Pirro Ligorio wrote a description of what he believed to be the statio of the cohors vigilum on the Caelian hill which has never been satisfactorily explained. De Rossi supposed that the description was either of the castra peregrina or else a mixture of truth and falsehood. Baillie Reynolds wished to associate the description with some slightly similar remains to the south-east of Santo Stefano Rotondo. Colini recorded it, but offered no specific interpretation.

The text of the description survives in the original Italian in Cod. Taur. V f. 127–128, and in a Latin version by Holstein in Cod. Vat. Lat. 9141 f. 143. The Latin version differs in some respects from the Italian, and we give both texts here:

Castro Celimontano de' soldati Vigili fu in Roma nel monte Celio di là degli acquedotti dell'acqua Claudia, fra l'hospitale del Salvatore in Laterano et il monasterio di S. Steffano, ai confini delli castri peregrini, nel cui luogo hoggidí vi sono le vigne di M. Lippo et di Uberto Strozzi gentiluomini Mantovani, i quali per piantare esse vigne hanno spianato le rovine di esso Castro, alloggiamento dei soldati che la città di notte guardavano, dove havemo veduti alcuni vestiggi della pianta de'fondamenti ch'erano sotto delle rovine scassandosi il luogo. Et si sono veduti i luoghi che haveva di quattro torrioni quadrati, uno per angolo del Castro et per quattro lati fra esse torri erano quattro stanze larghe XX piedi e longhe XLVI et a destra cinque stanze di XV piedi larghe et longhe XX et a sinistra altre cinque stanze simili et cosí per tutti quattro i lati erano l'altre a destra et a sinistra delle altre grandi simili di quarantasei piedi, et le torri fiancheggiavano essi lati delle sale et camere.

Non è per nulla facile districare un problema di confini nell'Alto Medio Evo, quando i documenti o mancano o sono bellamente contraddittori.

Per ora il problema che mi propongo di delucidare e questo : dove correva il confine fra le terre bizantine di Puglia quelle del principato di Benevento e del marchesato di Spoleto ? Quel poco che ci vien fatto di cavar fuori da documenti e cronache ha un merito veramente singolare : quello di lasciarci nella piu assoluta incertezza.

Partiamo da uno dei pochi dati sicuri: la divisione fra Benevento e Salerno (849 ?). All'antico principato, per cio che concerne la nostra regione, sono attribuiti i gastaldati di Lésina (sull'omonima laguna, all'angolo Nord-Ovest del Gargano), Termoli (alia foce del Trigno), Larino (fra Biferno e Fortore), Volturara (nell'alto Fortore, fra i monti del Sannio e della Daunia), Ariano Irpino (sull'acrocoro che domina le sorgenti del Cervaro), Lucera, Siponto, Ascoli Satriano. Il confine, in quest'anno, o correva addirittura lungo l'Ofanto o per lo meno, appoggiandosi all'ansa che tale fiume fa verso Nord, fra i monti Cervaro e La Guardiola (toponimo squisitamente longobardo!), e girando tra l'Ofanto e Ascoli Satriano, puntava al mare passando per Cerignola e Trinitàpoli.

This study of the Abbey of San Paolo di Valdiponte, also known as the Abbazia or Badia Celestina, is the work of a group collaborating under the general direction of Dr. Anthony Luttrell, who is responsible for the overall co-ordination of the project. The participants have discussed each other's sections, while remaining responsible for their own contributions. The original survey of the site was made by Miss Margaret Browne, with the assistance of Miss Sheila Rixon; Figs. 2 and 3 are based upon Margaret Browne's plans, while Figs. 4, 5 and 6 are the work of Domenico Minchilli. Figs. 2, 4, 5 and 6 were prepared in their final form by M. C. Wright. The excavations, directed by Hugo Blake and Tom Blagg, are not complete. A detailed report of the seasons 1971, 1972 and 1973, accompanied by further plans, a description of the finds and a discussion of the pottery, will be published in the second part of this study; meanwhile, the present authors have been able to make full use of Hugo Blake's draft report and plans. The architecture has been studied and described by Dr. Franklin Toker, who also participated in the excavations and conducted research in archives and galleries.

