In Deuteronomy Rabba Ki Teze section 2, (ed. S. Liebermann, p. 103) we read the following passage: ‘R. Abba b. Kahana said: …. It is like unto a king who hired for himself workers and put them into his orchard, without revealing to them the wages for looking after the orchard, so that they should not pay no attention to that for which they would be paid little and concern themselves only with that for which they would be paid much. In the evening he called for each of them. He said to the first, “Under which tree did you work ?” The worker replied, “Under the pepper-tree.” “The rate for this one is one gold piece (= aureus),” [said the King]. He called to the second and asked him, “Beneath which tree did you work ?” “Under that one,” he replied. He (the King) said, “This is a perach-lavan tree [literally, a white-flower tree], and the rate for it is half a gold piece.” He called the last one and said to him, “Under which tree did you work ?” “Under this one,” he answered. “It is an olive-tree, and its rate is two hundred mana.”’

Since in this parable we begin with one gold piece and then go down to half a gold piece it would appear likely that the final sum mentioned is a quarter of a gold piece. If this albeit hypothetical supposition be accepted then it follows that ¼ aureus = 200 mana, ∴ 1 aureus = 800 mana.

The following dedications are for the most part written in Greek, and made to a god who bears apparently a Greek name; but their value lies mainly in the light that they throw upon the circumstances and fate of a Roman colony in a land where the educated spoke Greek, though the uneducated rural population long retained the use of the Phrygian language. Various writers have spoken about the inevitable fate of such a small settlement of colonists originally speaking Latin. They melted gradually into the surrounding population. After a certain lapse of years they lost the Latin language, and adopted Greek. The evidence for this formerly was fragmentary; but in the series of dedications at the Sanctuary an opportunity is offered of studying the process as it evolved itself through the centuries.

A P. Decius Subulo appears twice in the extant books of Livy. The cognomen is only given on the first occasion and there spelled ‘Subolo’; and that may well be the correct original form. The word, we are told, is Etruscan for ‘tibicen’ and we may thus deduce, despite the Oscan nomen, a partly Etruscan (and perhaps priestly) origin for the family. It will have come from one of those regions of Central Italy pervaded by Etruscan influence—perhaps Campania; but nothing is known about it. We have no further reference to this P. Decius. It would be interesting to know whether he reached the praetorship: if he lived long enough, it is quite probable, to judge by others in similar positions; but we cannot tell.

The son of this man first appears in history in an unfortunate manner. Cicero tells us of a man whom Q. Opimius (cos. 154), at some time after his consulship, mocked for his effeminacy—a charge which, according to Cicero, was undeserved and which the. young man neatly returned. The impudent retort to a consular shows that the youth must have been of some social standing. Unfortunately his name is corrupt in our manuscripts; but with the help of a citation by Nonius, Cichorius has restored it with certainty as ‘Decius’. This same man—who, in the circumstances, must be the son of the senator P. Decius Subulo— was also the butt of a joke by Scipio Aemilianus, which Cicero greatly admired, but which we cannot understand, except to see that it was probably indecent.

In the settlement of Greece after the Third Macedonian War Roman policy was at times moderate, at times harsh. On occasion the difference might represent only an individual point of view: thus the terms imposed upon Macedonia might seem generous to a Roman who contemplated the grant of ‘freedom’ to the Macedonians, the reduction of taxation and the absence of territorial aggression on Rome's part, while they might equally seem harsh to a Macedonian who felt that his sense of nationhood had been violated by Rome's creation of the four independent Republics. But towards Epirus Roman policy seems to have been marked by two successive stages, the first moderate, the second brutal. It is the purpose of this note to attempt to consider the causes which determined this change and to examine what influence the Epirote Charops exercised upon the measures which turned his country into a playground for Roman brutality and ultimately into an abomination of desolation.

