When we speak of the style of an author, and especially of a great author, we mean the sum total of his linguistic, stylistic and artistic means of expression; we thus do not think purely of the literary tendency or school to which he belongs, or even only of his linguistic usage, his grammar and vocabulary. None the less these last-named factors are of great importance, and it will perhaps be appropriate to start with them.

I need not remind you that the style of Tacitus, taken as a whole, bears the general impress of the so-called Silver Age in its most typical form as developed by Seneca. We all know that by that time the long Ciceronian and Livian periods had been given up; in their place we find short, concentrated sentences, often joined to one another asyndetically, and in the more important passages these sentences are condensed into telling, emphatic, sententiae. So, too, in the choice of words all commonplace and popular expressions are avoided; instead, expressions and constructions from poetry are borrowed to a much greater extent than in Cicero's time.

It is with considerable reluctance that I offer a few comments on the possible significance of the Flavian reliefs discovered between 1937 and 1939 close by the Palazzo della Cancelleria in Rome. For the interpretation of monuments such as these is largely subjective; and, in a matter on which any student may claim as good a right to his own opinion as any other, the use of space in this Journal to make suggestions which few may think convincing needs special justification. That justification must be found in the encouragement to ventilate the ideas which follow (ideas first aired before the Anglo-Swedish Classical Conference at Lund in August, 1947) given me by various friends—particularly Dr. Arvid Andrén, Professors Axel Boëthius and Einar Gjerstad, Dr. P. G. Hamberg, and Professors A. D. Nock and A. W. Persson. None of these gentlemen should be assumed to agree with any of my conclusions, but to all of them my hearty thanks for useful discussion are due and are hereby offered. Furthermore, it must be made plain that these remarks are not intended even to touch on the problems connected with the development of Roman art in the Flavian age to the evidence for which these friezes are a most notable addition. They are confined to the question, What are the reliefs about ?

In September, 1938, Dr. J. K. St. Joseph, in retracing the ‘Roman way’ described by Roy as ‘leading from the neighbourhood of Lanark … towards the gorge of Loudon-hill, and so into Airshire’, identified the site of a reputed Roman ‘camp’ on a small plateau overlooking the ‘gorge’ on the south. It was at once arranged with the Glasgow Archaeological Society that trial trenches should be dug under his supervision. These proved that the enclosure was, in fact, a Roman fort, and produced some fragments of pottery which suggested that the site had been occupied in the Flavian as well as the Antonine period. There the matter had to rest for the duration of the war, and it was September, 1946, before Dr. St. Joseph's excavations for the Glasgow Society could be resumed. It is too soon yet for a coherent plan of the complicated remains to be laid down, but enough has been done to show that an Antonine fort with an interior area of between two and three acres had been preceded by at least two earlier enclosures ; and a substantial collection of datable pottery, produced partly by these excavations and partly by the encroachment of a gravel-quarry upon the north corner of the site, includes a considerable proportion of Flavian pieces—estimated at about one-third by Miss Anne Robertson, who is in charge of the small finds.

The significance of this for the history of the early occupation of Scotland is dealt with in a report on various excavations and surveys which will be published soon by the Glasgow Society. The purpose of this paper is to draw attention to the guidance which the discoveries at Loudoun Hill seem to offer for the interpretation of Tacitus' account of one of the campaigns of Agricola which preceded the occupation.

On 15th August 1947 there came to light, during dredging operations in the River Wensum at Worthing, 15 miles N.W. of Norwich (fig. 2), a Roman decorated helmet, which is possibly the first military object of the Roman period to be found in Norfolk. The site and circumstances of the discovery, and the other finds made nearby, are described below (p. 26). To the fact of its having been sealed in a bed of peat under several feet of shingle we doubtless owe the remarkably fine state of preservation in which the helmet has survived.