The Via Claudia Valeria was the prolongation of the Via Valeria to its natural termination upon the shores of the Adriatic. During the Republican period the principal lines of communication between Rome and almost every part of Italy were fixed and settled, even if they had not become viae munitae; and so it remained for the Emperors to develop this system and bring it to its logical conclusion. The old Via Valeria linked Rome with Alba Fucens, and, by natural extensions, with the country of the Marsi and the Paeligni. The Emperor Claudius went a step further, and, by connecting the Via Valeria at Cerfennia (Collarmele) with the Mare Superum at the Ostia Aterni (Pescara), not only brought the Paeligni and the Marrucini into direct connection with the capital, but opened up a most important route between the Mediterranean and the Adriatic. With the Paeligni and the Marrucini, through whose territory the Via Claudia Valeria passed, the Romans never had any serious trouble. We first hear of relations between Rome and these people in the middle of the fourth century. No serious hostilities are mentioned and Roman armies appear to have been able to march through their territory without opposition.; In 304 B.C. Rome granted, a treaty to the Marrucini, Marsi, Paeligni and Frentani, all of whom remained generally loyal in aftertimes. The Via Salaria, which, in its mature form, connected Rome with Ausculum and Castrum Truentinum, a point on the Adriatic coast somewhat to the north of the mouth of the Aternus, was of very early origin. To the late Republican period (117 B.C.) belongs the Via Caecilia, which branched off from the Via Salaria in the valley of the Farfa (at the 36th mile) and, after passing through Amiternum, the chief town of the northern Sabini, reached Hadria and the coast.

Such settlement as there had been in south-eastern Etruria prior to the Early Iron Age had been established by small groups of pioneers moving up the river valleys from the Tiber. The first Early Iron Age settlers came instead from the west, overland, a difference of orientation which from the very outset made itself felt in the resulting pattern of settlement and communications. The first settlers of Veii seem to have come from the neighbourhood of Tarquinia or Vulci, along a line that is marked by the Villanovan sites in the Vesca and Biedano valleys and that of Monte Sant'Angelo on the crest of the Monti Sabatini, between the Lago di Martignano and the Baccano crater. From Monte Sant'Angelo, 11 km. north-west of Veii, there is a continuous ridgeway track leading down to Veii itself, a track which right down to Roman times was to remain Veii's principal outlet to the north.

The roads and gates described in the previous section are of very varied dates, and many of them were in use over a long period. They have been described first because they constitute the essential framework for any serious topographical study of Veii. Within this framework the city developed, and in this and the following sections will be found described, period by period, the evidence for that development, from the first establishment of Veii in Villanovan times down to its final abandonment in late antiquity.

Whatever the precise relationship of the Villanovan to the succeeding phases of the Early Iron Age in central Italy in terms of politics, race or language, it is abundantly clear that it was within the Villanovan period that the main lines of the social and topographical framework of historical Etruria first took shape. Veii is no exception. Apart from sporadic material that may have been dropped by Neolithic or Bronze Age hunters, there is nothing from the Ager Veientanus to suggest that it was the scene of any substantial settlement before the occupation of Veii itself by groups of Early Iron Age farmers, a part of whose material equipment relates them unequivocally to the Villanovan peoples of coastal and central Etruria.

English travellers in the days of the Tudors who have left behind them the story of their wanderings in the civilised lands of Europe are so few that perhaps little excuse is needed for the publication of a diary kept for Sir Edward Unton.

Unton was a gentleman of Berkshire, and traced his pedigree to Edward IV.'s time. He married in 1555 a widowed daughter of the Protector Somerset, was knighted by the Queen in 1559, and in 1574 had the honour to entertain her at his house of Wadley near Faringdon. He was Sheriff in 1567 and elected to Parliament in 1572. He died in 1583 and was buried in Faringdon Church.

