Our knowledge of the Jewish Revolt in A.D. 115–117, derived formerly from scanty literary sources only, has been considerably enriched during the last few decades by new evidence, papyrological, epigraphical, and archaeological and the course of the events in the countries of the Jewish Diaspora can now be ascertained in fuller detail than was possible before.

The purpose of this paper is to inquire into the general aspects of the revolt.

In JRS 97 Sabine Huebner argued that the brother-sister marriages in Roman Egypt could be explained as marriages between an adopted son and a natural daughter, a widespread family strategy in the Eastern Mediterranean. Remijsen and Clarysse now return to the traditional view that Egyptians did marry their full sisters. Ancient authors considered brother-sister marriages as a peculiarity of the whole Egyptian population and, moreover, papyrological sources do not prove any connection between adoption and brother-sister marriage. Neither the household size nor the onomastic pattern in families with brother-sister marriages are consistent with the usual adoption practices of the Eastern Mediterranean.

Ill fortune bore down the family of the Labieni, and an ill repute hangs over their memory. Q. Labienus, an ally of Saturninus, perished miserably, cut down in the Curia by good citizens. His nephew, T. Labienus, Caesar's legate in Gaul from the first campaign to the last, deserted to Pompeius Magnus at the outbreak of the Civil War, conveying promises which he failed to implement, was held in scant honour by his new allies, and met his death at Munda. The son of Caesar's marshal, a renegade styling himself ‘Parthicus imperator,’ invaded the provinces of the Roman People and swept through Syria and Cilicia into Asia with an army of Parthian cavalry: he was defeated in battle and killed by Ventidius the Picene and the Marsian Poppaedius, generals of Antonius.

This article reconsiders a set of Late Roman inscriptions which record the tax liabilities of dozens of landowners in terms of post-Diocletianic fiscality. The stones, from eleven cities in the Aegean and western Asia Minor, are evaluated as evidence for the social and economic history of the Late Empire, challenging Jones' fundamental study in which the inscriptions are read as a sign of structural crisis. With their non-Egyptian provenance, the inscriptions offer unique, quantitative insights into land-ownership and labour. The inscriptions reveal surprising levels of slave labour in the eastern provinces, particularly in a new inscription from Thera. This last document allows, for the first time, an empirical analysis of the demographics of an estate-based population of slaves in antiquity.

This article presents a new interpretation of the historiographical production of Jordanes by situating it in the political and social environment of Constantinople of the years 550–552. It argues that these years were a period of crisis in Justinian's reign and that this is reflected in the pessimistic view of Roman power and the critique of Justinian's military and religious policy we can see in Jordanes’ Romana. If this prevents us from understanding Jordanes as a mouthpiece of the court, he cannot be reduced to a mere reproducer of Cassiodorus either: while there is more evidence for a close interaction between Jordanes and Cassiodorus (in particular the use of the Historia Tripartita in the Romana) than usually adduced, this is balanced by Jordanes’ explicit attempts to keep his distance from the senator. If the latter can be explained by Jordanes’ much lower social and literary status and his Moesian rather than Italian origin, which made him only a marginal member of Cassiodorus’ circle in Constantinople, the agreement between both men is the result of a confluence of views caused by the turn of the Italian war in 540–550. Jordanes, then, appears as a unique voice in what must have been a polyphony of opinions in mid-sixth-century Constantinople.

This paper discusses the widely held view that politics in fifth- and sixth-century Italy were largely driven by rivalry between the two great families of the Anicii and the Decii, supposedly following distinctive policies (pro- or anti-eastern, philo- or anti-barbarian, etc.). It is probable that individual members of these (and other) families had feuds and disagreements from time to time, but there is absolutely no evidence for continuing rivalry between Decii and Anicii as families, let alone on specific issues of public policy. Indeed by the mid-fifth century the Anicii fell into a rapid decline. The nobility continued to play a central rôle in the social and (especially) religious life of late fifth- and early sixth-century Italy. Their wealth gave them great power, but it was power that they exercised in relatively restricted, essentially traditional fields, mainly on their estates and in the city of Rome. The quite extraordinary sums they spent on games right down into the sixth century illustrate their overriding concern for popular favour at a purely local level. In this context there was continuing competition between all noble families rich enough to compete. Indeed, the barbarian kings encouraged the nobility to spend their fortunes competing with each other to the benefit of the city and population of Rome.

In this paper I wish to discuss the evidence of certain pragmatic calculations in Martial's Epigrams and Statius' Silvae, prescinding entirely from whatever literary qualities this kind of poetry may have. Specifically, the paper is concerned with the problem of presentation, and it has two parts. Part I argues that the poets' published books represent only the last and least important means of presenting poems to patrons, and collects evidence for the ways in which the poems were primarily communicated, via recitation, impromptu performance, and private brochure. Discussion of a special form of presentation, the book-dedication, is reserved for Part II. After attempting to redefine the status of the dedication in an ancient book, I will explore a contrast that is apparent between Martial's procedure and Statius'.

