In Roman poetry of the late Republic and the Augustan age, allusiveness was an essential element in poetic technique. In Virgil in particular there is an immense debt to earlier writers for words, phrases and rhythms, all contributing to the poet's effect; although the reader's understanding of the basic meaning of the lines suffers little from his limited awareness of the more erudite allusions. The same thing is true of Horace, with the added consideration that in satire, as in Athenian Old Comedy, burlesque and parody play an important part. Only occasionally is there reason to suspect that our ignorance of Lucilius or other lost writers, Greek or Latin, prevents us from recognizing the whole tone of a passage. It is difficult to ascertain whether Lucilius himself had made literary borrowing an essential element in the satirist's technique; but it must be accepted as such from Horace onwards.

This article examines the burning of written material at Rome from the Republican period until the rise of Christianity, using the lens of book history. It considers why and how Romans burned written material, gathering for the first time all testimony of burning any kind of writing, and examines responses to these burnings in ancient discourse. A capacious, book-historical approach to Roman book-burning shows that differences in practice and uses — of books as opposed to documents, for example — account for the different consequences Romans saw for burning different written media.

Fiscal explanations often given for Rome's first coins fail to account for the shape of monetary development. Nothing in the mid-republican budget matches the small scale and sporadic production of Roman coins during the early third century, or coinage's rapid expansion in the lead-up to the Second Punic War. Instead, I locate early Roman coinage within a broader reconfiguration of wealth and political power during the early phases of imperial expansion. Coins facilitated the exchange of wealth in the absence of strong social ties; conquest opened up Roman society to vast wealth of this order while also sparking debate about wealth's integration into the political community. Archaeological and textual evidence permits us to trace the contested and uneven development of elite accommodation to impersonal wealth during the third century. This context, I argue, offers the best explanation for Rome's initial coins.

I. Cato's title and commission: the problem.

II. Cic., fam. XIII, 48: C. Sextilius Rufus, quaestor in Cyprus, and his family.

III. The arrangements for annexation and administration.

IV. The precedent: P. Lentulus Marcellinus and Cyrene.

In 58 B.C. M. Cato, then of tribunician standing, was sent to Cyprus to confiscate and realize the King's property. The mission, with its political context, has been frequently discussed—best by S. I. Oost, with his usual historical insight and critical acumen. The present article proposes to base itself on Oost's discussion and investigate some further matters that did not come within the scope of his enquiry.

I

We must start with Cato's title, on which the truth has only quite recently been recognized. Amid dozens of references to the famous mission, we have only two that purport to give his title accurately. The author of de uiris illustribus tells us that Cato was sent to Cyprus as quaestor. Since he is notoriously inaccurate in such matters, to the confusion of much modern scholarship, this would not be worth a great deal by itself. But it is fully supported by Velleius, who in fact gives more details: Clodius passed a law that Cato, as quaestor with praetorian status, and with a quaestor to assist him, should be sent to Cyprus to strip Ptolemy of his kingdom.

When L. Aemilius Paulus visited Delphi after the crowning victory of Pydna his eye rested on a lofty pedestal, upon which his vanquished enemy, Perseus, was intending to set up a golden statue of himself. He determined that his own figure should occupy the vacant place, and his orders to this effect were carried out. No trace of the statue (or group) has been recovered, but there are considerable remains of the sculptured frieze, representing the cavalry skirmish which formed the prelude to the battle of Pydna, and it has been possible to reconstruct the monument in the Museum at Delphi with the surviving blocks and a free use of plaster to fill the gaps (fig. 54 and plate xx).