In a remarkable chapter on the Roman Campagna Sir Archibald Geikie has given the facts relating to the geological formation of those hills, which were to become later the cradle of the Roman civilisation, when the volcanic platform of the Campagna, no longer increased by fresh eruptions, was carved by subaërial agencies into the topography which it presents to-day. Among such agencies, which were both chemical and biological, may be mentioned those which prepared the vegetable soil and clothed it with oaks and beeches on the hills, with laurels and myrtles along the sea-coast, and with reeds and equiseta on the banks of the river. Then came Man, who may have watched the last gigantic natural fireworks of the Alban volcanoes from Mount Soracte, which had by that time ceased to be an island.

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 year 63 has always been regarded as Cicero's year, the year in which he gained some of his most striking political successes, and in the course of which he saved the republic. Nevertheless a careful scrutiny of the evidence will convince an impartial observer that, with all his hopes of proving himself a consul popularis, Cicero was throughout the year on the defensive, that the initiative was never for a moment in his hands, and therefore that in determining the real causes of the excitements and crises which shook Rome during his consulship we must search for other agents more truly responsible for the issue of events than anything that Cicero said or planned or carried into action.

In the course of a paper on ‘Roman Colchester’ in volume ix of this Journal, Mr. Philip Laver and the writer drew attention to the vaults which underlie Colchester castle, and claimed for them a Roman origin. The claim is based primarily upon constructional evidence which is readily appreciated in the presence of the actual remains, but the published summary perhaps requires some amplification for the reader who is unacquainted with these. Until its recent acquisition for the Colchester Corporation, the castle was in private possession, and was only partially known to the public; nor does the mass of literature which has gathered round the structure include any detailed study of its architectural problems. Hence the dark and comparatively barren vaults have hitherto escaped more than passing notice.

When we speak of the style of an author, and especially of a great author, we mean the sum total of his linguistic, stylistic and artistic means of expression; we thus do not think purely of the literary tendency or school to which he belongs, or even only of his linguistic usage, his grammar and vocabulary. None the less these last-named factors are of great importance, and it will perhaps be appropriate to start with them.

I need not remind you that the style of Tacitus, taken as a whole, bears the general impress of the so-called Silver Age in its most typical form as developed by Seneca. We all know that by that time the long Ciceronian and Livian periods had been given up; in their place we find short, concentrated sentences, often joined to one another asyndetically, and in the more important passages these sentences are condensed into telling, emphatic, sententiae. So, too, in the choice of words all commonplace and popular expressions are avoided; instead, expressions and constructions from poetry are borrowed to a much greater extent than in Cicero's time.

This article has no more ambitious purpose than to sow doubt. As an inquiry into the policy of Rome in declaring war on Philip V in 200 B.C., it cannot pretend to be anything but superficial.

In England at least, studies of the question are based nowadays on the brilliant writings of M. Holleaux and the scholarly work of F. W. Walbank and A. H. McDonald, which in the main derives from Holleaux. Within thirty years or so what started as paradox has become respectable orthodoxy—which De Sanctis has resisted, but few others.

In western Cyprus the chief line of communication from the mountainous nature of the country has always been coastal. We may recognise three systems: the modern motor highway, the Turkish road, the Roman road. Maps published in 1885 from the excellent survey of the late Lord Kitchener are the only reputable authority for the second of these. From it the first diverges considerably, in the main through an exaggerated fondness for easy gradients (fig 10). That the Roman road and the Turkish were virtually identical is demonstrated by the evidence of certain milestones hitherto unpublished.

In a recent paper N. J. Miners has challenged the view that Gaius Gracchus' law ‘ne quis iudicio circumveniatur’ should be interpreted as part of his attempt to reform the quaestio de rebus repetundis and has maintained that it cannot therefore be used as evidence for a stage in Gaius' legislative activity when he envisaged the retention of senators as indices in this court. Mr. Miners states well the principal objection to this theory, that Gaius' law, to judge from the references to it in Cicero, pro Cluentio, was concerned with unjust condemnations, while Gaius' preoccupation, as far as the extortion court was concerned in 123–2 B.C., was with unjust acquittals. Mr. Miners shows that our scanty information about the law will bear a very different interpretation and he returns to the view of Mommsen, that it should be associated with the Gracchan law de provocatione (and perhaps even identified with it).