The literary sources relating to the foundation of Constantinople can be evaluated afresh if the numismatic material is reconsidered. On this subject O. Voetter, J. Maurice, and O. Seeck have already done valuable work; yet it would bear further study.

Everyone knows the little bronze coins struck on the occasion of the foundation of Constantinople on 11th May, 330, one type of which commemorates Constantinople as the mistress of the seas, while another portrays the old capital, recalling the legend of its origin, with the wolf and twins. The significance of these twin types can be grasped better in a still larger issue struck at the same time. Maurice classed these coins in the larger issue which bear the bust of Rome as having been struck at Rome, and those bearing that of Constantinople as having been struck in the latter city; and this incorrect classification has obscured the parallelism of the type, which was of great importance for imperial propaganda. It is clear that both groups were struck at Rome in the same issue.

The poll-tax (λαογραφία as it was called in Greek), was one of the most important of the many taxes levied by the Romans on their Egyptian subjects. In his work on Taxation in Egypt, Mr. S. L. Wallace states: ‘There are more receipts for payment of λαογραφία extant than for any other tax paid in money.’ The view prevailing among papyrologists during the earlier years of the present century was that it was an impost which marked the inferior status of the Egyptians. They were dediticii, subdued by force of arms, and moreover excluded from the possibility of obtaining the Roman citizenship except in so far as they could succeed in first procuring admission to the citizen body of Alexandria. Thus, in his Grundzüge, published in 1912, Wilcken writes: ‘[Die Ägypter] wurden wieder zurückgeworfen in die niedrige Stellung, die sie unter den ersten Ptolemäern eingenommen hatten. Zwar hatten sie auch damals schon eine kopfsteuerartige Auflage zahlen müssen, aber abgesehen davon, dass die von Augustus eingeführte Kopfsteuer (λαογραφία) neu und wahrscheinlich strenger organisiert wurde, waren die Ägypter jetzt als peregrini dediticii als die Pariaklasse gebrandmarkt.’ When, therefore, P Giss. 40 restored to us, though in an unfortunately fragmentary form, the actual text of the Constitutio Antoniniana, and one clause of this famous edict was construed by the editor as excluding the dediticii from Caracalla's gift of the Roman citizenship, it was naturally concluded, alike by the editor and by all other scholars, that the Egyptians as a mass did not receive the citizenship but continued as (to use Wilcken's expression) a pariah class.

In this article there is presented a small group of hitherto unpublished tax receipts from Egypt which belong to A.D. 309 and 314. They come from the archive of Aurelios Isidoros, a farmer and occasional local office-holder of the village of Karanis, and with the other papyri of the same collection are in the possession of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. The chief interest which these texts hold for students of Byzantine Egypt lies in the picture which they provide of the tax-collecting process and of the handling of government grain in Egypt under the tax system introduced by Diocletian, and in particular the new information which they furnish on the matter of supplementary fees and transportation charges.

The receipts of the year 309 are for deliveries of barley; that of 314 is for the payment of money for the village quota of clothing requisitioned for military purposes. We shall take up the barley receipts first, and then that for the price of the clothing.

A scholar usually manages at some period in his life to read Xenophon's Cyropaedia, but probably rarely re-reads it. For the Cyropaedia has suffered from a change of fashion; once it was regularly read, and an admirable school commentary upon it by H. A. Holden is still purchasable. Now it is certainly not a school book, and it was mere chance brought me upon a passage which seems to raise questions about the development and propagation of a tradition, which may interest the great and friendly scholar to whom this volume is dedicated. But the topic ranges over so many territories into which I have no right to enter that I must ask him to forgive me for offering him a short essay rather than a rigorously reasoned and documented statement; I wish merely to put before him two texts, with brief observations.

In the Cyropaedia Xenophon depicts an ideal ruler. One important thing about that ruler is that he must not only be in every way a better man than those whom he commands, but must be admittedly and visibly so.

The famous Varangian corps of mercenary soldiers in the service of the emperors of Byzantium is well known in its earlier days to have been recruited from the Scandinavian north. Forging their way from their own inhospitable lands the Northmen, first of all from Sweden, reached the Volga and the lands even to. the south of the Caspian; later by the ‘East Way’, called also the ‘Varangian Way’, they came down through Russia by way of the Dnieper and the Black Sea to Constantinople, first as pirates, then as traders, and finally as the most trusted guards of the imperial person. Later again they ventured on the all-sea route, the ‘West Way’, and also opened a path across Europe, either over the Alps or by way of Provence, and so through Italy: this was the ‘Southern Way’, otherwise called the ‘Way by Rome’ But in the eleventh century, in the first half of which Harald Hardrada, the most famous of all the Varangians, was in the imperial service, there was a certain change; recruits began to come increasingly from England.

The first actual mention of the English name seems to be in a bull issued by the Emperor Alexios in 1088 to Christodoulos, the Abbot of the Monastery on Patmos.

The Gospel according to Luke contains two passages which allude, with some particularity, to a forthcoming siege and destruction of Jerusalem; viz. XIX, 42–4, XXI, 20–4.

The latter of these two passages (with which we may conveniently begin) stands in a context where Luke, to all appearance, is using the Gospel according to Mark as a source. The Marcan parallel to Luke XXI, 20–24 forms part of what is often called the ‘Synoptic Apocalypse’, or, more appropriately, the ‘Apocalyptic Discourse’, since its literary form is not that of an apocalypse; it is in the main a Mahnrede making use of apocalyptic motives, and concluding with a few sentences of straightforward prediction in the apocalyptic manner (XIII, 24–7).

