The recent publication by A. K. Bowman and J. D. Thomas of The Vindolanda Writing Tablets (Tabulae Vindolandenses II) (1994) provides another substantial corpus of Latin from a military outpost in the early Empire. The tablets take their place alongside such important military finds as the letters of Claudius Terentianus, which are roughly of the same date, the ostraca from Bu Njem, and the ostraca from Wâdi Fawâkhir, which again are dated to the first/second centuries.

The Latin of the Vindolanda tablets has recently been discussed by H. Petersmann as a specimen of ‘Vulgar Latin’, at a conference devoted to Vulgar and Late Latin. But while the influence of spoken varieties of the language can be detected in some misspellings, and in aspects of the syntax, morphology, and lexicon of the tablets, one must resist the temptation to find ‘Vulgar Latin’ (however one defines that problematical term: see below, IX.4) as the sole or principal element of the tablets. Many of the documents were not composed by free composition, but have a formulaic structure which made little or no demand on the linguistic competence of the writer (e.g. applications for leave (166–77), the daily reports of a type found at Bu Njem, which have certain distinctive features of syntax (155–6)). Accounts and lists (178–209) too may in their syntax and format, if not necessarily in their spellings, be heavily influenced by the conventions of their genre. Moreover record-keeping of this type usually falls to individuals with a degree of education and numeracy, and their writing may have little or nothing to reveal about the spoken language which they used or heard.

The importance of Lycophron's Alexandra for the history of the relations between Rome and the Hellenistic world hardly needs emphasis. The date of the poem depends on the interpretation of 11. 1229–30, where the Romans are described as γῆσ καὶ θαλάσσησ σκῆπτρα καὶ μοναρχίαν λαβόντεσ. It seems, therefore, necessary to inquire whether these lines imply a real world-power of the Romans, as many, following Niebuhr, have said, or whether they repeat a formula applied to several States with no pretence at literal truth. We have first to reconsider some other Hellenistic texts.

So far as extant writings go, Gaius is the first to assert that Rome was owner of the soil in the provinces. It seems, however, to be the general belief that the doctrine of state-ownership was invented long before the Empire. Mommsen attributed it to Gaius Gracchus, basing his view upon the Gracchan censoria locatio in Asia. Klingmüller, who has more recently examined the evidence, believes that the theory is even older; that in fact Rome had from the earliest times claimed ownership of conquered territory. Rostovtzeff, rejecting Klingmüller's arguments, asserts that Rome adopted the theory from the Hellenistic practices found embodied in the Hieronic law which Rome used for the collection of tribute in Sicily.

In cube tombs the mouldings which exhibit the greatest variation are the ‘lip’ and the ‘bell.’ It has been said above (J.R.S. XV, p. 22) that the ‘bell’ is the dynamic element of the upper part of the decorated façade.

Generally the depth of the ‘bell’ is equal to its height. When the former exceeds the latter, the crowning member naturally recedes, and the whole appearance of the upper decoration is less heavy. In the contrary case it becomes heavier. The large band is almost always somewhat high and is proportional to the height of the ‘bell.’

There is no more likely factor of dispute in a peace treaty than its definition of an inland frontier, even when the terms of the treaty are directly known: one has not to look far for instances where a topographic reference has proved to be equivocal. The terrain itself, of course, may be to blame. Only a continuous river line provides a clear demarcation of territory; a mountainous area or steppe or desert land, often by its nature sparsely populated, may lack the local place-names to give precision to a frontier. In the second century B.C. the Romans experienced this difficulty in North Africa and Asia Minor. But the modern scholar is even more at a loss, in two ways. First, his knowledge has geographical gaps, and the ancient names may have changed: one has only to think of the debt that we owe to the epigraphic work of men who have scoured Asia Minor for the evidence identifying ancient sites. Secondly, the literary texts have suffered corruption, in greater or less degree, during the course of their manuscript transmission. It is necessary to combine the study of topography, inscriptions, and text. Further—with reference to the present subject—the Romans imposed peace and what may be called a ‘protectorate’ in Asia Minor, however loosely.