The aim of this paper is to summarize the available information on the types of plough used in Roman Britain. There are a number of sources for such a study. Much of our knowledge of the basic structure of these early ploughs comes from the finely preserved Iron-Age examples which have been found in Scandinavian peat bogs. These also serve to supplement and clarify the most detailed surviving description of the Roman plough, which is given by Vergil in Georgics I. A few models of the Roman period have been found in Britain and Germany. Of major importance, of course, are the surviving parts of Romano-British ploughs (which are all, in fact, either shares or coulters), and material from Roman Europe can be used to amplify these. The Elder Pliny has a detailed, but difficult, section on the various types of share and occasionally he throws light on other aspects of the subject. Finally, a certain amount of information can be gained from comparisons with modern plough types.

The reign of Aemilian is one of the most obscure episodes in the dark third century of our era. ‘Obscurissime natus obscurius imperavit,’ wrote Eutropius of him, and the epigram has not lost its point to-day. But on one vexed question—the date of his reign—the coins, studied in connexion with the literary tradition, will yield an answer at least approximately certain, and from that answer results follow, which are of vital importance to the chronology of the whole succeeding period.

The duration of the reign of Aemilian was about three months. At Alexandria, where the year began on August 29th, Aemilian has not uncommon coins of year B, none of year A. This should imply that his rule did not extend far back behind the end of August. An inscription of Gemellae in Numidia shows Valerian and Gallienus as Emperors on October 22nd, 253; a detachment of Legio III Augusta, demobilized and sent home from Raetia, makes a dedication ‘pro salute Augg.’ to Victoria Augusta. We have here three pieces of evidence—all equally trustworthy. If we can succeed in combining them, we should be very near the truth.

In JRS LVI (1966) I gave a description of the Aoi Stena which was based on autopsy, and I discussed the campaigns of Rome against Philip V of Macedon in the years 200 to 198 B.C. In this paper I am concerned with the area farther north which Rome acquired in 229 B.C. and with the actions which took place there before 200 B.C. Many scholars have discussed Rome's early activities in Illyris but practically none of them has trodden the ground. My knowledge of most of the area may help me to advance more down-to-earth views of the extent of Rome's sector in Illyris and of Roman and Macedonian policies. I include some new evidence on the position of Dimallum.

The salient feature of Central Albania is the belt of coastal plain which extends from north of Lesh (Lissus) to north of the Gulf of Valona (see fig. 1). The widest and richest part of this plain is in the Myzeqija, which extends southwards from Kavajë. The Myzeqija in particular is integral to the economy of Central Albania, the area which was called Southern Illyris in the third century B.C. The transhumance of sheep has always been practised in this part of the Balkans, and the coastal plain of Albania with months of very heavy rainfall in October and March affords exceptionally fine pasturage for the winter period.

The term ecphrasis in ancient doctrine denoted any poetic or rhetorical description, including descriptions of landscape (topothesia), buildings, battles, and storms. In recent critical idiom it has been narrowed to refer specifically to literary descriptions of visual works of art. This critical focus indicates the interest of the problem of comparing the two media of literature and the visual arts. The great benefit of considering ‘ecphrasis’ in the modern sense is that it forces us to confront both the nature of the visual artistic medium and that of the verbal medium describing it.

The purpose of this paper is to put forward a new interpretation of five rock-reliefs in the province of Fars, S. Persia, which have been held to commemorate the capture of the Emperor Valerian near Edessa in A.D. 260. These reliefs may be grouped according to the number of Romans present.

Ovid's narrative of Phaethon's failed attempt prematurely to emulate his father in his unique expertise can be read as a reflection on the virtues and limits of Lucretius' philosophical poetry. The paper suggests that, while he gives much credit to the De Rerum Natura's literary quality and its striving for the sublime, Ovid also critiques the hubristic connotations of Lucretius' rejection of divine authority and agency from the workings of nature. The second part of the article explores how this particular version of the myth touches upon issues of poetic authority, political positioning, and Oedipal competition.

