With the release in the year 2000 of the film Gladiator, and the exhibition ‘Gladiators and Caesars’ in Hamburg and London, Roman spectacular entertainments, never out of the public eye for long, have returned once again to the limelight. Chief among these entertainments are gladiatorial games and chariot races, exerting a pull on the modern imagination through the famous re-enactments of them in popular films — such as Spartacus or the famous chariot race in Ben-Hur — as much as through our knowledge of their popularity in antiquity, often summed up in Juvenal's comment that the Roman plebs wanted only ‘panem et circenses’. Yet there was more to Roman spectacle than gladiators and chariots, popular as these were. The aim of this paper is to use the visual evidence from mosaics in Ostia and Rome to investigate the Roman reactions to another type of public spectacle, Greek athletic contests. These were held in Rome periodically from 186 BC, and gained a new momentum in AD 86 with Emperor Domitian's institution of a permanent four-yearly festival on Greek lines in honour of the Capitoline triad (Suetonius, Domitian 4).

Lo specchio prenestino del IV secolo a.C. che raffigura la lupa con i gemelli, la cui autenticità è stata sostenuta da Adam e Briquel nel 1982, è stato generalmente interpretato come una rappresentazione della storia di Romolo e Remo. Di fatto considerazioni sulla presenza di altre figure nel disegno portano ad un'ipotesi diversa: vale a dire che i gemelli siano i Lares Praestites, ed i testimoni della scena siano Mercurio (Hermes) e Lara (Dea Tacita), genitori dei bambini; Pan Lykaios e Quirinus, che rappresentano i Lupercalia e i Quirinalia; ed una bestia selvatica (fera) che rappresenta i Feralia.

This paper explores the ceramic assemblage of the Nepi Survey Project from the third century bc to the seventh century ad. The surface collection allows the detailed characterization of chronology, ware, fabric supply and functional characteristics. The assemblage shows a settlement explosion in the early second century bc, with another major rise from the Augustan period. The sharp decline in the late second to early third centuries ad is visible here, as it is throughout the region. The later peaks of the late fourth to mid-fifth and the mid-sixth centuries ad conform to the late Roman sequence from Mola di Monte Gelato. The dominant pottery class is oxidized coarse-wares, at 73%. The distribution of the different fabrics, including some of regional supply, suggests a number of different marketing mechanisms. Fine-wares and terra sigillata combined at 3% is what would be expected in the fringes of the Empire. The amphora class makes up over 5% of the assemblage, with the most variety exhibited at large villas and suburban halos. The most important supply originated from North Africa, with fish sauce as the main import. The functional analysis allows the definition of a ritual structure in the proximity of the cemeteries of the Massa area with highly varied types related to eating and drinking. The ceramic building material shows the importance of Campanian contacts, although the lack of imbrices suggests that many tile scatters derive from reused material.

In the present volume of the Papers of the British School at Rome I continue my description of certain groups of copies of ancient paintings preserved in English Collections (see Papers, vol. vii. pp. 1–62).

The two volumes of drawings at Holkham Hall, the property of the Earl of Leicester, were described generally in vol. vii. pp. 1–5. The coloured drawings and the pencil sketches with colour-notes are alike the work of Francesco Bartoli (ca. 1675–ca. 1730), the son of the better-known Pietro Sante Bartoli. As to the character of his work, I may refer the reader to vol. vii. l.c. The numbers in brackets after the serial numbers are those which are found on the drawings themselves.

Mr. Baddeley's volume of drawings executed by Pietro Sante Bartoli for Cardinal Camillo Massimi was described by me in the Papers, vol. vi. p. 489.

The drawings at Chatsworth I have attributed (vol. vii. p. 3) to Gaetano Piccini. My attention was called to them by Mrs. S. A. Strong.

It is very unlikely indeed that any substantial urban community survived the events which culminated in the fall of the Western Empire. If the inscriptional evidence has been read aright, Veii was already in full decline in the fourth century. The reasons may well have been in the first place economic, namely the concentration of such wealth as there was in the hands of the well-to-do landlords whose villas are so conspicuous a feature of the local countryside, at the expense of a township which, lying off the main road and lacking any particular resources, had already begun to be something of an anachronism two or three centuries earlier. At the same time it lay near enough to the main road to be vulnerable to any marauding army; and, unlike so many other ancient Italian towns, it had no impregnable hilltop fortress to which its inhabitants could withdraw. As a functioning community Veii may well have ceased to exist by the fifth century.

