The inscriptions of Christian, Lombard and Carolingian Italy have been collected and studied continuously almost from the date of their execution until the present day. This accumulation of secondary sources over a period of a thousand years has rendered the complication of the subject extreme.

The history of the clarification and scientific arrangement of Christian epigraphy in Italy begins with the work of de Rossi in the second half of the last century. He separated, and was therefore able to co-ordinate, the study of the inscriptions themselves, and the study of the collections of inscriptions. The first collection of Roman inscriptions possibly dates back to the end of the V century, and was of classical material; the collections of Christian inscriptions begin in the VII century.

Few archaeological problems have been longer and less conclusively debated than that of the origins of the Christian basilica. Ever since the great Renaissance architect, Alberti, noted the similarity of name and of architectural form between the Early Christian basilicas and the forum basilicas of Imperial Roman practice, students of classical architecture have been trying to establish the derivation of the Christian basilica from this, that, or the other type of pagan monument. The measure of their failure to secure general agreement is the very large and still increasing literature that has grown up around the problem. There have, of course, been certain clear advances. Some of the older theories, such as that which derived the basilica from the Pompeian type of Roman house, need no longer be taken seriously; and there is a vastly greater body of reliable evidence available now than there was even a quarter of a century ago. Despite these advances, however, we are still very far from being able to give an agreed answer to the fundamental question, why it was that the fourth-century Church adopted the apsed basilical hall as the standard form of building for the celebration of the Eucharist, and so established an architectural and liturgical pattern that is still effective to the present day. The primary purpose of this article is to review the problem in the light of recent discoveries and of recent research, and to try to define, rather more precisely than is often done, the terms within which it can usefully be discussed.

The existence of the tombs at Cyrene, and their magnificence, have been known for many years. In the last century a number of scholars wrote descriptions of them, and some excavated here and there among them, while in the last forty years many of the better-preserved monuments have been cleared, though not published. Until the Italian occupation of Cyrenaica in 1912, and indeed for some time following it, the settled conditions necessary for a patient investigation did not exist; and after that date the skill and energy of Italian archaeologists were directed mainly to the excavation and study of the ancient city itself. So it is that no serious study of their history has yet been attempted. The first requisite for such a study is a summary of the material available; the object of the present paper is to provide a preliminary classification of the tombs, a catalogue of them with maps, and a conspectus of the work already done, which may together serve as a basis for future study. The numeration of the individual tombs described in the following pages is that given in the detailed catalogue (pp. 22–43), where the letters N, E, S, and W refer to the North, East, South, and West cemeteries respectively (Figs. 1–7 and Pl. I). The bibliographical abbreviations used in the footnotes will be found in the section on previous work on the tombs (pp. 6–9).

The peopling of floral scrolls with living creatures is a decorative device which enjoyed unrivalled popularity throughout the whole history of Imperial art and in almost every country of the Empire. Its full cultivation and flowering were achieved in the Roman age; but its roots, like those of nearly every Roman art-motif, are in the late classical Greek and Hellenistic worlds. These roots were varied and complex. The primitive notion of spirits indwelling in trees and plants, and at a later stage personified in visible shape, may have played a part; some of the constituent elements can certainly be traced back to religious symbolism; and more immediate was the influence of the naturalistic trend of fourth-century art, which favoured the idea of rendering birds, insects, and small beasts in their native setting. In Hellenistic and Imperial times, as these elements mingled and the motif became more widespread, fancy came gradually to outweigh fact; and a delight in incongruity for its own sake found ready expression in the peopling of vine- and acanthus-rinceaux with mythological and genre scenes and figures, framed in the foliage or poised on slender stems, or with human figures and such solid quadrupeds as dogs, bulls, horses, bears, panthers, and lions, careering through the leafy whorls or springing from the hearts of flowers.

