Some fifty miles north-east of Jerusalem, on the rugged plateau between the Jordan and the desert to the east, lies a ruined city whose striking remains have attracted the interest of hardy travellers ever since the beginning of the last century—Jerash, the ancient Gerasa, in Transjordania. This district was the Decapolis of the Romans, though its cities numbered more than ten. Since that time war and the centuries have obliterated all trace of many of them; but Jerash, with its temples and theatres, its paved and colonnaded market and streets, its almost intact walls and its many Christian churches, is still beautiful and imposing. None the less, it is only very recently that its full significance has begun to be realised. Heretofore it has been usual to assume that Jerash attained prosperity and importance only under the Antonines, beginning with Trajan's annexation of Arabia in A.D. 105–6, and his assignment of Jerash to that province. This opinion was supported by the fact that the inscriptions supply dates of the second century or later for most of the public buildings; but a reconsideration of the archaeological and epigraphic evidence shows that the present plan of the city and the present form of the public buildings are due merely to alteration and rebuilding under the Antonines. From the materials which we now have it is possible to reconstruct a good picture of the flourishing and active city of the first century—further, to show that this prosperity was itself not new, but firmly based on a long and continuous past.

Asconius, in Pison. 5 (p. 5, 13 Kiessling). ‘Haec consuetudo’ (of using round rather than exact numbers) ‘in ipsis orationibus est: itaque idem Cicero in ea quoque quam habuit in Catilinam in senatu, ait cum octavus decimus dies esset postea quaro factum est senatus consultum ut viderent consules ne quid res publica detrimenti caperet, dixit vicesimum [? iam] diem habere <se> S. C. tamquam <in vagina reconditum>.' In the passage referred to by the commentator (in Cat. i, 2, 4) Cicero, after showing how promptly effect had been given to the senatus consultum ultimum, by Opimius and Marius, goes on: ‘At vero nos vicesimum iam diem patimur hebescere aciem horum auctoritatis. Habemus enim eius modi senatus consultum, verum inclusum in tabulis, tamquam in vagina reconditum.’

The current view of the Agricolan occupation of Scotland is conveniently summed up in Furneaux's declaration that ‘it is impossible to suppose that the conquest had been as thorough as is suggested [by Tacitus].’ York is sometimes alleged to have been the farthest point that was permanently secured, and a German historian has solemnly rebuked the Roman general for the fundamental fault of pushing forward without consolidating the ground that he had won. This scepticism as to Agricola's military capacity and achievements was justifiable enough so long as the historical notices stood alone. Moreover it appeared to be perfectly consistent with the ‘perdomita Britannia et statim missa’ of Tacitus himself. And, when archaeology made its first contribution to the discussion, the new evidence promised to be merely corroborative. The little Agricolan fort on the Bar Hill, discovered by a happy accident in 1903, was garrisoned for only a brief period, and had been abandoned fifty or sixty years before Lollius Urbicus built the wall from Forth to Clyde.

The problem of the reckoning of the tribunician power of the Roman Emperors leads us along thorny paths; but they are paths which the seeker after a true chronology must tread. The method usually followed by historians to-day—that of Eckhel, as developed and amplified by Mommsen—certainly approximates to the truth and seldom leads one far astray. There remain, however, sufficient evidences to show that it is not the whole truth; and, where exactness in dating really matters, nothing but the whole truth will do.

A. H. M. Jones died from a heart attack on a very rough crossing from Brindisi to Patras; he was on his way to give lectures at the Universities of Thessalonica and Patras. It was a tragically sudden end to a life of intense mental activity. Academically he had fulfilled his greatest ambition; for more than twenty years he had determined to complete a major work of synthesis on the late Roman Empire: the publication in 1964 of The Later Roman Empire 284–602 will still be recognized as a major work by our grandchildren.

For the municipal jurisdiction of the Roman Republic, the bronze tablet found at Veleia, which is commonly and, as I assume, rightly called the Lex Rubria, is clearly important but it is not in all places intelligible. The law dealt with the conduct of a range of civil cases in the courts of Cisalpine Gaul, from the proceedings in iure and the granting of a formula to the appointment of a iudex (cf. ‘ex hac lege’ ch. xxi 24), the delivery of the iudicium (cf. ch. xx) and the methods of execution available to local magistrates. Together with another more carefully drafted fragment from Ateste, which is at least closely related and may be a portion of the same law (cf. ‘ex hac lege’ in lines 8–9), it offers a glimpse of the legal structure in a crucial period. The Lex Rubria is longer, less carefully drafted, and at the same time more obscure; whence some contributions are offered towards the meaning of the text (I, II, III) and its implications (IV).

Amid all the disputes and controversies that have centred on the Roman army of the Empire since Mommsen's day, one important chapter in that army's history has remained curiously free from question; however many legions Augustus retained, whenever this legion was raised or that destroyed, all writers are in agreement that Vespasian, early in his principate, cashiered some of the mutinous legions of the Rhine armies.

The great majority of writers are agreed that the legions so dismissed were I, IIII Macedonica, XV Primigenia, and XVI Gallica; though Hardy, following Grotefend and Schilling, suggested that XV might have survived even into Trajan's principate: to-day, however, no one maintains this view, which was the outcome of a failure to account for Vespasian's apparent reduction of the number of legions.

In a previous article (JRS XXIV, 168–86) we reproduced the new text and discussed its critical significance. It contains two new passages, the contents of the first of which are studied here. The passage (PSI 1182, 11–43, Gaius 3, 154a) runs:

‘Sed ea quidem societas de qua loquimur, id est quae nudo consensu contrahitur, iuris gentium est; itaque inter omnes homines naturali ratione consistit.’ (Here the new text begins) ‘est autem aliud genus societatis proprium civium Romanorum. olim enim mortuo patre familias inter suos heredes quaedam erat legitima simul et naturalis societas, quae appellabatur ercto non cito, id est dominio non diviso : erctum enim dominium est unde erus dominus dicitur : ciere autem dividere est : unde caedere et secare dicimus. alii quoque qui volebant eandem habere societatem poterant id consequi apud praetorem certa legis actione. In hac autem societate fratrum ceterorumve qui ad exemplum fratrum suorum societatem coierint illud proprium erat, quod vel unus ex sociis communem servum manumittendo liberum faciebat et omnibus libertum adquirebat: item unus remcommunem mancipando …’

Scholars have long discussed whether the Golden Gate is a monument of Theodosius I, as the inscription which formerly adorned it strongly suggests, or whether if was built at the same time as the walls under Theodosius II. The inscription must in the latter case apply to a minor rising of the Primicerius Iohannes in 423. However, Schneider, the last scholar who has examined the walls, points out that they were nearly complete in 422, when a rescript assigned to travelling soldiers the lower stories of the towers. Iohannes' rising was not crushed until 425; and not even Schneider has maintained that the Golden Gate was built later than the walls.

It seems more natural to suppose that the inscription refers to the conquest of Maximus by Theodosius I. In this case the gate may be assumed to have been comparable to the triumphal arches of Roman colonies, and to have stood on the original pomerium. Its existence may account for the line of the wall, which joins the Sea of Marmara after the shore has turned south-west; for the line of the fortifications is thus made considerably longer without much gain of interior space.