Any knowledge of the municipal system evolved in Italy after the Social War must turn, however we might wish it otherwise, upon the four bronze inscriptions found respectively at Tarentum, Veleia, Ateste and Heraclea. They have been much discussed, and it may seem that there is nothing more useful to be said; but the present state of opinion leaves room for doubt. To Mommsen and scholars of his generation they were at least ingenuous documents, but poorly engraved and in places obscure and inexplicable. Even that was challenged by Gradenwitz, who in a remarkable series of articles turned upon them an eye sharpened in the pursuit of interpolation in legal texts, and declared that at least two—the Lex Rubria and the Tabula Heracleensis—were products of inept draftsmen who inserted glosses and interpolations in defiance of style and sense. A. von Premerstein went further; like the Spanish charter from Urso, the Heraclea inscription was an unfinished draft of Caesar's published, after his murder, by Antony with reckless additions of his own; and more recently, the same has been urged by G. Beseler, F. Schulz and others of the Lex Rubria. The internal problems of these inscriptions are thus met by questioning their evidential value, but this seems, like a conjuror's explanation, to raise deeper mysteries than it solves.

In volume xx of the Journal (pp. 55–70) there appeared an article by Mr. Syme on the imperial finances under Domitian, Nerva and Trajan. Briefly, his object was to shift on to the shoulders of Nerva the financial embarrassment often attributed to the reign of Domitian, and also to strive for a fairer recognition in general of Domitian's qualities. The following notes deal with some of the principal points at issue, and attempt a reconsideration of the financial policy of the period.

Caesar returned to Rome from his African campaign on 25 July 46 b.c. (by the old calendar). Cicero felt comparatively secure at Rome at this time, both because of the assurances of safety he had received from Caesar and because of his intimacy with those who expected to play a role in the new administration: A. Hirtius, L. Cornelius Balbus, and the pardoned C. Cassius Longinus, M. Iunius Brutus, and P. Cornelius Dolabella. At Brutus's request he had composed a treatise on the role of oratory in the practice of republican politics (Brutus, published earlier in the year) and was at this very moment composing a panegyric on Cato. Cassius, Dolabella and Hirtius had been guests at his Tusculan villa engaged with the master in long-interrupted oratorical exercises (‘intermissis exercitationibus’, Fam. 9. 18. 3) for some time during the month, whence he ‘sent’ them to greet Caesar and put in a word for him with their familiaris.

Since its rediscovery in the late nineteenth century, the ‘Ara of Domitius Ahenobarbus’ has become a keystone in the history of Roman republican art. Following the seminal interpretation of Alfred von Domaszewski, the monument is usually understood as commemorating the key stages of the Roman census. This paper offers a fundamental reappraisal of the Ara's imagery, based on an iconographic analysis which takes into account all relevant signs of rank and status such as shoes, clothing and other attributes. From this it becomes clear that none of the three protagonists on the Ara can be identified as a censor. Consequently, the monument neither commemorated a census nor was it a censorial location. Instead, I suggest that the Ara actually shows another important political event, namely the deductio of a Roman colony which I tentatively identify as the colonia Neptunia founded by Gaius Gracchus in 123 b.c.

This paper had its origin in an attempt to elucidate the connexions of three fragmentary mould-blown glasses in the Ashmolean Museum (infra, pp. 172–3, nos. F i d and e and ii c) which bear the complimentary motto ΚΑΤΑΧΑΙΡΕ ΚΑΙ ΕΥΦΡΑΙΝΟΥ, ‘Your very good health.’ The first two of these on close examination proved to be so much alike in every detail that they must have come out of the same mould.

The meaning and implication of this passage of Livy have been so generally misunderstood, that it is worth translating and explaining it; for its true meaning is important both in itself and, perhaps, for understanding one aspect of Roman colonial policy between 190 and 180 B.C.

The passage runs as follows: ‘nouum ius eo anno a Ferentinatibus tentatum, ut Latini qui in coloniam Romanam nomina dedissent ciues Romani essent. Puteoleos Salernumque et Buxentum ascripti coloni qui nomina dederant et cum ob id se pro ciuibus Romanis ferrent, senatus iudicauit non esse eos ciues Romanos.’

Around the world, covers have become advertisements for their books. The dignity that characterizes something self-contained, lasting, hermetic — something that absorbs the reader and closes the lid over him, as it were, the way the cover of the book closes on the text — has been set aside as inappropriate to the times. The book sidles up to the reader; it no longer presents itself as existing in itself, but rather as existing for something other, and for this very reason the reader feels cheated of what is best in it. Theodor Adorno

In his last book, at the end of a successful, literary career, Martial asks in regard to his own genre of epigram: ‘quid minus esse potest?’ (‘What can be humbler?’, 12.95). Such self-disparagement is not necessarily surprising, since there is no reason to imagine that Martial's success as an epigrammatist would alter his genre's place in the traditional hierarchy of literary seriousness. Martial's denigration of his own oeuvre, however, goes beyond consciousness of epigram's status as a low genre. The epigrammatist not only registers his genre's formal rank, he develops fully articulated fictional scenarios depicting the nature of his writing and its role in society. According to the most salient and pervasive fiction characterizing Martial's work, epigram is an ephemeral form of literature embedded in specific, social contexts, and dedicated to immediate uses.

