There has been general agreement both in ancient and in modern times that Hannibal's hope of final victory rested mainly on the chance of arousing widespread disaffection to the cause of Rome among the populations of Italy. It was natural that he should overrate this prospect. He knew that many of the nations which had been welded into a great confederacy under Roman leadership had fought stoutly for their independence and retained vivid memories of the not far distant contest. I propose to study the extent to which the cities and peoples of Italy gave aid to the invader, and to show how the relations of the revolting Italians with the predominant power were changed thereby. Ancient authors made extravagant statements about Hannibal's success in sowing strife between Rome and her allies. In this respect there is nothing to choose between Polybius and Livy. They themselves enable us in large measure to detect the great insecurity of their hasty generalisations. Yet modern writers often echo the errors and fail to supply, or only inadequately give, the corrections. Solely by a thorough and somewhat tedious scrutiny of details can the untrustworthiness of the large general assertions be fully exhibited. The process must resemble somewhat that of cross-examination in a court of law, whereby unsound evidence is gradually broken down. I have been induced to undertake the task by failure to find elsewhere any treatment of the subject which makes an approach to completeness.

The intention of this survey, as of its predecessors, is to assess the contribution to Roman studies of recent progress in epigraphy. Its aim is to draw attention to the more important newly-published inscriptions, to known or familiar texts whose significance has been reinterpreted, to the progress of publishing projects, and to a selection of recent work based upon epigraphic sources. It is mainly, but not exclusively, concerned with the implications of new work for Roman history and for that reason does not consider a number of otherwise interesting Hellenistic texts. It hardly needs to be said that there has been no publication remotely as significant as the SC de Cn. Pisone patre, which was reported in the previous survey, and to which we devote some further space here. But there are plenty of new or revised texts of sufficient interest: an honorific decree from Pergamon for a member of the city élite who clearly played a key part in the negotiations with the Romans at the time of the war with Aristonicus; the uncle of Cicero initiated into the Samothracian mysteries in 100B.C.; Octavian honoured at Klaros on account of his ‘quasi-divine exploits’; the Tessera Paemeiobrigensis or aes Bergidense, which appears to be an edict by Augustus of 15 B.C. alluding to a hitherto unknown Spanish province of this period — ‘Transduria(na)’; a startling re-interpretation of the significance of the ‘Tiberiéum’ inscription set up by Pontius Pilate at Caesarea Maritima; the splendid replacement for Henzen's Acta Arvalium; the foundation inscription of Sarmizegetusa; one of the very earliest references to waterwheels, called hydromēchanai (a word unknown to LSJ), in a long-known second-century A.D. text from Macedonia, where they were evidently employed on a large scale to produce income for the city; the transport by ‘barbarians’ of a Roman votive inscription, besides more obviously valuable booty, more than 200 km from the Roman frontier into what is now the Ukraine; and a re-reading suggesting that the well-known ‘milestone’ from Phoenicia honouring Julian as templorum restaurator was indeed, as Bowersock argued, erected immediately before the Persian expedition.

Romanization in the province of Asia did not manifest itself in linguistic or cultural changes, but is very visible in a trend towards corporate organization. In the cities of western and southern Phrygia, professional associations developed that were able to gain a prominent position alongside the civic institutions. It is possible to relate this process to incentives provided by Roman law. In the villages surrounding these cities, and especially in the rural areas of northern and eastern Phrygia, the conditions were different, but there are several indications that a new preference for formal organization and its epigraphic representation developed here as well.

This article investigates the use, in Pliny's official writings of imperial praise, of the theme of ‘divine comedy’ – the idea that everything is for the best in the imperial world under the ideal emperor. An examination of this prominent theme can help us understand how Pliny handled the inevitable tensions in an imperial ideology which was grounded in the opposing figures of the ‘good’ emperor who deserved deification, and the ‘bad’ emperor who deserved tyrannicide.