The two well-preserved Roman fortresses to be described in this paper have been known for many years. They were first brought to European notice by the British-sponsored geographical expeditions of the nineteenth century, when Tripoli was the spring-board for repeated attempts to find a route into Central Africa. Although important discoveries have been made in one of these forts (Bu Ngem) in more recent years, no detailed ground-plans have previously been published.

The following notes and illustrations are primarily intended to fill this lacuna in the documentation of the African limes; but it is hoped that they may also serve to increase our knowledge of early third-century trends in Roman military architecture. The European frontiers of the Roman Empire have yielded, and are still yielding, numerous examples of first- and second-century forts, and equally numerous examples of the forts erected during the later-third and early-fourth centuries, when barbarian invasion threatened the whole Roman world.

This paper summarises the results of work carried out during the years 1949–51 in the eastern Gebel of Tripolitania. The area had been visited, and some of the sites noted, by nineteenth-century travellers and by Italian archaeologists between the wars, and the adjacent plateau of Tarhuna has been the subject of a recent paper by R. G. Goodchild. My work was complementary to his, and I have not reproduced the details of information so lately set out except where they were immediately necessary.

I was able to spend long periods in the territory while holding the Scholarship in Classical Studies at the British School at Rome and a Research Scholarship at Trinity College, Cambridge, and I am deeply indebted both to the School and to my college for their generous support in unusual circumstances: in particular the latter, for providing a truck which carried me over fifteen thousand miles in difficult country and for a generous grant towards the cost of illustrating this paper.

Nell'estate del 1977 hanno avuto luogo la prima vasta ricognizione ed il primo scavo dei resti sommersi del porto di Gravisca, 65 km. a N–O di Roma; ambedue hanno fornito nuovi dati sulla pianta e la costruzione dell'antico molo. Questo porto è sempre stato collegato storicamente con la città etrusca di Tarquinia e con la Colonia Romana di Gravisca fondata nel 181 a.C., ma nonostante il nome di Gravisca fosse conosciuto perche citato in fonti antiche, praticamente niente si sapeva sul porto o sulla sua esatta ubicazione.

La Campagna 1977 ha confermato che il sito dell'antico porto coincide con quello dell'attuale Porto Clementino, ed ha rivelato parti di un molo simile a quelli dei vicini porti romani di Cosa e Pyrgi, e del porto etrusco di Populonia. L'esame di questo molo di pietra ammassata, e del la ceramica romana ad esso associata consentito di datarlo a non prima del primo secolo a.C. Una precedente utilizzazione etrusca del porto è stata azzardata, ma non è possibile provarla senza ulteriori scavi.

La cosiddetta Schola Praeconum si trova nella parte nord-ovest del Palatino sovrastante il Circo Massimo. Un sondaggio, effettuato nel 1978, rivelò un massiccio riempimento databile, sulla base delle 38 monete identificate, al secondo quarto del V secolo d.C., forse tra il 430 e il 440 circa. Il riempimento conteneva un'enorme quantità di ceramiche—terra sigillata chiara, lucerne (per la maggior parte di produzione locale), anfore commerciali, ecc. L'abbondante campione di fauna mostra soprattutto la presenza di bovini, pecore e maiali. Uno studio dei dati inerenti alla macellazione prova che il bestiame fosse sistematicamente allevato per il mercato della carne. La presenza delle anfore commerciali e del bestiame allevato per la tavola ci fa pensare alle informazioni sull'annona contenute nel Codice Teodosiano.

Since the publication of The Inscriptions of Roman Tripolitania a number of additinal inscribed stones have come to light in the province. Many of these have been, or are about to be, published in reports on the surveys or excavations during which they were found. Those that cannot be quickly or conveniently treated in this way are assembled in the first section of this note. Twenty-four of the texts in this section are quite new; the remainder are known texts that have been supplemented by the discovery of new fragments, or modified after re-reading. With them are given a small number of additional comments on published texts. In this section are included a certain number of texts or fragments that were found during the original excavation of the Forum Severianum by Professor Caputo, and rediscovered after the publication of IRT when the Forum was cleared of the debris left by the flood of 1946. These, together with all the known inscriptions of the Forum Severianum, will be the subject of a definitive publication by Professor Attilio Degrassi in an Anglo-Italian publication of the Severan buildings at Lepcis.