The villas were less exposed, those of them at any rate that lay off the main roads; and representing as they do a less complex economy than that of the towns, they were more resilient in the face of disaster. Even at an earlier date there are very few traces of any intensive agricultural specialisation, and a great many of them were certainly still functioning in Late Antiquity.

Medieval archaeology in the sense of a field study involving controlled excavation is in its infancy in Italy. Scarcely a dozen excavations have been carried out with the recovery of information about the middle ages as their primary objective and little attention has been paid to the material remains of everyday life. It is not surprising, therefore, that in the past the only medieval pottery to receive lasting attention has been the tin-glazed ware which was valued as the forerunner of renaissance maiolica. Nevertheless, in recent years programmes of surface collecting and selective excavation have been initiated in two areas with the specific purpose of studying the middle ages. The two areas are Lazio and Apulia. In Apulia the Society of Antiquaries sponsored a survey of the Tavoliere, or Foggia Plain, reports on which are in active preparation.

In 1974 I began a survey and excavation project in the province (or Regione) of Molise, southern Italy. Until 1974, comparatively little research had been carried out on the prehistoric archaeology of this province compared with the rest of Italy, but the 1974 survey produced abundant evidence (over four hundred sites) for early settlement, from the Middle Palaeolithic until the Italic or Samnite Iron Age (Barker, 1976a). The survey concentrated on three areas: at the head, midway down, and in the lower part of the Biferno valley, the principal valley of Molise. The Bronze Age site discussed in this paper was discovered in the second area midway down the valley (Fig. 1).

The goal of the Molise project is the study of the changing relationship between man and his environment in the Biferno valley from palaeolithic times until the classical period. It is hoped to achieve this goal by (i) excavating settlements of each major phase of occupation, (ii) combining the economic and environmental data from the excavations with the survey evidence showing the distribution of sites in each period, and (iii) integrating the archaeological evidence with geomorphological and related studies of environmental change in the valley. The Petrella excavation discussed in this paper is therefore just one part of the total project, but the importance of the site—the first Bronze Age site to be excavated in Molise—justifies the publication of the preliminary results achieved to date.

The seven inscriptions described below were recorded by O. Brogan during journeys made in the Tripolitanian hinterland in 1958, 1959 and 1960, and are published here with the kind permission of Dr. E. Vergara-Caffarelli of the Department of Antiquities in Tripoli.

Brown limestone block, broken away at the right side (0·94 × 0·56 × 0·17) inscribed on one face within a moulded border (panel, 0·88 × 0·47); as a result of re-use the face is badly damaged and in part obscured by mortar which it has proved impossible to remove without danger to the surface. Found in 1958, south of the Jefren-Zintan road (map 1/100,000, sheet Giado, 1672, U788719) midway up the hillside above the wells; now in Tripoli Museum.

In the latter half of the eighteenth century the trade in antiques in Rome was largely in British hands. Matthew Brettingham the younger was only employed as the agent of Lord Orford, Lord Leicester, and Lord Egremont (Michaelis, Ancient Marbles, 71 sqq.); but another artist resident in Rome, Gavin Hamilton, served his patrons not merely by purchasing, but by excavating antiques for them in the neighbourhood of Rome; and his enterprise was rewarded by discoveries of great artistic importance, though later archaeologists would have been far more grateful to him had he registered more accurately the sites and circumstances of his researches, still more had he made anything like a plan of the buildings he examined. It has not, it is true, been as yet possible to control his results; for I do not believe that any site which he searched has ever been re-excavated subsequently.

The plateau on which the site of Veii stands is bounded by the steeply eroded valleys of the Fosso Piordo and the Torrente Valchetta, the ancient river Cremera. A kilometre to the north-east of their confluence near the Piazza d'Armi, the site of the bath-house serving the Roman municipium Augustum Veiens was exposed by river erosion in November 1959 (fig. 1). It lies across the narrow floor of the Valchetta ravine, where the river has changed course frequently since classical times. The ancient approach probably lay along a small track leading from the edge of the main town plateau immediately above the baths. This choice of position, which certainly had pre-Roman associations, was determined by the presence of a number of hot springs which break through the valley floor at this point. They are the result of quiescent volcanic activity; another example occurred on the opposite side of Veii, in the Vignacce area of the Fosso Piordo.

