Systematic air reconnaissance of Romano-British sites has continued during the last few years, with results that are summarized in this paper which supplements accounts of earlier surveys already published in this Journal. In both the summers of 1963 and 1964 a prolonged dry spell affected much of eastern Scotland, but this region apart, the weather was not particularly favourable for the development of crop marks in the period under review: the dry spell in central and southern England in 1964 came too late to affect the cereal crops, but was the cause of remarkable differential growth in certain roots, particularly beet.

The greatest gain in information is in the military zone of north Britain, where photography repeated year by year never fails to yield discoveries: in the civil districts of the Province, Romano-British settlements and their agriculture are the most rewarding subjects to study. Nearly every feature here described has been examined on the ground, for only so can an accurate impression be gained of a site in relation to its surroundings: except where noted otherwise, no remains are ordinarily visible on the surface. The records and photographs on which this account is based are housed in the offices of the Committee for Aerial Photography of the University of Cambridge.

This paper considers the representation of Achilles in Roman poetry and art and, in particular, Roman interest in his childhood, culminating in the ‘exposure’ on Scyros. It is argued that common features in literature and art support the existence of illustrated mythographic handbooks. The relationship of Statius' Achilleid to the cycle of scenes representing Achilles' early years known from wall-paintings, mosaics, sarcophagi and the Kaiseraugst plate is discussed. Although the surviving book of the Achilleid concerns the pre-Troy years, it is suggested that Statius' real focus was the Trojan War itself.

This paper examines the language of power and authority in the Italian Alps, after the Roman pacification of the area in 14 b.c. The focus of the examination is an arch set up at Segusio to Augustus by a local dynast named Cottius, which allows us to consider how the incorporation of the region into the Roman Empire was perceived and presented from a ‘local’ point of view, and how we might use our interpretations to construct ideas of identity and power relationships integral to early imperial provincial administration.

One of the effects of the defeat of king Antiochus, followed by a treaty of peace whose terms limited his fleet to ten vessels of war and prevented him from sending an armed vessel to the west of the Calycadnus, had been that the slight amount of control, which the kings of Syria had formerly exercised on the coast of Cilicia Tracheia, could no longer be maintained. As yet the Romans themselves had no interest in the districts outside the Taurus. Of the southern coast of Asia Minor, Lycia was handed over to the Rhodians, Pamphylia after some delay to Eumenes, and although western Cilicia remained a part of the Syrian kingdom, the terms of the treaty effectually prevented the nominal rulers from exercising any sort of control. It is scarcely surprising that the wild tribes which inhabited both sides of the Taurus once more betook themselves to occupations which had been natural to them from the earliest times. The piracy which, according to Strabo, now began in these waters, was moreover encouraged by the Rhodians and the kings of Egypt, in so far as it crippled the Syrian power, while Rome, if we may except a tour of inspection by Scipio Aemilianus without armed force, took no cognisance of its existence. Rather the operations of the pirates, as the purveyors of slaves, were regarded, together with the similar activities of the tax-farmers, as an integral part of the economic basis of life.

In Roman religious law the word sacer indicated that the object to which it was applied was the property of a deity, taken out of the region of the profanum by the action of the state, and passed on into that of the sacrum. We have an exact account of it which can be traced through Verrius Flaccus to a scholar apparently of the age of Cicero, Aelius Gallus. “Gallus Aelius ait sacrum esse, quodcunque more atque instituto civitatis consecratum sit, sive aedis sive ara sive signum sive pecunia sive quid aliud quod dis dedicatum atque consecratum sit: quod autem privati suae religionis causa aliquid earum rerum deo dedicent, id pontifices Romanos non existimare sacrum.” This very explicit passage makes it plain that the state, through its religious authorities, had appropriated the word, and fixed it to a definite meaning, at some period when there were already temples in which deities could dwell and enjoy the possession of their own property, made over to them by the state to do them honour and propitiate them.

Not every Greek who bore a Roman name was a Roman citizen. Dittenberger formulated the rule by which the possession of Roman citizenship may be inferred. He writes of the inscription Κορνήλιος Άφροδεισιεὺς ἐποίει

‘Da auch kein Cognomen steht, ist der Gentilname offenbar nicht als solcher, sondern als Individualname gebraucht, was in römischer Zeit in Griechenland zuweilen vorkommt und da am sichersten zu erkennen ist, wo der Vatername im Genetiv dazutritt (Αντώνιος Μενάνδρου, CIA iii, 1133), oder der Name selbst ‘patronymisch verwendet wird (Βειτάλιος Πομπωνίου, IG Sept. i, 2445), oder beides zugleich stattfindet (Αντώνιος Άντωνίου, CIA iii, 1120). Alles dies hat bei einem wirklichen Gentilnamen absolut keinen Sinn; aber auch die Bezeichnung eines Griechen bloss mit einem nomen gentile kann nur so verstanden werden, dass dies an Stelle eines griechischen Individualnamens gebraucht ist. Folgeweise hat man in diesen Fällen auch nicht das mindeste Recht, aus dem lateinischen Namen auf den Besitz des römischen Bürgerrechts zu schliessen.’

The following list of the colonies planted in this period can be made (a name in italics indicates that the colony was of the Latin type):

194 Puteoli, Salernum, Buxentum, Liternum, Volturnum, Sipontum, Tempsa, Croton (Livy xxxiv, 45; cf. xxxii, 29, 3). ca. 194 Pyrgi (see below, p. 28).