Questo articolo mette in discussione la completezza della documentazione preistorica, anche nella zona intensamente studiata dalla British School. In esso si avanza l'ipotesi che le difficoltà metodologiche e d'ambiente hanno influito negativamente sulla documentazione preistorica più che su quella classica. Questa conclusione è basata sull'analisi di 17 siti originariamente studiati in ricognizioni della British School at Rome e su un'analisi dello sviluppo della ricerca archeologica nella zona. Tuttavia il presente studio deve essere considerato preliminare. Si potrebbe ottenere una migliore comprensione dell'accuratezza dei modelli d'insediamento preistorico attraverso una nuova ed intensiva indagine di una zona limitata, facendo uso di informazioni topografiche più recenti e di metodologie già usate in altre zone dell'Etruria Meridionale. Per ora, si fornisce un catalogo di tutti i siti pre-etruschi conosciuti entro i confini delle carte topografiche analizzate. Tuttavia, si afferma che le continue scoperte di siti preistorici, in particolare dell'età del Bronzo, renderanno necessari importanti cambiamenti nell'interpretazione dei periodi pre-etruschi.

This paper provides a sequel to the account previously given of Roman settlement in the eastern Gebel of Tripolitania, and is designed to complete the summary report of exploration carried out in this area during the years 1949–51. I must again express my gratitude for the assistance of friends and colleagues, in Tripolitania and elsewhere, to whom detailed acknowledgement was made in my earlier paper.

In dealing with the decline of the prosperous agricultural society of the first three centuries A.D., two sites were described on which the open olive farms were replaced, in the one case by a ditched blockhouse, and in the other by a herdsman's hut. These examples were chosen to illustrate the nature of the transition rather than to give a complete picture of the later economy. We there confined ourselves to the suggestion that the destruction of the olive farms was the work of marauding pre-desert tribes such as the Austuriani, whose incursion into the territory of Lepcis is recorded by Ammianus Marcellinus; and that the invaders' subsequent settlement left its material traces in the huts and fortified farms, and its historical mark in Procopius' description of the Libyan tribes and Ibn Abd al-Hakam's account of their traditional origin. It is our purpose here to give a fuller account of the later society, as it can be pieced together from the evidence of the sites, and to elucidate it where possible by a more detailed citation of the literary references.

In 1958, an archaeological field survey located a Roman pit 2¾ km. south-east of Sutri (at grid reference 737789 on the 1: 25,000 Carta d'ltalia, Istituto Geografico Militare, sheet ‘Sutri’) (fig. 1). The pit had been dug on the south side of a narrow spur, near its point, there only 2–3 m. high. Surface finds showed it to be full of black-glazed ware (ceramica campana) and other Roman pottery. In 1959 it was excavated, with the courteous permission of the Soprintendenza alle Antichità per l'Etruria Meridionale and of the local land-owner, Sig. Sansoni, and with the kind assistance of friends. This article deals mainly with its contents.

The excavation achieved its aim, to collect a comprehensive group of Republican pottery. The deposit could date from the last half of the second century B.C., but this is the earliest possible date and it may well fall entirely in the first century B.C.

The pit was roughly oval, just over 2 m. long and 1 m. deep as it survived (fig. 1). It had been enlarged, not long after it was initially dug, by an extension on the north side. Erosion since antiquity had then removed much of it and clandestine digging had disturbed its contents. This helps to explain why in no instance was any vessel recovered in its entirety.

