The victories that followed Claudius' invasion of Britain in A.D. 43 were celebrated by a lavish and extensive triumph in Rome in the following year. Moreover, as a more permanent and visible reminder of the emperor's successes, two victory arches, one in Gesoriacum (Boulogne), his embarkation point, and the other in Rome, were decreed by the Senate. No trace of the Boulogne structure has survived; the Roman arch, on the other hand, is one of the most intriguing monuments of the Julio-Claudian period, presenting scholars with a series of epigraphic and architectural problems. The purpose of this paper is primarily to attempt to throw some light on the epigraphic issue, but since, as will become clear, any discussion of the arch's inscriptions must take place within the context of its architecture and decoration, the latter will be considered first.

‘To be shaved by a barber means good all round, for — so to speak — from the act of being shaved (karēnai) proceeds that of being gladdened (charēnai), just one letter being substituted for another. … ‘By a barber’ is stipulated, because, if one shaves oneself and is not a barber, then that signifies bereavement or a sudden disaster. … Cutting one's own nails signifies paying one's debts, if one is a debtor. … ’

No Roman saddle survives complete. For its reconstruction we are therefore reduced to depictions or models of saddled horses and to making sense out of what archaeological evidence remains. Since Groenman-van Waateringe's study of 1967, it is clear that the archaeological evidence for saddles consists of the leather outer casing and metal horn stiffeners: neither of them, however, have ever been found in association.

‘The principal periods in the history of the monument were firmly fixed and the complicated relationship between its component parts was securely defined’. With these words Sir Ian Richmond in 1950 reviewed more than a decade's work on Hadrian's Wall. Ten years before he had written: ‘As the great scheme proceeded, modifications were introduced, some structural, of interest only in defining the order of progress, others amounting to a thorough revision of the design. The most important of the latter was the construction of forts on the Wall itself. His analysis of ‘the fort - decision’ remains unchallenged, but in his 1950 paper Richmond reported on details of the structure of the Wall: in particular those observed during the consolidation of Turret 26b and the relationship between the Narrow and Broad Walls. In conclusion he wrote: ‘Plainly these are minor puzzles beyond immediate solution here, important for those who would follow centuriae at work, yet not obscuring a vision of the main intention’.

In recent years good relations between the Norfolk Archaeological Unit, the Norfolk Museums Service and the general public have resulted in a great increase in reported, provenanced, archaeological finds. A formidable quantity of Roman coins, in particular, has regularly been submitted for recording and study. Although this information is systematically entered onto the county Sites and Monuments Record, the authors considered a synthesis of the numismatic data to be a potentially valuable project, which could provide evidence for the nature of occupation in different parts of the county at specific times. This survey is the result of an attempt to interpret the proliferating quantity of numismatic data becoming available from the county as a whole.

In January 1985 the Glamorgan-Gwent Archaeological Trust was alerted through its Planning Control system to the fact that planning permission was being sought for the erection of infill housing in the garden of ‘Sandygate’, Cold Bath Road, Caerleon SS 337907 (FIG. I). The area formed part of Barrack Blocks IX and X in the Prysg series and had been descfteduled after Nash-Williams's excavations in the 1920s. However, as it appeared that these excavations had left much of the archaeology intact, the Trust recommended to Newport Borough Council that planning permission be refused on archaeological grounds. At the same time, the possibility of rescheduling the area was explored with Cadw: Welsh Historic Monuments; but because of the small size of the area involved rescheduling proved to be impossible. This left the fate of the area in the hands of the Borough Council, and whilst the Planning Committee was not prepared to refuse permission, it agreed to write a condition of excavation into the planning consent. No money was forthcoming to finance the work, but as a Manpower Services Commission Community Programme scheme was already being operated by the Trust to carry out rescue excavations in Caerleon, personnel from this scheme were able to carry out the necessary work.

In his fair and constructive review of The Imperial Cult in the Latin West, Vol. i (1987), S.R.F. Price is in general agreement with the proposed development of provincial cults in the Latin West – with one exception. He has misgivings about the thesis that the temple at Colchester was only to Divus Claudius and at no stage to Claudius in his lifetime. Two points are raised. The first concerns the text of Seneca, Apocolocyntosis vm. 3: ‘deus fieri vult: parum est quod templum in Britannia habet, quod <hunc> nunc barbari colunt et utdeum orant Price writes, The dramatic context of this remark, by Jupiter, is before the debate in the Olympian senate about the admission of the late Claudius. As the Olympian debate is a parody of the debate in the Roman senate, it is implausible to argue that the Apocolocyntosis passage could refer to a temple authorized by the senate after Claudius' death.'