Air reconnaissance has been continued over the United Kingdom during the last four years, and this summary of results follows the same pattern as the accounts of earlier surveys already described in this Journal. The years 1969 and 1970 saw the most favourable weather for archaeological reconnaissance, particularly in the eastern half of Britain. Hopes of a good year for crop marks in 1971 vanished when the month of June turned out to be almost the wettest of this century, and then in 1972, cold, damp weather persisting from the end of May through June did not favour the development of crop marks.

Once again most of the new information has come from the military districts of Wales and the north. Understanding of military sites, both in their immediate setting and their wider significance in relation to the system to which they belong, requires some appreciation of local geography.

The following pages contain the results, not devoid of interest, if meagre in quantity, of various short visits to the valley of the Caystrus in Central Phrygia, and to the hills which bound it on the north and south. This valley formed the meeting-place of five great Anatolian roads, the northern and central trade-routes from the east, the highways to the west coast down the Maeander valley or past Akmonia or Eucarpia and Sardis, and the road to the Bosporus by way of Dorylaeum. Naturally therefore the valley of the Caystrus was traversed by many generals or governors or other persons known to history, and, little as history has recorded of the state of the valley at different periods, enough has been gleaned from various writers to enable us to fix the main features of its ancient topography. It was traversed from west to east by Cyrus the Younger and Xenophon in 401 B.C. Alexander the Great crossed it from south to north on his way from Celaenae to Gordium in 333 B.C. The battle of Ipsus was fought somewhere near its eastern end in 301 B.C. The plunder-laden army of Cn. Manlius Vulso moved slowly over it, proceeding northwards, in 191 B.C. Cicero travelled through it on his way from Synnada to Philomelium in 51 B.C. To cut short a long list, this valley was the scene of a fierce battle between the emperor Alexius I and the Turks in A.D. 1116; the account given by Anna Comnena of this campaign is the fullest record we possess on the ancient topography of the Caystrus valley, and it throws some light on places in the hills to the north.

Recent archaeological investigations have revealed that at the end of the fifth century b.c.e., Gabii, an ancient centre of Latium Vetus, was reorganised in a planned, quasi-orthogonal pattern, which constitutes an anomaly in the regional context. This is indicative of an important transformational moment in its history, representing a break from previous patterns of occupation and involving significant spatial and socio-political discontinuities with the previous settlement. This article proposes that the reorganisation reflects a moment of refoundation after a period of abandonment, an urban trajectory that can be clarified by a critical re-examination of the historical evidence, focusing on two pivotal processes: the devotio of the city by the Romans and the dynamics of early colonisation in Latium. This new interpretation not only has important implications for understanding the archaeology of Gabii and of early republican urbanism, but also sheds light on one of the ‘darkest’ ages in Roman history.

A papyrus dated to the year 8 B.C. attests the existence of the legion XXII Deiotariana and, indirectly, that of the other legions as well in the series with numbers running from XIII to XXII. It is therefore no longer necessary to say anything about the theory of Mommsen, that eight of them were raised all at once at the time of the Pannonian Revolt, and the other two after the disaster of Varus, or about the milder form in which Hardy served it up. Nobody could now wish to depart very far from the estimate of Emil Ritterling, that Augustus began his Principate with twenty-six or twenty-seven legions, or from that of Mr. Parker, that in 15 B.C. he had twenty-eight. But a general acquiescence does not preclude debate about details which, if they appear small, are never to be despised when they cast light upon imperial principle, or at least practice, and add coherence to a narrative or harmony to a picture.

There survive from a number of places in Western Asia Minor and the islands of the Aegean inscriptions recording census registrations. They are undated, but were probably engraved in the late third or early fourth century A.D., when Diocletian and his colleagues and successors are known to have been active in carrying out censuses to serve as the basis of their new system of taxation. All are fragmentary, but some are of sufficient length to yield results of some statistical value on the distribution of landed property, on the density of the agricultural population, and on the proportion of slave to free labour. In view of the extreme paucity of any statistical data for the ancient world they are worth analysis.

If any ancient historian—either Greek or Roman—made any systematic comment on the principles observed in the choice of coin types in the classical world his account has not come down to us. Aristotle, indeed, in his Politics, made a theoretical reference to coin types when he wrote ὁ γὰρ χαρακτὴρ ἐτέθη τοῦ ποσοῦ σημεῖον. This reference, though it is of characteristic Aristotelian brevity, in reality goes beyond the theory and implies the almost invariable principles of choice everywhere. For, as scholars have often noted and now generally agree, when Aristotle defined the addition of a type to a coin as a means of indicating its value, he was saying not that the type showed how great the value of the coin is, but that its very presence gives an assurance that the proper value of the coin—whatever that value might be—can be safely assumed. As G. F. Hill pointed out, and as will be seen later, ‘the importance of this apparently subtle distinction lies in its bearing on the significance of types.’