L'uso medievale delle catacombe romane può essere diviso in tre periodi distinti sulla base della loro funzione. Dal tempo di Costantino fino alla metà del VI secolo, le catacombe venivano usate principalmente come luogo di sepoltura. Dopo l'interruzione di questa pratica causata dalle guerre gotiche, le catacombe continuarono ad essere mantenute dalla chiesa romana e ad essere visitate dai pellegrini che si recavano a Roma, ma soltanto per venerare le reliquie dei primi santi e dei martiri che esse contenevano. Dopo la seconda metà dell'VIII secolo, quando tutte le reliquie importanti cominciarono ad essere trasferite in chiese più sicure dentro la città, l'interesse per le catacombe diminuì in modo significativo, sebbene alcune fossero conosciute a continuassero ad essere visitate fino alla fine del Medio Evo. Vengono qui esaminate le decorazioni murali aggiunte alle varie catacombe durante il periodo c. 500–1300, e si sostiene che anche queste possano essere divise in tre gruppi cronologici secondo la loro funzione.

Gli scavi recentemente effettuati presso S. Giacomo degli Schiavoni (CB) hanno portato alla luce un complesso di carattere industriale, con zone lavorative, magazzini ed un sistema idraulico di pozzi, contenitori e fogne, centrato su di una cisterna.

Il riempimento di questa cisterna conteneva una grande quantità di ceramica (400 vasi circa), databile agli anni 420–440 sulla base della terra sigillata chiara africana e focese ivi rinvenuta. Inoltre erano presenti anfore da trasporto dell'Africa e del Mediterraneo orientale, lucerne di produzione locale e molta ceramica dipinta e comune (anche quest'ultima, in parte, inportata dal Mediterraneo orientale).

La presenza di scarti di fornace di ceramica dipinta e comune e l'alta percentuale di ceramica importata suggeriscono che il sito avesse un ruolo economico abbastanza importante durante il tardo impero. La qualità delle importazioni dal Mediterraneo orientale suggerisce la presenza di un sistema economico apparentemente diverso da quello dell'Italia tirrenica.

Lo scavo della cisterna ha messo in luce anche un piccolo campione faunistico di estremo interesse.

La relativamente ampia varietà di specie, la inusuale (per questo periodo) predominanza degli ovicaprini sui suini e la presenza di una scapola di cammello (o dromedario) sembrano rappresentare gli elementi di maggiore interesse di questa fauna.

Interessante è anche la presenza di ossa di equidi (sia cavallo che asino) il cui ipotetico utilizzo come animali da trasporto fa supporre che il sito avesse un ruolo in un sistema economico di più ampia scala, nel cui ambito anche la presenza del cammello potrebbe essere interpretata.

Seppure l'incompleto recupero del materiale (dovuto ad assenza di setacciatura) e la piccolezza del campione invitino alla cautela, sembra lecito ipotizzare la presenza di un sito dalle molteplici attività economiche: allevamento (probabilmente per carne, latte e lana), agricoltura, caccia, commercio.

It is impossible for us, even in these days of land-rovers and jeeps, to imagine a North African landscape without a camel in it, yet the animal is nowhere to be found on the numerous Roman mosaics with scenes of country life in the museums of Algeria, Tunisia, and Tripolitania. Only two ancient writers before Ammianus Marcellinus refer to the camel in North Africa, one specifically, the other by implication. The fact that the camel spread over this region—Africa Proconsular is, Numidia and Mauretania—some time during the Roman period is, however, generally accepted. What is not clear is when and how this happened. The purpose of this note is to publish the photograph of a relief from a Tripolitanian tomb (Pl. XVIII), in the hope that it may be a small contribution to the discussion of the problem, at least as far as Tripolitania is concerned.

The evidence has often been studied. The earliest mention of the camel in the Maghreb is the note in the Bellum Africanum to the effect that twenty-two camels belonging to King Juba were captured during the skirmishing in the campaign which led up to the Battle of Thapsus (45 B.C.). It is not known how Juba obtained his twenty two camels, or whether other rich Numidians owned any, and there is no hint of the presence of the beast in Punic times. The second notice comes in the work of the late third-century African Christian, Arnobius of Sicca, who writes of the camel kneeling down when it is being loaded or unloaded.