Dr. A. A. Moss, who analysed the helmet in the Research Laboratory of the British Museum, has pronounced it to be of brass low in zinc content and corresponding approximately in composition to the alloy now called gilding metal. It weighs 1 lb. 5⅝ oz. and is 25·1 cm. in height, including the crest, 24·2 cm. in length, from back to front, and 20·2 cm. in its greatest width. The average thickness of the metal is from 1 to 1·5 mm.

A century ago, on the last day of 1848, there died Gottfried Hermann, the greatest classical scholar of his time. As a small token of homage to his memory some brief remarks on his contribution to the study of early Latin poetry may not be out of place here.

Hermann, who owes his fame to his work on Greek poetry, had a knowledge of the language of Rome and an instinctive sense of its potentialities such as few scholars possessed. He spoke and wrote Latin with lucidity, ease, and grace: it was to him the natural medium for the expression of his thought. A keen interest in Plautus had been roused in him at an early stage by his teacher Reiz, who was the first after an interval of darkness to rekindle Bentley's torch. Late in life, looking back over more than fifty years, Hermann said: ‘Plautum praeceptor meus Reizius pro sponsa mihi esse voluit.’ When Reiz was engaged in correcting the proofs of his edition of the Rudens he used the young Hermann as his amanuensis. Hermann (Elementa doctrinae metricae p. xiii) has left us a delightful picture of this collaboration: on the one side the elderly professor, all kindliness and modesty, distrustful of himself, relying on painstaking care and meticulous circumspection; on the other the impetuous youngster, impatient of tiresome hesitation and confident that his divination and his strong rhythmical instinct were enough to recover the metre and the true reading of a controversial passage.

Mr. Clifford Pember's enthusiastic and attractive presentation of his reconstruction of this seaside residence (Pliny, Ep. ii, 17), in the Illustrated London News, no. 5653 (23 August, 1947), 220–1, together with his skilfully executed model now exhibited at the Ashmolean Museum, is sure to render good service to Roman studies: partly through directing the attention of the larger public to one of the most significant literary and administrative personalities of the age of Trajan, and partly as an affirmation of faith in the possibility of using the indications in the famous letter for the purpose of a reconstruction, not only graphic but plastic, of the epistolographer's beloved retreat: a reaction from the extreme view of some recent scholars, e.g. A. M. Guillemin, that the letter in question is so profoundly steeped in the conventions of the literary genre to which it belongs as to defy practical interpretation—that it is less a description of an actual villa than a gesture of politeness towards a friend.

It is known that the Greeks found the means of time-reckoning when they began to observe and to record the rising and setting of the stars. Such recording had already been made in Babylonia and Egypt and taken up in Greece (and further developed) by Hesiod, Democritus, Eudoxus, and Ptolemy. Our knowledge of what they achieved was based until the end of the nineteenth century on the calendars of Geminus, Ptolemy, Aetius Amidenus, the Quintilii, Clodius Tuscus (and on some occasional references in other writers). In recent decades further examples have been found in astrological manuscripts and in papyri, amongst which the Calendar of Antiochus and that of the Pap. Hibeh 27 are the most prominent. Professor Rehm in his admirable Parapegmastudien has recently shown how much can be learnt from the simple entries in calendars about time-reckoning, astronomy, and, in general, about the cosmic system of a nation or a period. Religious entries on the other hand (which are of great importance for the origin and development of festivals) are less frequent—we find in the Hibeh Papyrus a number of local Egyptian festivals and in the Calendar of Antiochus two festivals of the Sun and a festival of the Nile.

If this note should prove persuasive, the credit will not belong to me; if not, I must accept the blame for publishing something not published by its author.

Recently I acquired an offprint of Cumont's article ‘La plus ancienne géographie astrologique’ (Klio ix, 1909, 263–273) which deals with the doctrine that divides up the various countries among the signs of the zodiac. On p. 265, where the list of Paulus Alexandrinus (which I reproduce below in the left column) is given, I found a marginal note (here on the right) in the hand of the late Professor F. C. Burkitt:—

Burkitt's opinion obviously was that, if we want to understand this list of the Acts, we must turn to astrological geography. This seemed a convincing suggestion and became even more convincing when I found how this passage had puzzled the commentators. Some of them felt that the writer meant to say ‘the whole oecumene’, but they could not explain why he mentions just these countries. What follows is intended to show that Burkitt's suggestion is sound.