193 Copia (Livy xxxv, 9, 7; cf. xxxiv, 53, 1).

192 Vibo Valentia (Livy xxxv, 40, 5; cf. xxxiv, 53, 1).

189 Bononia (Livy xxxvii, 57, 7; cf. 47, 2).

184 Pisaurum, Potentia (Livy xxxix, 44, 10).

183 Mutina, Parma, Saturnia (Livy xxxix, 55).

181 Gravisca (Livy xl, 29, 1), Aquileia (Livy xl, 34, 2; cf. xxxix 55, 4).

177 Luna (Livy xli, 13, 4).

The Iberian peninsula is a key region that has the potential to transform fundamentally our understanding of the Roman Empire. The longevity of the Roman presence in Iberia, the huge geographical variety of its regions, and the cultural differences between its peoples make it ideal for understanding the genesis, development, and disintegration of the Roman Empire as a whole. The transformation of regional infrastructure in Spain and Portugal during the 1980s and 1990s has generated much new archaeological information. This is particularly true of the major cities, where intensive urban development has greatly enhanced our understanding of their layout and development during the historic periods. In the countryside too, the expansion of the road networks, EU-inspired changes in crop quotas, and the intensification of mechanized farming have all had a major impact and substantially increased the number of known villas and rural settlements.

Readings of Cicero's ad Fam. 15 commonly focus on Cicero's bid for a supplicatio in 51 b.c.e., which supplies this book of letters with one of its most dominant refrains. Yet this emphasis sits oddly with the book's position within the letter collection as a whole. This article argues that whoever organized the books of the ad Fam. into sequence has invested the idea of the supplicatio, and of Cicero's aspiration for a triumph, with a new metaphorical significance that it would not have had at the time of the letters’ writing. My reading attempts to locate this retrospective significance and to trace the portrait of Cicero that emerges from it.

Certificates of sacrifice (libelli) were produced during the so-called persecution of Decius (a.d. 250), which is documented through the testimony of Christian authors and through original certificates preserved on papyrus. The aim of this article is to offer a more detailed perspective on some specific points in the procedure as regards the production of the papyri. Although Decius’ edict did not produce an instant and decisive change in the religious balance of the Empire, the procedure that was put in place nonetheless testifies to the effectiveness of the existing structure, and also to the capacity of the officials to adapt this structure so as to obtain maximum compliance from the population.

The subject of this essay is not Roman gardens, their reconstruction or restoration, but Roman gardening. This must be found on the page, and specifically in the work of Columella, who has more to say on this aspect of Country Life than the rest of Classical Antiquity put together — literally more, in quantity, but also, and more to the point, more to the point.

Reference to Columella's Garden always means the poem of 436 hexameters that bursts into the prose De re rustica as Book 10. It appears on its own in a cluster of manuscripts, and has regularly been read as a free-standing composition. In this paper, I resist this sin of excerption, to explore the role of gardening on Columella's farm.

A good deal of attention has recently been paid to the Romano-British House of the type known as ‘basilican’ or ‘basilical,’ the long barn-like building with a fairly broad central nave and a pair of side-aisles, often bratticed off so as to form separate rooms, which sometimes extend right across the body of the hall. So far as we know the distribution of this type in bulk is restricted to the south of England. But it does occur so far north as Mansfield Woodhouse, in Nottinghamshire. On the Continent it is rare: but the examples are widely distributed, in such a way as to suggest that all is not yet known about the way in which these houses spread. Most of these houses, however, are situated in Britain, and here they are sometimes alone, but quite often associated with the smaller type of Roman villa, serving as outbuildings or servants' quarters.

A recent study of the Theodosian Code, which includes the identification of constitutions composed by Ausonius (A.D. 375 to 377) and Nicomachus Flavianus (A.D. 388 to 390) as quaestors prompts a fresh interpretation of the Historia Augusta and its author, whom I shall call Scriptor. On this interpretation his work is subtler than is generally conceded. The enigmatic series of biographies meant, and was intended to mean, different things to different people: to the vulgar it was an entertaining and often salacious series of lives interspersed with jokes; to the author an enjoyable exercise in teasing others and not least himself; to the insider a set of puzzles behind which lurked personal and political allusions, but also a reflection on certain political themes: the role of the Roman senate and urban prefecture, the importance of regular administration, the overriding need to defend Gaul and the west.

Two of the Herculaneum Tablets, though fragmentary and obscure, furnish evidence that justifies a re-examination of the role played in Roman law and society by the institution which is the subject of this paper:

Tab. Herc. LXXXIII:

L. V[e]nidius En[ny]chus testand[i ca]usa dixs[i]t

[L.] An[n]io Rufo se honoris ius emerere [ut]

si vellet ex numero decurionum aut au[gus]-

talium nominatis a se decem de petition[ibus]

nostris discep[t]atorem dicas ra[t]ione posc[

[…]e H[S] M[‐]me sibi debere s[t]i[puletur] …

LXXXIV:

…] quem et superius nom[i]-

n[a]s[ti…] Fes[ti]nium Proculum

disc[e]ptatorem paratus sum ire,

si minus necessario c[oa]ctus a te spo(n)-

sionem tecum faciam. VAC.