mentioned by G. Giovannoni, his interpretation of it (as a late medieval structure in the “gothic” style) seems to be wholly mistaken.

The seven inscriptions described below were recorded by O. Brogan during journeys made in the Tripolitanian hinterland in 1958, 1959 and 1960, and are published here with the kind permission of Dr. E. Vergara-Caffarelli of the Department of Antiquities in Tripoli.

Brown limestone block, broken away at the right side (0·94 × 0·56 × 0·17) inscribed on one face within a moulded border (panel, 0·88 × 0·47); as a result of re-use the face is badly damaged and in part obscured by mortar which it has proved impossible to remove without danger to the surface. Found in 1958, south of the Jefren-Zintan road (map 1/100,000, sheet Giado, 1672, U788719) midway up the hillside above the wells; now in Tripoli Museum.

The plateau on which the site of Veii stands is bounded by the steeply eroded valleys of the Fosso Piordo and the Torrente Valchetta, the ancient river Cremera. A kilometre to the north-east of their confluence near the Piazza d'Armi, the site of the bath-house serving the Roman municipium Augustum Veiens was exposed by river erosion in November 1959 (fig. 1). It lies across the narrow floor of the Valchetta ravine, where the river has changed course frequently since classical times. The ancient approach probably lay along a small track leading from the edge of the main town plateau immediately above the baths. This choice of position, which certainly had pre-Roman associations, was determined by the presence of a number of hot springs which break through the valley floor at this point. They are the result of quiescent volcanic activity; another example occurred on the opposite side of Veii, in the Vignacce area of the Fosso Piordo.

The site was known to antiquarians of the last century. Canina mentions the baths briefly (p. 73) and reproduces an engraving of them (Tav. XX) in Antica cittá di Veio (1847), which presumably shows the outer shell of the building before the river broke into it (pl. XX, a). It illustrates a vital point in understanding the remains as they stand at present.

Apollonia in Cyrenaica was founded by the Greeks as the port for the city of Cyrene, from which it is some 20 km. distant. In the Roman period its prosperity was such that it received autonomy and became one of the five cities of the Pentapolis; by the sixth century A.D. it had surpassed both Gyrene and Ptolemais in importance. Christian sources more commonly refer to Apollonia as ‘Sozusa,’ and it is from this Christian designation that the present Arab name of ‘Susa’ is derived.

Witness to Apollonia's nourishing Christian life are its extensive Byzantine remains. Among these figure at least four churches, three of which have now been excavated, and what is probably the palace of the governor of the Pentapolis himself, the most recent structure to have been uncovered. What follows is a report on the ‘West’ Church excavated by the Department of Antiquities of the Provincial Government of Cyrenaica during the spring, summer, and fall of 1958 and again in the spring and summer of 1959. The consolidation and reconstruction of the church were begun simultaneously with the excavation and are still in progress.

The West Church at Apollonia was first plotted by the Beecheys in 1821–1822. In their plan of Apollonia the church appears with a quite extensive forecomplex. Intervening time plus in some places an overlay of small Italian buildings completely obscured the outlines of the church and caused the forecomplex to disappear from view altogether. Yet excavation of the site has proved the Beecheys essentially correct.