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’.

This paper presents an innovative study of the port system of Rome in Imperial times through the application of an integrated approach to both archaeological analysis and material evidence. Specifically, it seeks to provide a more complete contextualization and understanding of the port system of Rome by focusing on the exploration of the physical geography of the river Tiber and its transformations in connection with the organization of the port system between the late first century BC and early third century AD. Methodologically, this study is based on the compilation, re-evaluation and analysis of published archaeological and geoarchaeological data and on the application of modelling and simulations techniques within a GIS environment. These foundations and means allow us to reconstruct the development of the river Tiber's historical course in antiquity and its impact on specific organizational aspects of Rome's port system. In this sense, this study provides new insights and avenues of research (applicable to other geographical areas and periods of time) to evaluate the system's changing capacity for transport and the potential existence of a signalling system, in contrast to previous hypotheses on the organization of river traffic along the Tiber.

This paper examines the iconographic and archaeological evidence for chariot racing in Etruria, its context and audience. We then focus on the representation of the chariot crash — a motif pervasive in Etruscan art on a variety of locally-produced artistic media. The incongruous depiction of the most exciting, dangerous and tragic occurrence in the race alongside scenes of banqueting and dancing complicates our understanding of Etruscan tomb painting and of funeral ritual. Images of chariot crashes reveal an Etruscan appreciation for Greek epic, while also reflecting real details of the burial rite and the nature of élite competition.

In 2010, the Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies achieved its centenary. In 2012, the British School at Rome, which was closely linked to the origins of the Roman Society, celebrates the centenary of its Royal Charter. This marked the formal establishment of the distinctively broad and interdisciplinary remit of the School by the inclusion of humanities, art and architecture in a single institution. The combination of these two anniversaries has given rise to this attempt to think through some of the paths that Roman studies have taken, and to understand them within the context of broader developments in particularly British and Italian historiography. The Roman Society and the British School at Rome have many points of connection, both in terms of individuals and in terms of research interest. Recent work on the development of a British historical tradition has shown that it remains important to ground the reading of historical scholarship within the intellectual trajectory of its practitioners. This is, therefore, an argument about how the research represented in the Journal of Roman Studies, and conducted at the British School at Rome, and ultimately more widely, should be seen in a historiographical context.

This paper analyses the manuscripts of Diego de Revillas in the British School at Rome Library regarding the Severan marble plan and its arrangement in the Capitoline Museum, in 1742. They offer some insight into how this much discussed work was undertaken by Giovanni Battista Nolli, under the supervision of Alessandro Gregorio Capponi and Revillas. Specifically, Revillas’ documents throw new light on the way the scale reduction of the Forma Urbis was (incorrectly) figured out.

The two fragmentary inscriptions presented herewith were unearthed at Aphrodisias in Caria during the 1963 and 1966 campaigns of excavation. Both, cut on panels of coarse-grained, white Aphrodisias marble, were found out of context in Byzantine fill, re-used as convenient building or paving blocks. The one (in two joining fragments) lay in the collapsed fill of a building complex subsequently suggested to have been a Bishop's Palace. The second fragment was discovered nearby in the excavation of the area adjoining the so-called Bishop's Palace, the Odeon and its porticus post scaenam. Their present interim and unedited publication is warranted by the significance of their contents for the history of Roman Asia Minor and the necessity of making them available without undue delay to interested scholars. Since a partial edition would be ill-advised at this point, and this writer lays noclaim to full expertise in Anatolian epigraphy, it has appeared judicious to offer merely an austere transcription of what can be read with certainty or reasonable probability, virtually without supplements. This publication does not therefore pretend to be an editio princeps.

There can be little doubt that down to the beginning of the Early Iron Age the greater part of the Ager Veientanus, in common with the adjoining territories, was still covered by the primeval forest of which the Ciminian Forest of early Roman history was the still-considerable surviving remnant. There were doubtless trails through the forest, and the activities of hunters and charcoal burners would account for sporadic finds of stone implements (in so far as these have been correctly identified as of Neolithic or Bronze Age date). But the main centres of settlement at this early date lay elsewhere, along or near the coast and a few of the larger river valleys. One of these was, inevitably, the Tiber itself; another the river Fiora and the uplands around Lake Bolsena, forming a link between the coast and the middle valley of the Tiber. Outside these clearly defined areas of settlement the prehistoric archaeological record is largely a blank.

A recently published history of naval power and trade in the Mediterranean in the early medieval period provides a reminder of that vital but little-explored change in the balance of maritime power which preceded the Crusades and of the movement which won back for the Christians of the West, Sardinia, Sicily, and Malta, threatened the shores of Africa and Albania, and was both a rehearsal and an essential preliminary for the great Drang nach Osten which was to follow. Little is known of the shipping used in these operations or of the tactics employed, but an attempt has been made to investigate the scanty sources for the Norman naval operations in the early stages of their conquest of southern Italy and Sicily, not merely because some of these operations were important in their immediate results, but also as an example of the naval technique of the Latin Christian military commanders in southern Europe. The subject derives additional interest from the spectacle it affords of Vikings finding their sea-legs again after many decades as farmers and cavalrymen in Normandy. It also offers one explanation for the conquest of the considerable area of southern Italy and Sicily by a comparatively small force, and once again demonstrates the eclecticism and adaptability of the Normans.

L'articolo contiene la prima parte di un resoconto provvisorio sulla recente opera di scavo a Fregellae da parte di un gruppo di archeologi inglesi. Dopo una breve introduzione sulla storia della colonia e sullo sviluppo degli scavi, l'articolo tratta dell'area del santuario e delle mura della cittá. Ne emerge che il complesso monumentale del santuario fu forse costruito nel secondo quarto del II secolo a.C. e distrutto nel 125 d.C. Viene anche dimostrato che almeno una parte delle mura della cittá fu costruita per la prima volta durante la seconda Guerra Punica.

I 125 anni tra le guerre civili della tarda Repubblica e la fine del periodo Giulio-Claudio testimoniarono un cambiamento drammatico nel personale delle legioni romane: i posti occupati dagli Italiani vennero gradualmente occupati da uomini provenienti dalle province dell'Impero, che quindi provenivano dalle più diverse culture. La prospettiva di lunghi anni di servizio su distanti frontiere aveva alienato le tradizionali fonti di forza lavoro. Questo articolo suggerisce che il cambiamento era in atto prima di quanto fosse generalmente supposto. Pochi Italiani ritornavano a casa dopo il servizio. In genere i legionari non avevano alcun legame emotivo con la città di Roma, al punto che ben pochi avevano mai la possibilità di visitarla.

This gazette presents to the reader outside Rome news of recent archaeological activity (primarily in 2010, but also in the first part of 2011), gleaned from public lectures, conferences, exhibitions and newspaper reports.