While lately engaged with an edition of the ‘Agricola,’ it occurred to me to enquire how far Tacitus was read, and his works copied, during the period between his lifetime and the introduction of printing. Such an enquiry is more necessary than is always realised, if one is to appreciate properly the character and importance of the manuscripts of an ancient author. One needs not only to know their dates, relationships and general merits or demerits, but also to understand what may be called their ‘background,’ that is to know how far the author in question was seriously studied and his works copied during the centuries between his own day and the Renaissance. I therefore tried to work out some account of the history of Tacitus in this respect. I have been able to do this only very briefly, but the sketch, though short, may interest some readers of our Journal, and, being more or less historical, is not alien to its proper scope. Moreover, no quite similar sketch seems to exist, either in English or, so far as I am aware, in any language.

This article summarizes some of the results of an inquiry into third-century rescripts which has been proceeding for the last seven years but of which nothing has so far been published. The main source, the Codex Justinianus, contains some 2491 items dated between A.D. 193, when we first have a substantial number of texts, and 305, which are certainly or probably private rescripts, as I shall call them, i.e. subscriptiones. These were written answers given by the emperor to petitions by private individuals on points of law. If these written answers, which were in some sense the concern of the imperial office a libellis, are reassembled from the titles under which they are grouped in the Codex, and are read in complete chronological order, the reader is struck by the fact that their style is consistent over a period which varies from a few months to several years.The periods of consistent style, however, do not coincide with the reign of a particular Augustus or Augusti. Some twenty such periods and hence some twenty third-century composers of rescripts, who are clearly not emperors, can be distinguished in this way. In half a dozen cases there is evidence, again drawn from the style of composition, that the composer is one of the jurists known to us independently from the pages of Justinian's Digest; for example, Papinian, Ulpian, Menander, Modestinus or Hermogenianus. In two cases the evidence for the identification is set out in some detail below. It seems, therefore, that the composition of rescripts of any importance was the responsibility of professional lawyers, acting in their capacity of imperial secretaries a libellis, an office which Papinian at least is known to have held.

The recent publication by A. K. Bowman and J. D. Thomas of The Vindolanda Writing Tablets (Tabulae Vindolandenses II) (1994) provides another substantial corpus of Latin from a military outpost in the early Empire. The tablets take their place alongside such important military finds as the letters of Claudius Terentianus, which are roughly of the same date, the ostraca from Bu Njem, and the ostraca from Wâdi Fawâkhir, which again are dated to the first/second centuries.

The Latin of the Vindolanda tablets has recently been discussed by H. Petersmann as a specimen of ‘Vulgar Latin’, at a conference devoted to Vulgar and Late Latin. But while the influence of spoken varieties of the language can be detected in some misspellings, and in aspects of the syntax, morphology, and lexicon of the tablets, one must resist the temptation to find ‘Vulgar Latin’ (however one defines that problematical term: see below, IX.4) as the sole or principal element of the tablets. Many of the documents were not composed by free composition, but have a formulaic structure which made little or no demand on the linguistic competence of the writer (e.g. applications for leave (166–77), the daily reports of a type found at Bu Njem, which have certain distinctive features of syntax (155–6)). Accounts and lists (178–209) too may in their syntax and format, if not necessarily in their spellings, be heavily influenced by the conventions of their genre. Moreover record-keeping of this type usually falls to individuals with a degree of education and numeracy, and their writing may have little or nothing to reveal about the spoken language which they used or heard.

(i) Introduction

For a hundred years, ancient historians have been seeking to determine the date at which Caesar's Gallic command legally expired—a date which, curiously, no ancient writer has troubled to record. Little has been added, save repetition, to the arguments used by Mommsen in favour of 1st March, 49 B.C., by Zumpt in favour of 13th November, 50 B.C., and by Hirschfeld in favour of 1st March, 50 B.C. A few ‘freaks’ have sprouted, 29th December, 50 B.C., from Judeich, and an uncertain date between 31st July and early October, 50 B.C., from Stevens. And now, instead of offering a strange or even a familiar device for untying the Gordian knot, I want to suggest that it should be cut; that there was no exact terminal date for Caesar's tenure of his command. This I can only do by challenging what most scholars are content to accept, the foundations on which Mommsen placed his own discussion of the problem. Before I proceed to the problem itself, I hope to establish, in order, the following three points : (1) that Sulla did not, as Mommsen thought, make a clean severance between magisterial office and provincial government; (2) that it was not in the nature of long-term commands under the Republic to have a specific terminal date ; and (3) that sections 36 f. of Cicero's De provinciis consularibus do not supply incontrovertible evidence for certain facts and constitutional principles, for which their evidence is often assumed to be authoritative.