His younger son, Henry, took a larger part in affairs of State. He, too, sat in Parliament, but he is chiefly remembered as Ambassador to France and friend of Henry IV., who is said to have mourned his death at the siege of La Fère in 1596. There is a curious portrait of the younger Unton in the National Portrait Gallery.

§ I.—That the three historical reliefs, of which two are immured in the north and south walls of the portico of the Villa Borghese, while the third rests on the ground to the left of the entrance, once belonged to a triumphal arch erected by Claudius in commemoration of his conquest of Britain, seems to be the accepted belief at the present time. The reliefs are published under this title in Brunn-Bruckmann's Denkmäler; their provenance from the Arch of Claudius is affirmed without question by Helbig in his guide to the Roman collections, and has been assumed in all recent discussions of the history of Roman art. Nevertheless it has no foundation, save in a conjecture of Nibby, contained in his Monumenti scelti della Villa Borghese, a work published in 1832. The Villa had been stripped of its principal treasures during the Napoleonic period—when some scores of statues and reliefs found their way to Paris, and now form no inconsiderable portion of the sculptures of the Louvre—and their places were partly filled by less important works gathered from the gardens of the Villa and from the other properties of the Borghese. It was thus that the reliefs in question came to be employed in the decoration of the portico; up till that time they had, as it would appear, lain neglected and scarcely noticed in the gardens of the Villa.

Il Museo di Manchester ospita una ampia e varia collezione di reperti archeologici, molti dei quali provengono da collezioni private locali costituite tra il diciannovesimo secolo e gli inizi del ventesimo secolo. La base della collezione etrusca e italica è formata da parte della donazione fatta al Museo dal Signor William Sharp Ogden, architetto, nel 1926. Alcuni pezzi di questa collezione sembra siano stati acquistati presso antiquari di Londra, sebbene molti vasi portino l'etichetta di precedenti collezioni molto ben conosciute. Molti altri oggetti provengono dalla collezione raccolta in Inghilterra dal Signor Arnold Forrester Warden, e donata dalla sua vedova nel 1979.

Nel 1981, Manchester ricevette molti bronzi italici, etruschi e romani provenienti dalle collezioni eccedenti del Wellcome Institute, distribuite dagli amministratori tra diversi musei britannici. La maggior parte degli oggetti italici ed etruschi fu acquistata presso importanti antiquari e case d'asta londinesi tra il 1919 ed il 1932. La collezione del Museo di Manchester è ben integrata dal materiale etrusco che si trova nel Museo di Merseyside County, Liverpool, mentre a Manchester, la City Art Gallery possiede alcuni reperti archeologici sia classici che etruschi, in parte provenienti dalla Collezione Canino.

East of Sabratha the coast of the Mediterranean Sea is formed by a line of soft sandstone cliffs. These, which are scarcely more than twenty feet high, are divided by low headlands into shallow bays. Below the cliffs, the foreshore is sometimes of harder rocks, flat or weathered into sharp spines and pinnacles; sometimes of fine sand, equally ideal for bathing or for beaching boats. Inland run low sand-dunes, barren now except for the desert shrubs on which Arab boys graze their goats. But this coast was fertile once, for here and there one may find scatters of pottery, Hellenistic, Arretine, and Roman coarse wares; or lines of square-cut well-laid masonry, which mark the sites of Roman baths, mausolea and villas. One such group of buildings forms the subject of this paper.

The site (Fig. 1) was discovered by Mr. J. B. Ward Perkins, the Director of the Sabratha Expedition (1948), who noticed foundations cut into the rocks of the foreshore, and short stretches of wall protruding from the sand dunes above the cliffs: clear evidence that a villa had once stood there. It was not possible to spare either Arab labour or supervising staff for a full-scale excavation of the site, but it seemed worth-while to make some record of the buildings. Mr. N. de l'E. Thomas and I decided, therefore, to devote what spare time we had to investigating the villa and, when its importance had been recognized, we were aided by four Arab workers.