This paper re-examines the role of ‘client kings’ in the Roman east in the early Principate. Contrary to previous emphasis on continuity with the republican past, it proposes that Octavian-Augustus enacted a set of measures that fundamentally changed the relations of certain eastern monarchs with the imperial centre. These ‘provincial monarchs’ became a new elite of Roman administrators, personally loyal to the domus Augusta and distinct from ‘client kings’ earlier and elsewhere. This Augustan systemisation complemented the provincial division of 27 b.c.e., creating a ‘divide and rule’ dynamic between provincial monarchs and imperial legates which was expedient to the Julio-Claudians. This model is then used to challenge the view that the Flavians systematically ‘provincialised’ the east as part of a reorganisation of the frontier. It raises the alternative possibility that provincial monarchy gradually died out, following the Flavians’ realisation that its continued maintenance was detrimental to their public image in Rome.

The Roman remains at Bath, dominated by the stately thermal establishment, have always been associated in geography and in archaeology with the goddess Sulis-Minerva. The famous pediment of her temple, found when the eighteenth-century Pump Room was built, has long been accounted one of the most remarkable manifestations of Romano-British art; its richly carved reliefs have always invited restoration; and they at once received it, somewhat sketchily from Englefield and most ingeniously from Samuel Lysons in 1802 (pl. XXIII). So convincing, indeed, was the main outline of Lyson's reconstruction that it held the field and remained the basis of all subsequent proposals, including that so carefully elaborated by the late A. J. Taylor. The discovery of the stones carried with it the site of the temple; for the blocks cannot have fallen far. It lay below the Pump Room, on the north side of the sacred pool whose copious hot springs were enclosed by the Romans in an irregular polygonal basin. The sanctity of the spring, which seems only later to have been roofed, is proved by the many coins and the leaden tablet inscribed with a curse which it contained, but, unlike many sacred pools, for example, that of Nemausus at Nîmes, it was not itself frequented by bathers. It could be viewed from the Baths through three great open windows on its south side; and these were of some architectural pretensions, the central member having a true arch, and the flanking pair (of which one survives (pl. XXIV, 2)) joggled flat arches, while the corridor within was furnished, as was no other part of the Baths, with fluted pilasters (pl. XXIV, 1).

In this article we present a new study of the Arch of Janus, analysing previously unpublished aspects of its architecture and chronology based on new data obtained from a recent research project. This study provides the first complete planimetric view of the monument, together with a stratigraphic reading of the structure, evaluating the different elements of spolia that were re-used in its construction. Also, the discovery of a new inscription that was re-used in building the arch finally confirms that it dates from the period of Constantius II (a.d. 357). Finally, we present a proposal for the reconstruction of the dedicatory inscription of the arch, preserved in the nearby church of San Giorgio al Velabro.

Since Mommsen, it has been a tenet of Roman history that Augustus transformed the ‘senatorial order’ into a hereditary class, which encompassed senators, their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren in the male line. This paper shows that the idea of a hereditary ordo senatorius is a myth without foundation in the evidence. Augustus and his successors conferred new rights and duties upon relatives of senators, but did not change their formal rank. Moreover, the new regulations applied not to three generations of descendants, but only to persons who stood under a senator's patria potestas during his lifetime. Emperors protected the honour and property of these filii familias of senators, in order to incentivise them to participate in politics and invest their wealth into munificence. The Supplementary Material available online gives all known early imperial holders of the title clarissimus vir in the province of Africa (Supplementary Appendix 1), all known early imperial clarissimi iuuenes (Supplementary Appendix 2) and all known early imperial clarissimi pueri (Supplementary Appendix 3).

In a paper published in the 1917 volume of this Journal, pp. 59 ff., I attempted to make available for the general student the results of some recent research on coins. The present paper is designed to continue the task thus begun. It follows the same plan and is subject to the same restrictions. General principles are stressed, while for details reference is made to the special publications noted on pp. 263, 264. Only the imperial issues, not the purely local or provincial, are considered.