The earliest surviving account of Constantine's last days, April to May 337, was written by Eusebius of Caesarea as instant history, since Eusebius died in May 338 or 339. Parts of this concluding section of the Vita Constantini, for example the paragraphs about the first Christian emperor's baptism and mausoleum, have attracted scholarly curiosity, others less so. Here I would like to investigate systematically, for the first time, the versions of Constantine's abortive Iranian campaign provided by Eusebius and others, and then move on to consider the origins of a famous account of Constantine's baptism. Both exercises will show how oppositional versions of Constantine's last days influenced the formation of conventionally accepted narratives—or, more specifically, how polytheist historiography helped to mould the Nicaean or ‘orthodox’ perspective, parts of which have prevailed to the present day. Discussion of the fictional accounts of Constantine's baptism by ‘Eusebius of Rome’ and Silvester of Rome will also provide an opportunity to underline the truth of Michel van Esbroeck's observation that ‘the historical aspect of propaganda literature eludes positivist history, of which it is, even so, a part’.

‘While Trajan was tarrying in Antioch’—it was in the winter of A.D. 115, after the conquest of Armenia and the annexation of Mesopotamia, before setting out for the Tigris, Ctesiphon and the Persian Gulf—‘a terrible earthquake occurred; many cities suffered injury, but Antioch was the most unfortunate of all’.

Philippus Arabs ruled the Roman world for five years, A.D. 244 to 249. It is an obscure reign, even for the period: the Augustan History offers no life of Philip, the other literary sources are scanty and dubious. The political historian might turn, like Gibbon, to general criteria—‘the knowledge of human nature, and of the sure operation of its fierce and unrestrained passions’. For economics and administration nothing will serve but more evidence. It seems worthwhile, therefore, to assemble the papyrus documents which reflect Philip's régime in Egypt; and to ask whether any coherent picture emerges from them.

This enterprise has its own dangers. The documents from Egypt represent chance finds, on a few sites, in the remoter half of the country. They are oppressively numerous, yet negligible in comparison with the bulk now lost. They allow vivid glimpses of administration at work, but for the most part at the lower levels and in individual cases. Chance survival, local particularism and official incompetence play a large part.

In any discussion of the relationship between Fiscus and Patrimonium, the inscription from Saepinum dealing with incidents on the callis or tratturo from the Abruzzi to the Tavoliere which passed through the town must play a part. The inscription comprises three documents: a report from the Imperial freedman Septimianus to his superior, the freedman a rationibus Cosmus, on the maltreatment alleged by the conductores gregum oviaricorum in the region of Saepinum and Bovianum, at the hands of local magistrates and stationarii; a request from the a rationibus to the Praetorian Prefects; and a warning letter from these to the magistrates of Saepinum, placed at the head of the dossier.

The standard interpretation of the Saepinum inscription explains the place which it holds in discussions of the Patrimonium; for let us suppose that the conductores gregum oviaricorum are the contractors for the Imperial flocks, the oves dominicae, and that the intervention of Cosmus is justified on the basis of his position, the flocks being sub cura mea; it would follow that at any rate under Marcus (the affair belongs to the years 169–72), the possessions of the Emperor were in the hands of the a rationibus and hence of the Fiscus.

The excavation of Lepcis Magna and of Sabratha has yielded a number of inscriptions that document the supply and use of marble for architectural purposes under the Roman Empire. The texts of these inscriptions will appear shortly in the collection, ‘Inscriptions of Roman Tripolitania,’ which is now being prepared by Miss J. M. Reynolds and the writer for publication by the British School at Rome (referred to hereafter as IRT). Few of them have been previously published, and of none has the significance been discussed. They have, however, an important bearing both on the architectural and on the economic history of their times; and the pages that follow are an attempt to indicate something of their character and significance, and to suggest further useful lines of inquiry.

One of the most revealing single items of evidence on the political character of the Empire is an anecdote told by Dio about Hadrian; a woman approached the Emperor on a journey and demanded his attention; Hadrian said he had no time and moved on—καὶ μὴ βασίλευε shouted the woman after him, ‘then stop being Emperor’. The point is clear; the ideology—and the practice—of the Empire was that the Emperor was personally accessible to his subjects in a way which now seems incredible, and which most books on the Empire tend to ignore, or regard as trivial. One may recall, for instance, Maecenas struggling to get through the crowd surrounding Augustus as he gave judgement, the advocati trying to hold Claudius by physical force on the tribunal to hear their pleas, or the story of how a muleteer of Vespasian was bribed to stop and shoe a mule, giving time for a litigator to approach.