It is surprising that so little study should have been devoted to the navy of the later Empire. Since new information has now become available, it would seem a favourable opportunity to consider afresh the structure of the warships of the imperial fleets. The ancient sources may be divided into three main categories. The first is represented by that invaluable collection of tenth century naval handbooks which have recently been edited by M. Dain. Most important for our present purposes are the Περὶ θαλασσομαχίας of the Emperor Leo VI, which may probably be dated to 905–6, and the anonymous Παρὰ Βασιλείον Πατρικίου καὶ Παρακοιμωμένου (cited ‘Anon PBPP’), which M. Dain dates to the years immediately following the Cretan expedition of 960–1. This latter work was unknown to Torr when writing his Ancient Ships, and M. Dain may be said virtually to have rediscovered it. It is addressed to a certain Basil who was the natural son of Romanus Lecapenus. His bastardy stood him in good stead, and he survived the fall of his father and half-brothers. He seems to have attached himself to the party of Nicephorus Phocas, and organized a ‘fifth column’ which contributed in no small part to the overthrow of Joseph Bringas. His nefarious enterprises were finally ended by Basil II, who relegated him to a monastery. All the tenth-century naval handbooks reflect older traditions, and there seems to have been little essential difference between conditions prevailing under the Amorian and the Macedonian dynasties.

For over fifty years the standard source for the form and meaning of ancient Celtic names has been Holder's Altceltischer Sprachschatz. As usual with such encyclopaedic works, the result has been to endow it in the eyes of non-specialists with an authority sometimes greater than it deserves, fine piece of scholarship though it was in its day; for there is a good deal in Holder which Celticists now know to be mistaken. He made much use of the opinions of Stokes, Rhys, and Arbois de Jubainville; and these are by now often out of date. It is important that historians should realize this. The study of British place-names has made remarkable progress of late years, but the Celtic side of it has not kept pace with the rest; for place-name scholars very rarely have any first-hand knowledge of Celtic historical grammar. Hence even in the best recent works on our place-names the Celtic etymologies are sometimes unsound, because the authors put too much reliance in obsolete or untrustworthy authorities. The present article is a short list of addenda and corrigenda to Holder and other such works, in respect of a few Romano-British names whose Celtic etymologies seem particularly to need revision. The forms taken as the starting points are those given in the Ordnance Survey Map of Roman Britain; or, failing that, in Holder. References to Ptolemy are from C. Müller's edition, Paris, 1883; to the Antonine Itinerary from Otto Cuntz's, Leipzig, 1929 (also to K. Miller, Itineraria Romana, Stuttgart, 1916); to the Peutinger map from Miller's edition ibid.; to the Notitia Dignitatum from O. Seeck's, Berlin, 1876; and to Ravennas from J. Schnetz's, Leipzig, 1930.

To the student of the art of imperial Rome, and in particular to the student whose views are founded on the monuments of Rome itself, the age of the Severi is often felt to be one of promise rather than fulfilment. It is not until the latter part of the third century, on the eve of the new age, that the pagan architecture of the imperial capital comes to its final, rich flowering in such monuments as the Aurelian Walls, the Baths of Diocletian, and the Basilica of Maxentius. The Baths of Caracalla, the additions to the Flavian Palace on the Palatine and the vanished Septizonium remind us that in the meanwhile monumental architecture was dormant only; but the centre of interest and of experiment has shifted to more practical fields; and it is rather to the houses and warehouses of Ostia that we have to look for evidence of the continued development of Roman architectural ideas. In the field of sculpture we are somewhat better served.