The study of medieval liturgy is well served by a fuller appreciation of the unique richness of individual manuscripts. One example, Vat. Lat. 7701, is a key piece of evidence for uncovering the reception of the Carolingian project to ‘correct’ liturgy in Chieti, Abruzzo. This manuscript is a ‘pontifical’, created for the personal use of a ninth-century bishop of Chieti. Within this book, he described and prescribed his own liturgical duties, those which made up his office as the Carolingians understood it. The peculiarities of the manuscript and some of its unique features are best understood by reference to this imperative. Alongside other products of the Carolingian scriptorium at Chieti, the manuscript reveals that even bishops at the southernmost tip of the Carolingian Empire saw themselves as fully engaged in an Empire-wide programme to amend liturgical practice, which did not aim for uniformity but led to significant creativity. This programme was associated with imperial authority, but led by bishops themselves. Local liturgical variation is undeniable in our manuscript, but the sharing of texts and communication with sees all across the Empire are equally visible components.

Throughout the Mediterranean the study of the destruction, reuse, moving and preservation of statues has provided a window onto the transformation of Rome during a time of ascendant Christianity. The preservation of statuary collections is increasingly important in this regard. Archival research has revealed the discovery of one such collection at Ostia's Sanctuary of Magna Mater, a treasure trove of sculptures, reliefs and at least one bronze statue. All were well preserved, and several were found in the open spaces of the sanctuary. Together they span 500 years of history, stretching into the late fourth century. Unfortunately, the late antique significance of this group has never been acknowledged. This paper situates that collection within the social world of late antique Ostia, where many statues of both sacred and non-sacred subjects remained on display. The late fourth-century dedication, in particular, set alongside the earlier pieces, demonstrates that the ‘mood and motivations’ of traditional Roman religion, in Clifford Geertz's terms, also remained quite visible. The presence of this accumulated tradition, a hallmark of Rome's ‘civil religion’ for centuries, testifies to the high social status afforded one of Ostia's most historic sites, even during an increasingly Christian age.

This gazette presents to the reader outside Rome news of recent archaeological activity (primarily in 2015, but also in the first part of 2016), gleaned from public lectures, conferences, exhibitions and newspaper reports.

This article examines the so-called ‘Africa’ dish, part of a treasure trove of silver table-ware discovered in a cistern at the Villa della Pisanella, a villa rustica destroyed in the eruption of Vesuvius in ad 79. It proposes a new interpretation of the dish's iconography and argues that the woman in the centre of the emblema is Cleopatra Selene, while the attributes surrounding her reference her parents Cleopatra VII and Marcus Antonius, her brothers Alexander Helios and Ptolemy Philadelphus, her husband Juba II of Mauretania, and their mythological ancestor the demi-god Heracles. Thus the emblema serves as a meditation on the fates of Antony and Cleopatra VII, descendants of Heracles who chose the path of vice, a choice that resulted in their defeat by Octavian at the Battle of Actium. Octavian's virtue, victory and clemency, combined with his guardianship of their children, ensured the subsequent promotion of their daughter Cleopatra Selene as a key figure in his dynastic and political strategy, through her marriage to Juba II and the couple's appointment as client rulers of Mauretania. Also supposedly descended from Heracles, Juba II and Cleopatra Selene chose to follow in their illustrious ancestor's footsteps along the path of virtue. In common with other pieces from the treasure trove, the ‘Africa’ dish alludes to recent historical events and personages, utilizes death as a means of promoting the enjoyment of life, and incorporates popular elements of Greek mythology, all the while offering banqueters an erudite puzzle to solve during the course of their banquet.

This gazette presents to the reader outside Rome news of recent archaeological activity (primarily in 2011, but also in the first part of 2012), gleaned from public lectures, conferences, exhibitions and newspaper reports.