The last half-century has seen a remarkable advance in our knowledge of the magical beliefs and practices of later antiquity. But in comparison with this general progress the special branch of magic known as theurgy has been relatively neglected and is still imperfectly understood. The first step towards understanding it was taken more than fifty years ago by Wilhelm Kroll, when he collected and discussed the fragments of the Chaldaean Oracles. Since then the late Professor Joseph Bidez has disinterred and explained a number of interesting Byzantine texts, mainly from Psellus, which appear to derive from Proclus' lost commentary on the Chaldaean Oracles, perhaps through the work of Proclus' Christian opponent, Procopius of Gaza; and Hopfner and Eitrem have made valuable contributions, especially in calling attention to the many common features linking theurgy with the Greco-Egyptian magic of the papyri. But much is still obscure, and is likely to remain so until the scattered texts bearing on theurgy have been collected and studied as a whole (a task which Bidez seems to have contemplated, but left unaccomplished at his death). The present paper does not aim at completeness, still less at finality, but only at (i) clarifying the relationship between Neoplatonism and theurgy in their historical development, and (ii) examining the actual modus operandi in what seem to have been the two main branches of theurgy.

John Mauropous, an eleventh-century Metropolitan of Euchaïta, has long been commemorated in the service books of the Orthodox Church. The Synaxarion for the Office of Orthros on 30th January, the day dedicated to the Three Fathers, St. Basil the Great, St. Gregory the Theologian, and St. John Chrysostom, tells how the festival was instituted by Mauropous and describes him as ‘the well-known John, a man of great repute and well-versed in the learning of the Hellenes, as his writings show, and moreover one who has attained to the highest virtue’. In western Europe something was known of him certainly as early as the end of the sixteenth century; his iambic poems were published for the first time by an Englishman in 1610, and his ‘Vita S. Dorothei’ in the Acta Sanctorum in 1695. But it was not until the second half of the nineteenth century that scholars were really able to form some idea of the character and achievement of this Metropolitan of Euchaïta. Particularly important were two publications: Sathas' edition in 1876 of Michael Psellus' oration on John, and Paul de Lagarde's edition in 1882 of some of John's own writings. This last contained not only the works already printed, but a number of hitherto unpublished sermons and letters, together with the constitution of the Faculty of Law in the University of Constantinople, and a short introduction containing part of an etymological poem. But there remained, and still remains, one significant omission: John's canons have been almost consistently neglected.

“What great profit and delight is like to arise to the Reader in perusing this History, let himself imagine, when he shal meet here with Prudent Letters & Dispatches from Princes and Generals; Wise Laws and Provisions for the publique Safety; Politick Leagues and Confederacies to secure Interests; Elegant Speeches and Exhortations to animate the Souldier; Notable Examples of Vices and Virtues; Inevitable Stratagems to circumvent Adversaries; Lively Descriptions of the Scituations of Countries, Cities, Buildings, Hils, Seas, Rivers, and Fountains; Various and Interchangeable Turns and Inconstancies of Wars and Fortunes; in a word, all the Treasury and Wardrobe that can inrich and beautifie a History.”

Such is the preface to Holcroft' version of Procopius' History (1653), in which he himself enumerates ‘Deinotes’, ‘Mythopoiia’, ‘Aletheia’, as proper characteristics of orator, poet, and historian respectively, announcing the intention of concealing nothing of delinquencies even of closest friends.

Counsel often open their address with the words ‘May it please your Lordship’, though they doubt whether their client's merit justifies such conventional optimism. In submitting this slight tribute of admiration and gratitude to Norman Baynes, I have similar feelings, but I hope that the subject at least will find favour with one who, as lawyers are proud to remember, is one of themselves as well as a famous historian.

It may not be actually stated that the wicked uncle of the fairy tale was also a guardian, but probably he was; for uncles are the commonest guardians in all ages, and their perfidy is a typical example of human wickedness. Among those who suspected them most were, according to our tradition, the ancient lawgivers of Greece; for guardianship and the connected subject of second marriages occupy quite a noticeable place in the scanty records of both Solon and Charondas. Solon, according to Diogenes Laertius, laid down that a guardian must not marry the mother of his ward, and that the person who would inherit from the ward must not be his guardian.

Only the learning, the wisdom, and the wit of Professor N. H. Baynes could do full justice to the influence of Tacitus on modern political and historical thought. As no ancient historian of our time is so interested in the legacy of Classical Antiquity as Professor Baynes, it has seemed not inappropriate to bring to him from my native Piedmont the following contribution to the history of Tacitus' influence. An earlier chapter of the same history was written in this Journal (VI, 196 ff.), by Professor F. J. Haverfield.

Pontano, at the end of the fifteenth century writes: ‘Curtium ac Taciturn quasi mutilatas videmus statuas; licetque suspicari potius ac coniicere quam omnino de iis iudicium aliquod absolutum ac certum tradere.’ After the editio princeps of the first books of the Annals (1515), it became evident that Tacitus had a message for contemporaries. As Guicciardini said: ‘Insegna molto bene Cornelio Tacito a chi vive sotto a' tiranni il modo di vivere e governarsi prudentemente, cosi come insegna a' tiranni e' modi di fondare la tirannide.’