This paper is a study of the way Cicero wrote philosophy. Or rather a way: as one would expect of an author of his ambition and versatility, Cicero produced different sorts of philosophical writing in different works. What I am considering here, accordingly, is the way Cicero wrote philosophy in one particular treatise, de Divinatione. Section I examines the place of Div. in his philosophical oeuvre, and asks why he should have decided to devote a treatise to the topic. It suggests inter alia that he was attracted by the special opportunities for philosophical rhetoric which it afforded him. Section II explores the two distinctive styles of rhetoric in Div., and proposes that they are best seen as a particular kind of marriage of the Greek and the Roman. Section III discusses the claim that Div. is to be read as a tract against superstition, and opposes to it a conception of the work—at once more straightforward and more nuanced—as an exercise in the opposition of arguments. It focuses particularly on the avowedly Socratic dimension of Div. Section IV supports the same view of the dialogue by emphasizing the philosophical weight of the arguments for as well as against divination.

In A.D. 96 Nerva courted popularity in Rome for his new regime by changing the way in which the special tax on Jews payable to the fiscus Judaicus was exacted. The reform was widely advertised by the issue of coins, under the auspices of the senate, with the proclamation ‘fisci Judaici calumnia sublata’. Precisely how Nerva removed the calumnia no source states, but it can be surmised. The tax did not cease to be collected, for its imposition was still in operation in the time of Origen and possibly down to the fourth century A.D. It is a reasonable hypothesis that Nerva's intention was to demonstrate publicly his opposition to the way in which his hated predecessor, Domitian, had levied the tax, and to procure release for those described by Suetonius (Dom. 12. 2) as particular victims of Domitian's tendency to exact the tax ‘acerbissime’. According to Suetonius, these unfortunates were those who either ‘inprofessi’ lived a ‘iudaicam vitam’ or ‘origine dissimulata’ refused to pay the tax: the people thus trapped by Domitian and, if the hypothesis is correct, exempted by Nerva were those who failed to admit openly to their Jewish practices and/or those who hid their origins (presumably as Jews). I shall argue in this paper that by removing such people from the list of those liable to the Jewish tax, Nerva may unwittingly have taken a significant step towards the treatment of Jews in late antiquity more as a religion than as a nation.

I. No Roman definition of nobilis or novus homo exists. Mommsen held that the nobiles comprised:

(a) all patricians;

(b) those descended from patricians who had effected a transitio ad plebem;

(c) those descended from plebeians who had held curule offices, viz. the offices of dictator, magister equitum, censor, consul, praetor, curule aedile. They were thus identical with the persons who had the ius imaginum. (On this footing Mommsen ought to have included plebeian aediles, at least for the post-Sullan era.) All others, including those who were the first of their lines to hold curule office, were novi. This theory has been generally abandoned in favour of Gelzer's; Afzelius argued that it corresponded to the conception of nobility in the second century, but not to that prevalent in Cicero's time. Yet it may after all be right.

Women are ‘perceived’. We speak often not just of ‘women’, but of ‘images’, ‘representations’, ‘reflections’ of women. Woman perceived is woman as art-object; and paradigmatic of this phenomenon is the myth of Pygmalion.

This article will consider Ovid's version of the myth, the story of the artist who loved his own creation. I shall suggest that the story reflects on the eroto-artistic relationship between the poet and his puella explored in Latin love elegy. The Metamorphoses myth of the art-object which becomes a love-object mirrors the elegiac myth of love-object as art-object. The elegists represent the puella as both art and flesh. Pygmalion deconstructs the erotic realism of elegy and by its frankness about the power of the male artist discloses elegy's operations. It tells us how to read the puella — as a work of art; and the lover — as an artist obsessed with his own creation. Pygmalion reflects and exposes the self-absorption of elegy, the heroization of the lover, and the painted nature of the woman presented in eroto-elegiac texts, that is, the way in which she is to be seen as an art-object.

No contemporary account of Trajan's Parthian War survives, nor were any monuments set up to commemorate his exploits in the East in the same way that Trajan's Column in Rome and the trophy at Tropaeum Traiani (Adamclisi) do his Dacian Wars. We rely almost entirely on the excerpts of Dio Cassius' History preserved by Xiphilinus, together with a few fragments of Arrian's Parthica, in order to reconstruct the causes, objectives and strategy of the war. Because of the scant nature of the sources, all three aspects remain the subject of much scholarly discussion and dispute. Here, however, an attempt is made to address the problems raised by Trajan's eastern campaigns from a different perspective. References in fourth-century sources shed light not only on the purpose and execution of the war itself, but also on the way Trajan was perceived in late antiquity as a valuable paradigm for contemporary events and figures.

Any attempt to sketch. Cicero's political ideals from his own treatises de Republica and de Legibus has to confront two difficulties, one of which, at least is real and insuperable. This obstacle is that both treatises are in their present condition so defective or fragmentary that we have to judge Cicero's ideal from a torso, not a complete work. The six books On the Republic were clearly finished and published just before Cicero started for Cilicia in 51 B.C.; but though the bulk of the first three books has been recovered from the Vatican palimpsest, of the last three we have only the Somnium Scipionis and the merest fragments, so that on education and, above all, on Cicero's specific remedy for the evils of the day, the ‘moderator rei publicae,’ we have to reconstruct his views from two or three isolated notices accidentally preserved. The de Legibus was begun as soon as, or before, the Republic was finished, but was discontinued during Cicero's proconsulate and the Civil War (51–48 B.C.).

