Accounts of air reconnaissance in Britain have already been printed in this Journal (XLI, for north Britain; XLIII, for south Britain): the present paper records recent discoveries, bringing the previous records up to date.

Of the last five summers only in 1955 was there a marked drought favourable to the development of crop marks; but it has been possible to observe different parts of the country under a wide variety of conditions. These have allowed advantage to be taken of different combinations of weather, crops, and soil, so that a buried site invisible one year might be seen in another. Moreover, opportunities for reconnaissance in March and April have meant that large areas could be observed soon after spring ploughing, when soil-patterns in bare fields often reveal disturbances in the ground. These conditions have been particularly valuable for studying Celtic field-systems on the chalk downs and traces of ancient agriculture in the Fenland.

In the north, reconnaissance has revealed an interesting new group of military works, apparently of early date, at Troutbeck on the margin of the Lake District, besides yielding much fresh information at sites already known. This is particularly true of the extensive Roman sites in Scotland that often now lie within several different fields, not all of which are under suitable crops in any one year. Two forts, two signal-stations, and some sixteen temporary camps may be added to the list of discoveries given in JRS XLI.

The most fascinating aspect of the language and style of Tacitus is that they may be seen in evolution. If we set aside the Dialogus as a special case because of its subject matter, for which a Ciceronian style was virtually obligatory, we may follow Tacitus' style through a continuous process of development from the two monographs to the Histories and then to its culmination in his most mature work, the Annals—though to use this word ‘culmination’ may be to prejudge the issue. Of course stylistic change and development may be found in the works of many writers, Cicero and Propertius for instance, but in few writers if any is the development so clear to see, yet also so complicated, as in Tacitus.

E. Wölfflin, who began the systematic investigation of Tacitus' language and style, maintained that there is in Tacitus' writings a persistent and continuous movement away from normal, hackneyed and colourless expressions towards novelty, colour and dignity, towards what the Greeks called σενότης—or, as some have chosen to put the matter, Tacitus in diverging more and more from the ‘normal’ became progressively more ‘Tacitean’.

The objects published here with the kind permission of Dr. Jacob Hirsch are said to have been found at ‘Seki Bazar between Makli and Elmali’: the place is probably to be identified with the village Sekia, shown on the map in O. Benndorf and G. Niemann, Reisen im südwestlichen Kleinasien i, four miles north of the site of Oinoanda. Sekia lies about half-way along the road between Makri (Makli is unknown and is probably a mispronunciation of Makri) and Elmali. The internal evidence of the inscriptions confirms that the find must come from somewhere in SW Asia Minor. The find consists of two inscribed plaques with busts and fragments of a wreath. We first describe the objects, then comment on the inscriptions, and finally discuss the problems which arise from a study of them.

The early history of the coastal lowland to the south and south-east of Lake Scutari (Lacus Labeatis), through which the Bojana (Barbanna) and Drin (Drilo) rivers find their way to the sea, is not recorded, although archaeology suggests that this region, an obvious point of departure for penetration of the interior, was developed earlier by Greeks and played a greater part in their affairs than the writers of antiquity alone would allow us to believe. It contains two sites of local strategic importance, both admirably adapted to ancient settlement. First, the prominent sugar-loaf hill rising sharply above the village of Lesh on the south bank of the Drin to a height of 186 m., to overlook the low ground about the mouth of the river and to command a convenient point for a crossing. Second, the natural acropolis formed by Scutari citadel, enclosed on three sides by rivers and dominating access from the coastal lowland to the lake.

Fifty years separated the Declaration of Corinth in 196 and the destruction of Corinth in 146, two milestones in the history of Graeco-Roman relations. Exactly midway between these two events comes the embassy of Q. Marcius Philippus, notorious for a piece of sharp practice which aroused the compunction of a section of the Roman Senate itself, and as the prelude to a war regarded by many in Greece as the first step in a policy which was to end in the ruin of two of the greatest cities of the Mediterranean world. The object of the following note is to examine in some detail the date and purpose of this embassy.

The date when the Parthian king Phraates surrendered his four sons and their wives and children to the Romans has been fixed by the statement of Strabo (xvi, 748) that they were consigned to the Syrian legate Titius (τὸν ἐπιστατοῦντα τότε τῆς Συρίας). The only means of determining when Titius was in Syria is provided by Josephus, who says (Ant. xvi, 270) that, through the good offices of Herod, Titius was reconciled with Archelaus of Cappadocia, from whom he had previously been estranged. This reconciliation must be placed between 12 or possibly 13 B.C. and 8 B.C. and modern scholars have been practically unanimous in accepting the view of Mommsen that it was during this period, perhaps because of some fresh difficulty with the Parthians, that Phraates surrendered his sons.

Both Victor and the Epitomator, who are the only ancient authorities to mention the matter, clearly understood Trajan's alleged remark about Nero's quinquennium as a compliment: in which case it is very high praise indeed from an impressive quarter. Both also clearly understood the quinquennium as the first five years, when Nero was a mere youth. Consequently, when it became fashionable to rehabilitate the reputations of Roman emperors, historians of the reign of Nero, at any rate in England, seldom forbore to invoke the authority of Trajan for a favourable verdict on the administrative record of its opening years. They would then proceed to catalogue examples of good government, both at home and abroad, down to A.D. 59, or even to A.D. 62. In 1911, in the first volume of this Journal, J. G. C. Anderson, who later preceded Mr. Hugh Last in the Camden Chair at Oxford, made a sharp attack on this procedure, and suggested an entirely new interpretation of the quinquennium. Since then historians of Nero have been, with some exceptions, more guarded on the subject, partly because of Anderson's paper, and partly, no doubt, because the degeneration of emperors after virtuous beginnings was recognized as a common topos in imperial biography. A few have explicitly accepted Anderson's thesis. None of them, however, has discussed Anderson's arguments in detail, which is what I wish to do here.

During the last two centuries of the Roman Republic, Italian business-men swarmed into newly acquired provinces and lands that had fallen under Roman influence. Sometimes they settled abroad with their families and, as landowners, obtained a form of wealth that raised them in the social scale. At the end of the second century B.C. Italians began to emigrate and become landowners in another way—by the foundation in the provinces of colonies, veteran and civilian. It was Gaius Gracchus who initiated colonization overseas, and it remained a radical, controversial policy—but an indispensable one. Both forms of emigration kept up their momentum until the Imperial age. As they passed through the empire or settled abroad, families of Italian negotiatores and colonists left evidence of their movements, mainly in the form of inscriptions. Under the Caesars we may, in some cases, trace their progress in reverse: the descendants of Italian émigrés—negotiatores, colonists, and landowners—returned to Italy and held posts to which some at any rate of their ancestors could never have aspired.