One of the smallest of the papyri in the files of cohors XX Palmyrenorum stationed at Dura-Europos in Syria Coele appears to be one of the most interesting. It is P. Dura 81, which is dated, on similarity of style to another document, to c. A.D. 251:

On the fourth line J. F. Gilliam the editor comments: ‘Following -athon it appears that o was first written and then corrected to i. Possibly these letters are part of a name, perhaps the nomen of Marcellus. Mathoni would be possible, though surprising.’

However, the reading is almost certainly correct as it stands. A Marcus Aurelius Atho Marcellus is attested by two inscriptions as being procurator Mauretaniae Caesariensis at some time between A.D. 246 and 249. I suggest that he is the same person as the man mentioned at Dura for four reasons: Atho is the only example of this nomen to be found in PIR2; the combination with Marcellus; they are both procurators of high rank; they are contemporary.

The most fascinating aspect of the language and style of Tacitus is that they may be seen in evolution. If we set aside the Dialogus as a special case because of its subject matter, for which a Ciceronian style was virtually obligatory, we may follow Tacitus' style through a continuous process of development from the two monographs to the Histories and then to its culmination in his most mature work, the Annals—though to use this word ‘culmination’ may be to prejudge the issue. Of course stylistic change and development may be found in the works of many writers, Cicero and Propertius for instance, but in few writers if any is the development so clear to see, yet also so complicated, as in Tacitus.

E. Wölfflin, who began the systematic investigation of Tacitus' language and style, maintained that there is in Tacitus' writings a persistent and continuous movement away from normal, hackneyed and colourless expressions towards novelty, colour and dignity, towards what the Greeks called σενότης—or, as some have chosen to put the matter, Tacitus in diverging more and more from the ‘normal’ became progressively more ‘Tacitean’.

The early history of the coastal lowland to the south and south-east of Lake Scutari (Lacus Labeatis), through which the Bojana (Barbanna) and Drin (Drilo) rivers find their way to the sea, is not recorded, although archaeology suggests that this region, an obvious point of departure for penetration of the interior, was developed earlier by Greeks and played a greater part in their affairs than the writers of antiquity alone would allow us to believe. It contains two sites of local strategic importance, both admirably adapted to ancient settlement. First, the prominent sugar-loaf hill rising sharply above the village of Lesh on the south bank of the Drin to a height of 186 m., to overlook the low ground about the mouth of the river and to command a convenient point for a crossing. Second, the natural acropolis formed by Scutari citadel, enclosed on three sides by rivers and dominating access from the coastal lowland to the lake.

A remarkable blue-grey marble horse with a white marble rider, found in the Basilica at Aphrodisias, has been a focus of recent research. The article describes the archaeology and history of the monument — how it can be reconstructed, with its base and in its precise setting in the Basilica. The group was a daring composition that had already fallen and been restored once in antiquity. What emerges is firstly a new full-size hellenistic-style statue group whose subject can be identified as Troilos and Achilles, and secondly a striking example of the long second lives of classical statues in Late Antiquity. The horse was a great public monument of the early imperial period that was moved to the Basilica probably in the mid-fourth century a.d., where it has a well-documented context. The subject of the group can be identified both from epigraphy and from its iconographic antecedents, and its version of the subject can be related to a particular strand in the rich later literary representations of the story.1

Tarpeia's role as a Vestal has become a matter of scholarly consensus in the past two decades. This article questions that consensus by suggesting that Varro and Propertius are the two major proponents of this ‘Vestal version’, which is not present in other major narratives such as Livy, Dionysius of Halicarnassus and Plutarch. Propertius’ version in particular, which depicts Tarpeia as a Vestal in love, has been overprivileged in analyses of this myth as a dramatisation of individual identity versus loyalty to the state. Varro's account, which also includes Tarpeia's Vestal status, suggests a different interpretation: it is likely that Varro considered Tarpeia a non-Roman Vestal whose Vestal status supported the state. This version resolves certain dissonances in early Roman myth.

This paper will examine the claims of the excudent alii (‘others will hammer out’) priamel of Aeneid 6.847–53 within the immediate context of the parade's end, where Marcellus, parading the spolia opima, is used to exemplify the claims made about fine and speculative arts belonging to the Greeks, and war and the arts of empire to the Romans. It will be shown that certain, highly specific memories of the elder Marcellus are cued by the priamel that run directly counter to Anchises’ claims. The paper will look at how these claims are spoken in character, and driven by specific narrative motives, and it will relate the mismatch of exemplified to exemplifier to certain larger patterns within the Aeneid of things being left unsaid only to stand out all the more by being left unsaid. The paper concludes with a speculative essay on the necessary reductions and revisions that go into the making, and reading, of culturally instrumentalized monuments.