William Harris' War and Imperialism (Oxford, 1979) has already received a long review in last year's Journal (70 (1980) 177 f.) by A. N. Sherwin White; but the importance of the book and of its theme clearly justifies further discussion of the essential problems raised. In any case, the review concentrated almost entirely on points of disagreement and hardly stated a position on the general questions raised by Harris' work. What is more the author and his reviewer, sharp though their disagreements may be, seem to share a range of assumptions about the scope of the problem and the appropriate methods of dealing with it; in my view, these assumptions need to be stated and examined.

Capitolia, temples to the triad of divinities Iuppiter Optimus Maximus, Iuno Regina and Minerva Augusta, are often considered part of the standard urban ‘kit’ of Roman colonies. Their placement at one end of the forum is sometimes seen as schematizing and replicating in miniature the relationship between the Capitolium at Rome and the Forum Romanum below it. Reliably attested Capitolia are, however, rarer in the provinces than this widespread view assumes and there seems to be no relationship between civic status and the erection of a Capitolium. Indeed, outside Italy there are very few Capitolia other than in the African provinces, where nearly all known examples belong to the second or early third century a.d., mostly in the Antonine period. This regional and chronological clustering demands explanation, and since it comes too late to be associated with the foundation of colonies, and there is no pattern of correlation with upgrades in civic status, we propose that the explanation has to do with the growing power and influence of North African élites, who introduced the phenomenon from Rome. Rather than being a form of temple imposed from the centre on the provinces, Capitolia were adopted by provincial élites on the basis of their relationship with Rome.

We call a monument Ara Pacis without any support from ancient tradition. It was Friedrich von Duhn who first so called it in 1879 and he justified it in the briefest fashion. He considered three sacrificial slabs and three processional slabs. He did not produce any analysis but based his case on the fact that some of those reliefs were discovered in the grounds of the Palazzo Fiano, that is on the Campus Martius, and that the Ara Pacis was built on the Campus Martius. That was all. Nevertheless, his conjecture was enthusiastically received: it was the golden age of classical archaeology, when numberless monuments were assigned to great Greek artists and great historical events and thus the foundations were laid for a more critical and sceptical study of Greek art. This scepticism destroyed many identifications but it never reached the Ara Pacis, and that I believe for special reasons. There was great excitement in the years after 1873 when Carl Humann discovered the great altar of Pergamum ; excavations began in 1878 with sensational results. Friedrich von Duhn made his ‘discovery’ in the following year and it concerned another great altar, but this time in Rome. He was clearly spellbound and so were his contemporaries. They did not ask for proof. In that atmosphere such credulity was natural. Yet however much the altar has been studied during the last eighty years the question has never been asked why it should be the Ara Pacis. My answer is that it is not. My first task, however, is to reconsider the evidence about Pax and I shall do this as if our altar did not exist. I shall return to it in the second part of my paper and end with the interpretation of a specimen relief, the sacrifice of Aeneas which seems to me the most revealing of the reliefs.

Like all works of literature, works of history end up sooner or later with a readership quite different from that envisaged or hoped for by their authors. A subtle and polemical work such as The Gallic War of Caesar has become a standard text for teaching Latin in the early years of secondary education, as have the tender and sophisticated elegies of Tibullus and Propertius. In Italy, the unpopularity of ‘The Betrothed’ by A. Manzoni, a finely ironical and difficult but rewarding novel, is the result of the distaste or boredom experienced by children forced to read it at school.

A similar fate has dogged Thucydides. As T. P. Wiseman has recently emphasized, Thucydides and Polybius, precisely because their historical method is close to our own, are regarded as the paradigms against which to judge ancient historical writing—quite wrongly. In fact they are untypical and exceptional; and one has moreover to ask to what extent they were even properly understood in antiquity. In a famous chapter near the beginning of his work (1. 22. 4), Thucydides proudly distances it from that of Herodotus, though without naming him: his own history is not designed for passing appreciation, but is to be of permanent value. Because human nature is always the same, a critical record of past events will present analogies and resemblances when compared with future developments. Knowledge of the past is thus useful, because it improves ones judgment and understanding and even suggests how to behave in situations in which one may find oneself.

One of the measures carried by Gaius Gracchus in the course of his first tribunate in 123–2 B.C. provided for the regular sale of grain to citizens of Rome at the price of 6⅓ asses per modius. Gracchus also, presumably by the same law, provided for the construction of state granaries.

The sources for the law are meagre. None of them is contemporary, and those later writers who do comment on the law furnish few details. What is known of its content is conveyed in a brief sentence from Livy's Epitomator supported by a scholiast on Cicero's pro Sestio, and in a few words of Appian. The Epitomator and Scholiast give the price at which the grain was sold.