The Composite capital was described by D. S. Robertson in his Handbook of Greek and Roman Architecture (2nd ed., 1945) as ‘essentially a mixture of four-sided Ionic and Corinthian, in varying proportions. The invention is probably Augustan, but the earliest strictly datable examples are perhaps to be found at Rome in the Colosseum, dedicated in A.D. 80, and in the slightly later Arch of Titus: both these have a double row of acanthus leaves which gives them a more Corinthian look’.

Since the Handbook was written, very little has been added to the history of the Composite capital. Robertson's explanation of the origin of the type, which seems to have been pointed out first by Patroni, is still the accepted one.

There is hardly any aspect of scholarly work and teaching in Roman Studies today not marked by digital technology. We assume that readers regularly access digital images of Roman material culture, use digitised corpora of primary sources in the original language or translation or consult online books and articles. The availability of digital resources on the internet is also a welcome enabler of ongoing public interest and even participation in the field. This overall state of affairs is generally a positive development, but both general trends and specific digital resources deserve a critical appraisal.

Eduard Norden's well known claim that pagans only read the New Testament when they wanted to refute it has never been seriously challenged. During the first four centuries of the Christian era the only pagans who can be shown to have had a thorough acquaintance with Christian writings and knowledge of Christian teachings are Celsus, Porphyry, and the Apostate Julian —all of whom wrote detailed refutations of Christianity.

Yet it has often been alleged that there are allusions to Christian doctrines and even echoes of New Testament phrases in the epigrams of Palladas of Alexandria. Now this, if true, would be of great interest and importance; for although it has, from time to time, been contended that Palladas was a Christian, there can in my opinion be little doubt that, like so many other schoolmasters in fourth and fifth century Egypt, he was a pagan. It is sufficient to refer to his caustic couplet on the monks, his numerous poems on Τύχη so characteristic of pagan writers of the day, and his ironic comments on the ‘conversion’ of the statues of the old Olympians, and on some Victories adapted to herald the victory of Christ (further evidence is adduced in § II).

This article examines the implications of Galen's newly-rediscovered Peri Alupias (On Consolation from Grief) for our understanding of the function and contents of public libraries in late second-century a.d. Rome. As a leading intellectual figure at Rome, Galen's detailed testimony substantially increases what we know of imperial public libraries in the city. In particular, the article considers Galen's description of his use of the Palatine libraries and a nearby storage warehouse, his testimony on the contents, organization, and cataloguing of the books he found there, and his use of provincial public libraries for the dissemination of his own works.

There are no direct visual representations of the city in Etruscan art, any more than there are in Attic art. Indeed the civic aspect of the Etruscan world is in general particularly elusive; even in inscriptions, references to political and social structures are rare and brief. In the case of Athens, the study of the imagery of Attic vase-painting as a unified and structured system of representations has revealed hitherto unsuspected significations. It is true that the basic places and occasions of social, institutional, political and religious life are not themselves portrayed; yet the social categories and essential functions of the city are displayed, through the medium of a kind of anthropological description.

In the first half of the eighteenth century, five pieces of Roman silver plate were discovered in south Northumberland under circumstances which suggest that they belonged to some service or hoard. The proof that they are thus connected together, though very strong, is not absolutely conclusive, and the service or hoard which (if the proof be accepted) they comprised is of no great magnificence; it cannot be set beside the 66 pieces found in 1830 at Bernay near Berthouville, in Normandy, or the 70 pieces found just outside Hildesheim, near Hannover, in 1868, or the 108 pieces dug up at Boscoreale, near Pompeii, in 1895, or the vessels weighing some 2,700 ounces discovered at Trier about 1628, or even the 39 pieces found at Chaourse, near Troyes, in 1883.

