The best illustrations of the army which extended and protected the Roman Empire are to be seen on Trajan's Column. They are not, however, thoroughly known to classical students, for reasons which are worth stating. The primary reason is undoubtedly the scarcity of Cichorius's reproductions of the reliefs and the still greater rarity of plaster casts; but an important contributory factor is the bewildering quantity and peculiar quality of the material. The reliefs tell the story of two wars, the first a series of expeditions leading up to great battles, not unlike Agricola's campaigns in Britain; the second an organised conquest, ending in the burning of the hostile capital, the suicide of the nobles and their King and the enslavement of a people. This narrative picture, as dramatic as the Bayeux tapestry but unprovided with a text, has attracted historians, because it seems to fill a gap in their literature, and students of art, as being among the most extensive and detailed examples of such Roman sculpture.

Serious excavation of the archaeological remains of Ostia really began only in the early years of the present century. Spasmodic work upon the site was, it is true, undertaken during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but the earliest excavators, De Norogna, Volpato, La Piccola, Hamilton and Fagan, were little more than treasure-hunters, more intent upon gaining possession of some artistic masterpiece than upon elucidating the problems of the past. Even the distinguished archaeologists of the nineteenth century, Visconti, Lanciani and Gatti, worked at Ostia only spasmodically, and often failed to publish adequate accounts of their discoveries. Nor were serious attempts made to protect from the ravages ofrainand frost the buildings unearthed.

Archaeology sheds little light upon the origins of Verona, but ancient literary tradition assigns its foundation to the Rhaetians and Euganeans of northern Italy, while modern philologists do not hesitate to identify the name Verona as Gallic. Actually, there is no doubt that, as Pliny asserts, the town lay in Rhaetian land, for inscriptions mentioning Rhaetian deities and religious functionaries come from its neighbourhood. One may even guess at the site of the Rhaetian oppidum, for there is only one hill at Verona that it can have crowned, namely, the high spur east of the river, on which the Visconti later placed their castle of San Pietro. This overlooks the best point to span the turbulent Adige (Athesis) near Verona, and its position serves as a reminder that the Rhaetians were northern folk looking southwards and choosing to live in a hill-town, like their Gallic kinsmen. The disposition of Trento provides an almost exact parallel, further up the valley.

The building with which this study is concerned occupies the eastern half of Region ii, 2, just inside the city gate at Ostia. Two specific statements have been made concerning it, that it commenced as magazzini or horrea in the republican era, and that it was converted into baths in the late third century A.D.; these were the suggestions of the excavators, and have never yet been questioned. They are points of considerable importance, because this building would thus be the only example of republican horrea yet discovered in Ostia, and the conversion of horrea into baths or shops, which the theory implies, would be important for the economic history of Ostia, whether the reason for the change was the concentration of horrea elsewhere or merely the decline of the city. The second statement, too, would point to building activity in Ostia at a time when no other big building was being put up. This paper is an attempt to prove that at no time was the building used as horrea, and that the conversion to baths is to be placed not in the third, but in the late first, or very early second century A.D. Five main periods will be distinguished, of which the appended table gives a summary.