The site was known to antiquarians of the last century. Canina mentions the baths briefly (p. 73) and reproduces an engraving of them (Tav. XX) in Antica cittá di Veio (1847), which presumably shows the outer shell of the building before the river broke into it (pl. XX, a). It illustrates a vital point in understanding the remains as they stand at present.

The boundaries of the IX regio of Rome are re-examined, revealing possible chronological changes. The figure of XXXII D feet assigned to the perimeter in the Regionary Catalogues must perhaps be changed to XXII D. A reconstruction of the geography of the southern part of the Campus Martius (palus Caprae, in a wide area between the Tiber and the Pantheon; amnis Petronia, whose course was perhaps further south than has been thought previously) can be helpful in considering several topographical problems of the region, for instance the arbor caprificus and the aedes Volcani, which probably stood at the edge of the marsh and beyond the amnis Petronia. Martial's mention of Europa, generally related to a porticus Europae, could, on the contrary, concern the famous picture of Antiphilos in the porticus Pompei.

The image of the tree has been powerful in the human imagination and therefore fruitful as a source of metaphor. In ancient mythologies it appears as a cosmic symbol and it is entwined, root and branch, in Christian thought. The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil overshadows Man's fall; the ‘Tree’ of the Cross dominates his salvation; the Tree of Life, which sheltered him in the Garden of Eden, heals him in the New Jerusalem. In the great prophetic image of Isaiah, the turning-point of history becomes the young shoot of an ancient tree:

And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse and a branch shall grow out of his roots.

In course of time, too, the great crisis of wickedness also appears in Jewish thought under the same figure:

And there came forth out of them a sinful root, Antiochus Epiphanes. Again, in Jewish thought good men are trees that flourish:

And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season, his leaf also shall not wither.

The area under study comprises primarily the eastern section of Lucania south of the stretch of the Via Appia from Gravina to Venosa (Fig. 1); the purpose is to examine the network of principal ancient roads (Fig. 3). The terrain imposes limits on the siting of these roads, but, as will be seen, changes in the distribution of population shifted the importance of various routes at different times. The literary sources, ancient and medieval, offer some assistance in ascertaining the location of some of the routes, but the main tools are air photography and autopsy.

II. The Written Sources

These are somewhat sparse and have produced several problems that themselves require elucidation. They are:

1. The Itinerarium Antonini. This describes three routes through the area under study:

(a) In lines 104.1–104.4, part of a long route from Mediolanum to Regio, we read Venusium civitas, Opino 15, ad fluvium Bradanum 28, Potentia 24.

(b) In lines 113.1–5, part of a route from Equum Tuticum to Regio, we read Venusia, ad Pinum 12, Ipnum 12, Caelianum 40, Heraclia 28. None of the figures is secure.

This report is a further contribution to the publication of the survey of the country surrounding Veii. The area is bounded in the north by the watershed of the Roman Via Clodia; on the east by the line of the Via Cassia, also a watershed; on the south by the Valle della Torre Spaccata and the stream it joins, the Fosso dell'Acquasona, to the latter's junction with the Fosso Galeria; and on the west by the river known from north to south as the Fosso di Cesano, Rio Galeria, Valle Galeria and Fosso Galeria. It is a compact area as the roads which originate in its north-east corner terminate within it, apart from the cross country Etruscan road which goes off across the Fosso Galeria towards the lower Arrone (Route I) and the Etruscan road down the long ridge to the Via di Boccea crossing of the Fosso Galeria (Route VI), neither of whose onward courses has yet been studied in detail. The Roman road down the last mentioned ridge may have been a useful link in local communication, but it was probably not a through road.

This article considers the writings of Saint Jerome as a source for writing a cultural history of the city of Rome in late antiquity. Jerome is of course, in many respects, an unreliable witness but his lively and often conflicted accounts of the city do none the less provide significant insights into the city during an age of transition. He provides a few snippets for the scholar of topography, but these do not constitute the main attraction. Jerome's city of Rome appears above all as a textual palimpsest: variously painted in Vergilian colours as Troy and frequently compared with the biblical cities of Babylon, Bethlehem and Jerusalem. In the final analysis, it is argued, Jerome's Rome is surprisingly unstable, indeed a ‘soft city’.