It is a commonplace that Britain is an island. The further truth, that it is an island which is very closely tied to the continent lying east of it, is a good deal less familiar. Geographical writers are apt, even for historical purposes, to emphasise instead those two features of the island which Mr. Mackinder in his admirable volume has called its insularity and its universality, its separation, that is, from Europe, and its central position in the world. I feel, however, that both students of ancient history, and also modern men at this particular moment, are more concerned with the peculiar relation of Britain to Europe. It is not the insularity of the island but its dependence on the continent which really matters. This dependence dates from days long before the first appearance of man; it is due, indeed, to the configuration of western Europe in remote geological periods. In those dateless days the seas which now divide our southern coast from France, and our eastern coast from the Low Countries and from Germany, were river valleys which took the drainage of a vast area extending from Wales and the Pennine hills on the north-west, to the Eifel, the Vosges and the Cevennes on the south-east. The rivers have long vanished, but their valleys, vast almost as the valley of a Missouri or a Mississippi, can still be traced in the configuration of the British and continental coasts. On each side of the sea the main rivers flow down to face each other, the main harbours of each land lie vis-à-vis and the natural entrances by which trader or soldier might wish to enter Britain open on to the main exits by which he might wish to start from the continent. Nor is it merely a matter of entrances or exits. That part of Britain which faces the continent is the lower-lying part of the great valley which I have mentioned. It is therefore fairly flat, and it offers no strategic obstacle to invaders. Its only features, its forests and its fens, are hardly large enough even to divert the march of armies and have been over-rated by writers like the late Dr. Guest and Mr. J. R. Green. The really difficult regions of Britain, the tangled uplands of Wales and west Yorkshire and the north, lie far away from the path of European aggressors. They might assist the rulers of Britain in checking an Irish invasion; they do not protect it from European influences. Britain is a land which was made to be invaded from the continent.

It is surprising that so little study should have been devoted to the navy of the later Empire. Since new information has now become available, it would seem a favourable opportunity to consider afresh the structure of the warships of the imperial fleets. The ancient sources may be divided into three main categories. The first is represented by that invaluable collection of tenth century naval handbooks which have recently been edited by M. Dain. Most important for our present purposes are the Περὶ θαλασσομαχίας of the Emperor Leo VI, which may probably be dated to 905–6, and the anonymous Παρὰ Βασιλείον Πατρικίου καὶ Παρακοιμωμένου (cited ‘Anon PBPP’), which M. Dain dates to the years immediately following the Cretan expedition of 960–1. This latter work was unknown to Torr when writing his Ancient Ships, and M. Dain may be said virtually to have rediscovered it. It is addressed to a certain Basil who was the natural son of Romanus Lecapenus. His bastardy stood him in good stead, and he survived the fall of his father and half-brothers. He seems to have attached himself to the party of Nicephorus Phocas, and organized a ‘fifth column’ which contributed in no small part to the overthrow of Joseph Bringas. His nefarious enterprises were finally ended by Basil II, who relegated him to a monastery. All the tenth-century naval handbooks reflect older traditions, and there seems to have been little essential difference between conditions prevailing under the Amorian and the Macedonian dynasties.

The reign of Hadrian marks the beginning of a new epoch in Roman administration and in the history of Roman Law. Hadrian's visit to Britain is immortalised by the Wall which he built from Tyne to Solway. Its construction is characteristic of the Emperor's willingness to renounce further conquests and even to abandon land which had been Roman. The Wall marked the limit of the districts which he was prepared to retain and administer. It followed, not the shortest and easiest route, but a line beyond the fortified area whence a look-out could be kept over the barbarians outside, and its object was the completion and definition of the fortified frontier region whereby it became easier to civilise and to pacify the country which lay to the south. Hadrian's aim was to bring order and peace to the land bounded by the new frontiers of the Roman world. Thus Hadrian may be sharply contrasted with his predecessor Trajan, the soldier on the throne, who owed his elevation to his successful wars in the Rhine region, and who as Emperor extended the frontiers of the Empire on the lower Danube and in the East. On Hadrian's accession the Empire was more powerful than ever before or afterwards, but its financial and military resources were strained to the utmost, and indeed frequently had been overstrained. The small peasant owners and small towns, sources of Roman culture and prosperity, had begun to suffer and disappear.