In the course of the excavations at the legionary base of Haltern earlier this century, a lead lid some 10.5 cm in diameter was found near to the principia. The lid (PL. XIII) is inscribed EX RADICE BRITANICA (sic).

Seemingly dating some thirty to forty years before the conquest of Britain, this inscription is intriguing. Since the first publication of the lid in 1928 the contents of the vessel to which it belonged have been identified with the herba Britannica which Pliny the Elder described in the following terms:

‘Nor is it beasts alone that are guilty of causing injury; at times waters and regions do the same. When Germanicus Caesar had moved forward his camp across the Rhine, in a maritime district of Germany there was only one source of fresh water. To drink it caused within two years the teeth to fall out and the use of the knee-joints to fail. Physicians used to call these maladies stomaca and scelotyrbe. A remedy was found in the plant called britannica, which is good not only for the sinews and for diseases of the mouth, but also for the relief of quinsy and snake-bite. It has dark, rather long leaves, and a dark root. Its juice is extracted even from the root (sucus eius exprimitur et e radice). The blossom is called vibones; gathered before thunder is heard, and swallowed, it keeps away the fear of quinsy for a whole year. It was pointed out to our men by the Frisians, at that time a loyal tribe, in whose territory our camp lay. Why the plant was so called I greatly wonder,unless perhaps, living on the shore of the British ocean, they have so named the britannica because it is, as it were, a near neighbour of Britain. It is certain that the plant was not named because it grew abundantly in that island: Britain was at that time an independent state.’

In an article published in Britannia in 1980, Reinhard Stupperich argued for the dominance of classical iconography in the mosaic pavements of fourth-century Britain and showed how a number of pavements had previously been misinterpreted. Among the scenes which he examined, at least three which had appeared anomalous to earlier interpreters were shown to fit more or less within standard iconographic formulae: a scene from East Coker showing Dionysus and Ariadne, and panels from Keynsham representing Athena playing the flutes and Achilles discovered on Skyros. The difficulties which they had caused were due to lack of skill or understanding on the part of the craftsman who produced them, to the imperfect state of their preservation, or (where destroyed) to the unreliability of the modern draftsman to whose record we owe our knowledge of them.

During 1983, in advance of redevelopment, archaeologists from the Museum of London's Department of Greater London Archaeology investigated the site once occupied by the palace of the medieval Bishops of Winchester, 250 metres west of the southern end of London Bridge. The excavations revealed a series of Roman buildings dating from the first to the fourth centuries a.d., one of which yielded the painted wall-plaster which forms the subject of the present article.

During the reign of Augustus, a high proportion of the inscriptions which mention that name give it in full Augustus, Augusti, Augusto and so on (e.g. ILS 82-3, 85-96, 98-100, 102-5 etc.). But in a few instances, stone-cutters began to use Aug. as a convenient abbreviation for the word, in any of its cases (e.g. ILS 97, 101, 106 etc.). Before long, as imperial titles become longer, the form Aug. was more and more commonly used.

From 1824–41 thousands of Roman coins were recovered from the Thames during the rebuilding of London Bridge and during subsequent dredging operations to deepen the river channel and remove submerged remains of the previous bridge. The coins covered a wide date range, from the reign of Augustus to that of Honorius. It is generally accepted that the great majority were probably votive offerings which had been tossed into the river from a Roman bridge on much the same alignment as its medieval successor.

In the spring of 1850, a remarkably well-preserved male bog-body was found on Grewelthorpe Moor, near Ripon, North Yorkshire. The body was clad in brightly-coloured woollen garments and a pair of leather ‘sandals’, the style of which induced two late nineteenth-century writers to conclude that it was that of an ‘ancient Roman’ (see below). More recently, Tinsley recognized the importance of this find and suggested that the body may have been a ‘Roman soldier’. In the absence of adequate supporting evidence, one of the present authors (J.P.W.) previously expressed skepticism concerning the body's supposed Roman date. Two woollen fragments which survive in the Yorkshire Museum in themselves provide insufficient dating evidence. Fortunately, the surviving shoe-sole is of a distinctive Roman-British regional type. This article presents the dating evidence, reappraises the clothing in the light of its confirmed Romano-British origin, and re-assesses the circumstances behind the death in the light of comparable finds.