The frequent use of the first person singular in the text of this article makes it necessary that we should explain how the work has been divided between us. Mr. Fell, who was resident for two years at the British School at Rome, first as Craven Student of the University of Cambridge, and then as Gilchrist Student of the Faculty of Archaeology, History and Letters, is responsible for Section A (The Via Flaminia in History), and Dr. Ashby for Section B (The Topography of the Via Flaminia from Rome to Narni). In Section C the description of the road from Narni to Forum Flaminii by Terni and Spoleto is the work of Dr. Ashby, while from Narni to Forum Flaminii by Bevagna it is the joint work of both writers: but the concluding portion of the road was studied and described by Mr. Fell alone. The whole article has, however, been carefully read by both of us.

The mint of Republican Rome was located on the Capitol somewhere in the vicinity of the temple of Juno Moneta. This is one of the best known but perhaps worst attested pieces of topographical information concerning the Republican city of Rome. The evidence that the coins of the Roman Republic were made there is exiguous to say the least. Indeed, there are only two literary sources that explicitly site the mint at Juno Moneta's temple. The first is Livy's account of the condemnation and execution of M. Manlius Capitolinus, the hero who had previously saved the Capitol from assault by the Gauls. Livy mentions that the people passed a law to the effect that no patrician would thereafter be permitted to live on the Capitol or the Arx, for Manlius' house had stood on the site where, Livy says, now stands the aedes atque officina Monetae, the temple and the workshop of Moneta. The second is contained in the Suda (s.v. Μονήτα), in a passage to be discussed below. These are the sole threads of evidence on which the location of the mint of Republican Rome hangs. Nevertheless, despite an attempt to impugn Livy's reputation for topographical accuracy, they should suffice.

It has become the accepted view that a certain group of ‘viri militares’ can be identified among the legates who governed the consular military provinces in the Roman empire. The question of these ‘specialist soldiers’ is relevant to the understanding of how appointments to military commands were made, and, more generally, to the political history of the empire. For it can be argued that ‘viri militares’ were important not only because they were responsible for the defence of the empire and could raise revolts with their armies, but also because, as a group, they were particularly influential with the emperor. And so Professor Sir Ronald Syme, to whose work we owe most for the concept of ‘viri militares’, speaks of a ‘paramount oligarchy’ that was ‘drawn in the main from the men who govern the armed provinces of Caesar’. Now, Syme recognized a wide variety of factors that might influence the selection of consular legates. However, his theory of ‘viri militares’ tends to be repeated without qualification as accepted doctrine, and in the hands of those who do not mark his caution lends itself to a rather schematic approach and mechanical solutions. This incurs the danger to which Syme himself has adverted: ‘Historians in all ages become liable through their profession to certain maladies or constraints. They cannot help making persons and events more logical than reality’.

‘Appellatus sum vicies et semel imperator.’ So the Res Gestae of Augustus declare (4,1), and they are echoed by two historical writers (Tacitus, Ann. i, 9, 2; Dio lii, 41, 4). The emperor received the last fourteen of these imperatorial acclamations after he acquired the title of Augustus (16 January 27 B.C.), and their dates have long been recognized to provide valuable clues towards constructing a full military narrative of his reign. In his commentary on the Res Gestae, Theodor Mommsen was able to identify the date and occasion of most of the salutations to the satisfaction of subsequent investigators. Nevertheless, both greater chronological precision and something more important may emerge from a new examination of all the evidence now available.