More than a local military interest attaches to an inscription found in the fort at Birdoswald during the excavations of 1929, which records the restoration of the praetorium, the principia and the bath-house under Aurelius Arpagius, vir perfectissimus praeses, in the period A.D. 297–305. It sheds a fresh ray of light on the evolution of Diocletian's provincial re-organization, while another ray comes from the East in the shape of a fragmentary inscription which Sir William Ramsay copied at Laodiceia on the Lycus in 1926 and has. kindly placed at my disposal. A companion stone from Hierapolis, on the other side of the valley, was published with a few comments by Prof. Judeich in Altertümer von Hierapolis, 1898, p. 87, no. 43, from which it is reproduced in IGRR, iv, no. 814, but its significance has not been perceived. The two inscriptions supplement each other in a happy manner. They clearly relate to the same governor, whose name was afterwards erased.

Among the most potent devices that Roman emperors had at their disposal to disavow autocratic aims and to put on display the consensus of ruler and ruled was the artful refusal of exceptional powers, or recusatio imperii. The practice had a long history in Rome prior to the reign of Augustus, but it was Augustus especially who, over the course of several decades, perfected the recusatio as a means of performing his hesitancy towards power. The poets of the Augustan period were similarly well practised in the art of refusal, writing dozens of poetic recusationes that purported to refuse offers urged upon them by their patrons, or by the greater expectations of the Augustan age, to take on projects. It is the purpose of this paper to put the one type of refusal alongside the other, in order to show to what extent the refusals of the Augustan poets are informed not just by aesthetic principles that derive, most obviously, from Callimachus, but by the many, high-profile acts of denial that were performed as political art by the emperor himself.

To historians of the ancient world, the closing of the Athenian Neoplatonic school by the emperor Justinian stands as one of the best known, and most debated, events of the later Roman Empire. To some, it is an event of little consequence with only an ephemeral impact upon subsequent developments. To others, it represents nothing less than the death of classical philosophy. Nevertheless, this modern scholarly interest belies ancient attitudes. The only direct statement about the end of Athenian philosophical teaching comes from the Chronicle of John Malalas, and all other ancient sources, including those that rely upon Malalas, are silent about the incident. This silence hints at a fact that this study will make clear. To contemporaries, the closing of the Athenian school was an unremarkable occurrence that represented neither a tyrannical use of imperial power nor an attack upon the valued cultural tradition of philosophical teaching. Like all else in the later Roman world, it occurred within the confines of a political system that, when working properly, matched imperial initiative to the specific needs of a province or city. As a result, the causes and significance of the closing of the Athenian school are best appreciated by understanding how the event developed out of its local political setting.

This conflict has for moderns a perennial interest, second only to that which is excited by the Peloponnesian war. The superior attractiveness of the struggle between the Greek cities, as felt by readers in general, is a supreme testimony to the genius of Thucydides; since in intrinsic importance for the world's history, his theme is far inferior to that which was handled by Polybius and by Livy. At the end of the Peloponnesian war few men can have foreseen the rise of the Macedonian kings, to which it contributed; when Second Punic war finished, it was obvious that the ultimate control by Rome of the whole area of ancient civilisation was assured. For those who care less for the form of historical records than for the value of events, the second and decisive long-drawn duel between Romans and Carthaginians must ever possess a fascination which belongs to few other periods in the history of mankind. There is a continual flow of publications dealing with its incidents and its manifold aspects.

Antiquarian research in the Renaissance period was unfortunately not always free from the reproach of deliberate falsification. It seems strange, at first sight, that the amount of genuine material discovered did not suffice to occupy the minds of archaeologists, and that they should have found it necessary to add to it by purely gratuitous inventions. But, given a certain knowledge of the subject, it was easy for a fertile brain and a facile pen to fabricate inscriptions, coins, plans of buildings, etc., whether in order to prove a favourite theory or to attain an ideal completeness which could not be attained by more prosaic, though more honest, means.