The Exhibition of 1938, held in honour of the bimillenary of the birth of Augustus (‘Mostra Augustea della Romanità’), magnificent though it was, represented only one phase in a continuous scheme for displaying by means of monuments the full extent of the Roman dominion—its origin, growth, development and the abiding effect of its culture on the modern world. Hardly has it closed but a grandiose scheme is shaping rapidly for reconstructing it on a vast and permanent basis. This new ‘Mostra’ will form part of the International Exhibition of the year 1942— the ‘E. 42’, as it is already commonly called—a large model of which has now been set up in a pavilion outside the Exhibition grounds together with numerous plans and views of details.

When, before the consular elections in 56 B.C., the Senate, in obedience to the terms of the lex Sempronia, was choosing the provinces for the consuls of the following year, their choice lay between four possibilities: Cisalpine Gaul, held by Caesar, Transalpine Gaul, also held by Caesar, Syria, held by A. Gabinius, and Macedonia, held by L. Calpurnius Piso. Cicero urged that neither of the Gauls should be made a consular province. He argued, in general, that it would be wrong to disturb Caesar before his work in Gaul was finished, and then he spoke against those who wished to select not both, but one of, the Gauls. He considers the case of each of the two Gauls separately.

In western Cyprus the chief line of communication from the mountainous nature of the country has always been coastal. We may recognise three systems: the modern motor highway, the Turkish road, the Roman road. Maps published in 1885 from the excellent survey of the late Lord Kitchener are the only reputable authority for the second of these. From it the first diverges considerably, in the main through an exaggerated fondness for easy gradients (fig 10). That the Roman road and the Turkish were virtually identical is demonstrated by the evidence of certain milestones hitherto unpublished.

Mr. V. E. Nash-Williams reports discoveries on three sites. (1) At Llantwit Major, Glamorganshire, where a house was partially excavated in 1888, trial cuttings showed that the structural remains covered an area of about 2 acres, enclosing roughly a square of about 300 ft., on the N, S, and W sides of which were the main buildings with detached outbuildings on the E side. In its final stage the plan was of winged-corridor type with main range on the W and others to the N and S, the latter possibly additional; it was fronted by an internal colonnade of imported freestone and faced on to a cobbled courtyard. A subsidiary range had been tacked on at right angles to the N wing. The walls of local limestone and sandstone remained up to 6 ft. and were decorated with coloured plaster; the floors were mostly of opus signinum. A hypocaust or furnace-chamber in the western or main range, after long use, had been filled in with refuse and a small iron-smelting furnace had been built over it. Two rooms in the N wing, opened in 1888, were cleared ; much of the geometric pavement survived. Three or four more skeletons were found ; they had been buried in rough cists sunk into the pavement or cut through the walls, and therefore at a period when the house was no longer in use. A massively constructed outbuilding, measuring 80 by 26 ft., stood just within the remains of a ditch system. (2) At Caerleon a trench was cut on the SW side of White Hart Lane in the praetentura of Isca abutting on the SE defences. It revealed the primary clay rampart, 15 ft. wide and 6 ft. high, with the inner face of the latest stone rampart outside it ; inside the rampart, and between it and the rampart roadway, a stone building had been inserted (cf. JRS xix, 182). The roadway was 20 ft. wide and heavily metalled and was bordered by the stone culvert of the main drainage-system. On the inner side of the roadway the walls and floor of a stone building, probably a barrack-block, were found.

Professor Norman Baynes, in opening the discussion, said that he proposed to consider the subject in relation only to those at school who were studying the Classics. The teacher must, he thought, abandon two inherited views: that history could be successfully taught sine ira et studio and that it was no function of the teacher to present to students his own interpretation of the past. The ideal of impartiality in history teaching is illusory: God alone could present the history of man ‘as it actually happened’. All teaching or writing of human history is an interpretation of the facts, and that must be a reflection of personality. Interest and vital reaction in the taught can be awakened only through the personal interest and enthusiasm of the teacher. Thus there can never be finality in the presentation of history: every age must recreate its own interpretation of the past.