That the close connection between military organization and state-organization has received little attention in this country is less to be wondered at, because this country is an exception to the rule. Being protected by its insular situation, it has had no need of a large standing army within its boundaries. On the Continent the connection appears clearly. Feudal organization was bound up with the art of fighting by knights, and was upset as much by the invention of guns and gunpowder as by economic development: monarchy was supported by mercenary armies, and the men who introduced compulsory service have more than others contributed to the founding of democracy.

But I leave it to others to judge modern history according to their own opinions, and turn to ancient history, which I know better and where the connection is more obvious, because warfare was an almost constant occupation in ancient states and military service a duty imposed upon the citizens.

The circumstances surrounding one of the most grievous disgraces which ever befel a Roman army are familiar. In 321 B.C. the so called Second Samnite War was at its height. The Roman consuls, while at Calatia with their armies, received news that the enemy forces were in Apulia under the new Samnite general, Gavius Pontius. Pushing forward, either in the hope of winning a decisive victory on the Apulian plains, or in order to relieve the pressure on the allied city of Luceria, they advanced into a valley which had but two exits: on trying to get out of this defile, they found both entrances blocked. Doubtless the army made attempts to fight its way out of the encircling Samnite ring, but they proved unavailing. To avert death by starvation, the consuls surrendered. Pontius, being in a position to dictate his own terms, demanded that Roman garrisons should be withdrawn from territory which the Samnites regarded as theirs, while the Romans were not to re-open the war: in addition he took six hundred Roman knights as hostages, disarmed the Roman army and sent it ‘under the yoke.’

The Romans of later times knew very little about the origins of their coinage. Thus, Pliny the Elder could assign the first issue of bronze to Servius Tullius, and the mint-master of Trajan could mistake denarii of somewhere near 200 B.C. for issues of Horatius Cocles and Decius Mus. Apart from isolated notices in metrological and other writers, we have a limited amount of coherent tradition, notably in Pliny the Elder, Varro and Festus, which increases in value as it approaches the Empire. But, even here, we do not find the sure ground on which we should choose to construct our system. The tradition, we all agree, has some relation to facts, and therefore some value: but it is impossible to trust it blindly—it must be checked and criticized and, if need be, adapted to fit the evidence of the coins themselves.

The careers of Roman senators born in the Eastern half of the Empire are interesting and worthy of study for several reasons. They include men who influenced affairs in such different ways as Herodes Atticus and Avidius Cassius, and the rarity of the honour, in the earlier cases at least, led to an unusually large output of inscriptions which form a good source of information as well as an attractive field for conjecture. Besides this, the purely prosopographical interest, it is possible by following up and seeking to account for the gradual increase of the number in connection with other evidence, to supplement our rather meagre knowledge of life in the Greek East, and also, in the period before the death of M. Aurelius, to watch the working of the diarchy at a time when the Senate's prestige was at its highest and the emperors were most concerned to maintain its efficiency.

The paintings in the triclinium of the Villa Item, a dwelling-house excavated in 1909 outside the Porta Ercolanese at Pompeii, have not only often been published and discussed by foreign scholars, but they have also formed the subject of an important paper in this Journal. The artistic qualities of the paintings have been ably set forth: it has been established beyond all doubt that the subject they depict is some form of Dionysiac initiation: and, of the detailed interpretations of the first seven of the individual scenes, those originally put forward by de Petra and accepted, modified or developed by Mrs. Tillyard appear, so far as they go, to be unquestionably on the right lines. A fresh study of the Villa Item frescoes would seem, however, to be justified by the fact that the majority of previous writers have confined their attention almost entirely to the first seven scenes—the three to the east of the entrance on the north wall (fig. 3), the three on the east wall and the one to the east of the window on the south wall, to which the last figure on the east wall, the winged figure with the whip, undoubtedly belongs.