In the heart of the Sierra Morena, and at some twelve kilometres as the crow flies to the north-west of the modern town of La Carolina, in the province of Jaen, a silver-lead mine is at present being successfully worked by an English company. But the English company would not be working it to-day, nor would they be doing so successfully, were it not for the fact that the Romans had been there before them and that the Roman miners had left indications on the surface that pointed to extensive workings below, and had not exhausted the riches which kindly Nature had stored in the vein which they exploited. That the Romans must have worked the mine which is known in our times as “el Centenillo” during a long period is principally evidenced by the extent of their underground operations, which attained the astonishing depth of 210 metres (690 feet) from surface, while in length they exceeded a thousand metres (3,280 feet) and gradually narrowed down in depth until, for some reason that will never be known and which it would be imprudent to guess at, the “old men” abandoned the mine. They worked on the best part of the lode which, in all probability, resembled other lodes in the district in being richer in silver near the surface. The Romans must, however, have been principally working the mine for lead when they determined to leave it, as their lowest workings were in a highly mineralised zone which was very good for galena but relatively poor in silver; although, as a matter of fact, the mineral, even at the depth of 325 metres (1,066 feet) which has been attained to-day, carries more silver than the other silver-lead mines of the district. (The galena contains about 82 per cent, of lead and yields about 20 ounces of silver to the ton.)

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.

It is very remarkable, though quite intelligible that, while the province of Britain belonged for centuries to the Roman empire, its inhabitants took practically no share in the administration of the empire. No evidence suggests that a native of one of the municipalities, whether colonia or municipium, of Britain ever made his way into the Roman senate or the higher ranks of the equestrian order, and yet, if that had happened, inscriptions would exist among the monuments of Britain recording such honours won by Britons. The literary life of the empire was equally strange to the Britons; as Mr. J. R. Green says, “none of the poets or rhetoricians of the time is of British origin.” So too the lower military commands are never held by Britons. No cohort or ala is known to have been commanded by a man born in the island. Even the lower officers, the centurions, were rarely taken from the province, either for the legions quartered in the island or for those in other parts of the empire. Baehr and I had actually denied the existence of any legionary centurion of British origin, but Mr. Haverfield has pointed out to me a centurion of the XXIIth Legion stationed at Mainz, who appears to have been born in Lincoln (Lindum); and my attention has now been called to a legionary centurion whose British origin is not, indeed, absolutely certain, but who belongs in one way or another to Britain, and deserves to be introduced to the Britons of to-day.

While Gibbon's Roman History and his Memoirs are established as classic works in any canon of English or historical literature, the first of his three books, the youthful Essai sur l'Étude de la Littérature (1758–61), remains the victim of comparative neglect. There has been no edition of this work since 1814, but we can ill afford to ignore a text which is at once the first fruit of Gibbon's intellectual ‘creation’ at Lausanne in the 1750s, and also serves as an indispensable general and methodological introduction to his History. One symptom of our casual attitude lies in the fact that, although the Essai is the only one of Gibbon's works which can be traced from its manuscript conception through to final publication, no attempt has been made to explore his compositional and intellectual processes by this route. Furthermore, in an age where every scrap of new text by the great historian has become a precious relic worthy of immediate publication, we have overlooked thereby the last really significant cache of his unpublished writing. Given its subject matter, one may say that the omission is not merely significant but spectacular. In a series of cancelled passages from the Essai's first draft of 1758, Gibbon dealt with topics such as the need for philosophic detachment, rather than sentimental alignment, in discussing Roman history; the role of ‘general’ or profound causes in explaining Rome's rise and fall; and the significance of Pagan corruption for the rise of Christianity.

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.

It is to be feared that the greater part of the Histories of Tacitus is lost beyond recall: Latin literature appears but rarely among the treasures of the sands of Egypt. The consequent gap in our knowledge is very imperfectly filled by the records that do remain. It is certain that many events of importance have been wholly passed over in them, while many others are referred to in such an incidental and cursory way that varying interpretations seem possible, and conjecture becomes permissible and even necessary.

We know in general that Vespasian was an energetic reformer and reorganiser: it may be possible, even with our fragmentary evidence, to trace his reorganisation of the two wealthiest provinces, Asia and Africa, somewhat more fully than has hitherto been done. With regard to Asia, the conjecture seems justifiable that Eprius Marcellus was Vespasian's agent for reform, and that his prolonged tenure of the proconsulship of Asia is to be so explained. And in Africa, there may be some reason for supposing that Q. Vibius Crispus performed a similar service, and that his proconsulship there was similarly extended.

In his collection of passages περὶ ἀνδρείας Stobaeus (Ecl. 3, 7, 12) quotes a poem in five Sapphic stanzas by Melinno and, in introducing it with the words Μελινοῦς Λεσβίας ἰςε ῥώμην, blunders. The poem, as Grotius saw long ago, is addressed not ἰςε ῥώμην, to physical strength, but ἰςε ῥώμην, to Rome, and has in fact nothing to do with ἀνδρεία. Nor is there any good reason to think that the authoress came from Lesbos.