A. Nature of the Roman Administration: 25 B.C. to A.D. 65—The province Galatia is a singularly obscure subject. Marquardt's chapter contains little information, because little was known; but what he states is correct, and he makes few, if any, unfounded or dangerous assertions. He knows and mentions the senatorial governor (praetorius leg. Aug. pr. pr.), the equestrian proc. Galatiae, and about the name of the province he expresses no hesitation: as a province of the Empire it was simply Galatia. Inherited by Augustus from Amyntas, the last king, it bore as the realm of a king the unifying name Galatia; no other name was possible, and this name was continued by the policy of Augustus. A friend points out to me that the idea of inheritance of the realm Galatia was only a sort of political or legal fiction; and that the relation of the Emperor to such client-kings as Amyntas was one of absolute power on his side and of absolute servitude on the other. That is true. Augustus bestowed authority and title on those pseudo-kings; he could at any moment resume what he had bestowed; and on the death of any of them the complete and absolute authority reverted to him. The question, however, is under what forms Augustus chose to clothe his absolute lordship. He was a master of the art of disguising hard unlimited despotism under legal or religious forms, and in this case the form was that of Will or Testament, as Strabo mentions. Augustus claimed to have inherited the realm of Amyntas in virtue of the latter's Will, and acted, after the latter's death, 25 B.C., as his heir (κληρονόος, heres). The Emperor must have accepted the inheritance formally within the legal interval, and treated his inheritance according to law as including the debts as well as the property of the deceased. It was not hereditas sine sacris. Augustus was bound to pay all obligations; and he paid in full.

The tables which follow need but a word or two of explanation. They are an attempt to show in a graphic way the extent of our knowledge concerning certain phases of the commercial activity of Egypt during the Roman and Byzantine periods, 30 B.C. to A.D. 640.

The series of Roman inscriptions with which the present paper is concerned belongs to a familiar and extensive class, examples of which will be found in any handbook of epigraphy—stones that were erected to commemorate the completion of some more or less important undertaking of a public character. But a peculiar, if not a unique, interest has always attached to this particular group because of its intimate association with one of the great historical monuments of the Empire. Ever since the dawn of the seventeenth century, when the foundations of our knowledge of Roman Britain were being laid, the fact of this association and its broad significance have been universally recognized.

Some fifty miles north-east of Jerusalem, on the rugged plateau between the Jordan and the desert to the east, lies a ruined city whose striking remains have attracted the interest of hardy travellers ever since the beginning of the last century—Jerash, the ancient Gerasa, in Transjordania. This district was the Decapolis of the Romans, though its cities numbered more than ten. Since that time war and the centuries have obliterated all trace of many of them; but Jerash, with its temples and theatres, its paved and colonnaded market and streets, its almost intact walls and its many Christian churches, is still beautiful and imposing. None the less, it is only very recently that its full significance has begun to be realised. Heretofore it has been usual to assume that Jerash attained prosperity and importance only under the Antonines, beginning with Trajan's annexation of Arabia in A.D. 105–6, and his assignment of Jerash to that province. This opinion was supported by the fact that the inscriptions supply dates of the second century or later for most of the public buildings; but a reconsideration of the archaeological and epigraphic evidence shows that the present plan of the city and the present form of the public buildings are due merely to alteration and rebuilding under the Antonines. From the materials which we now have it is possible to reconstruct a good picture of the flourishing and active city of the first century—further, to show that this prosperity was itself not new, but firmly based on a long and continuous past.

Two sharply contrasted views are held about the duration of Roman government in Britain and in the West generally. The traditional view, which I believe to be substantially correct, dates the abandonment of Britain early in the fifth century. The late Professor Bury put forward in 1920 a theory that the occupation was maintained down to A.D. 438. The theory was based primarily on a later dating of the Notitia Dignitatum, and on a mistaken estimate of the numismatic evidence.

When we examine recent discussions about this fragment from the first book of the Bellum Poenicum (19 Morel, 44–6 Warmington, 7 Marmorale), we find an agreement such as otherwise is rare in classical studies. In many countries many scholars, old and young, have adopted Hermann Fränkel's view (Hermes LXX, 1935, 59 ff.) that the passage was inspired by certain sculptures which Naevius had seen at the temple of Zeus Olympios at Acragas. But whereas Fränkel himself drew only cautious conclusions (he assigned the fragment to the story of Aeneas and considered more than one possible way in which it might be connected with that story), several among his followers jumped to the history of the year 262 B.C. and used the fragment as a cornerstone for the reconstruction of the main narrative of the Bellum Poenicum.