The consensus view that all Roman money consisted of coins has been undermined in recent times and should be discarded. The inhabitants of the Roman Empire frequently and on a significant scale made payments by means of credit-money, creating a ‘multiplier effect’, which meant that in high classical times the Roman economy was not constricted, as is often supposed, by an inelastic money-supply. Yet the monetary system was not modern; rather it had its counterparts in such economies as those of seventeenth-and early eighteenth-century Britain.

An allusive plot of an incestuous brother-sister marriage runs through Virgil's story of Dido and Aeneas, signalled both by imagery comparing Dido and Aeneas to Diana and Apollo, moon and sun, and by allusion to Callimachean poems celebrating actual brother-sister marriages at the Ptolemaic court. Aeneas' departure from Carthage marks the relegation to the past of Alexandrian temptations and a journey to a future foundation based on exogamy, although Italy itself is not free from the dangers of incest and fratricide. Ovid's explicit tales of incest comment on Virgil's allusive narrative.

This paper examines the political content and context of Seneca's Natural Questions. It argues that, on the one hand, Rome is marginalized in the context of the immensity of the cosmos; and philosophy is elevated above traditional Roman pursuits, including political activity and historical writing. But at the same time the work is firmly anchored in its Roman geo-political context; Seneca situates himself in a long and continuing tradition of investigation of the natural world, where Roman writers can stand alongside Greeks and others; and the current emperor Nero is presented not just as princeps and poet, but as sponsor of geographical and scientific investigation.

This article investigates the use, in Pliny's official writings of imperial praise, of the theme of ‘divine comedy’ – the idea that everything is for the best in the imperial world under the ideal emperor. An examination of this prominent theme can help us understand how Pliny handled the inevitable tensions in an imperial ideology which was grounded in the opposing figures of the ‘good’ emperor who deserved deification, and the ‘bad’ emperor who deserved tyrannicide.

This paper compares the early imperial period results from thirty surveys in and around regio VII Etruria in order to identify similarities and differences of settlement, population, and economy. Three sub-regional patterns are defined: the suburbium, coastal Etruria, and inland Etruria. Consideration of methodological issues of survey comparison suggests the problem is real, but not insuperable. A range of interpretative models is discussed with particular reference to the impact of the Urbs on economic, agricultural, and social developments. The structural connections between these sub-regions are emphasized, particularly the organization of labour, demography, and agricultural strategies. The results reveal varied responses to Roman control, leading to more not less diversity. More generally, the results underline the value of comparing regional survey data.

This paper seeks to locate Seneca's treatment of earthquakes in Natural Questions 6 in the broader ancient seismological tradition; and, more particularly, to examine the initiatives which potentially transform his treatment into a highly original mode of literary-philosophical investigation not just into the cause of earthquakes, but also of how a ‘scientific’ understanding of them can at least partially quell the intimidating effect of such wonders of nature. On this approach Natural Questions 6 is perhaps concerned not so much with earthquakes per se but with shaping attitudes towards the natural world as a whole, inculcating in us a vision of such phenomena as but ‘normal’ aspects of cosmic functioning. By this method the book promotes within us a different, engagingly Senecan appreciation of cosmic integrity.

The article presents an edition of and commentary on a Latin bronze inscription (152 lines long) from the time of Hadrian, found at Agón, near Caesaraugusta (Zaragoza), in ancient Hispania Citerior. The inscription contains a set of regulations (lex riui Hiberiensis) governing an irrigation community consisting of rural districts (pagi) from two different cities (Caesaraugusta and Cascantum) which shared a canal, the riuus Hiberiensis. The lex was produced in accordance with an agreement of the pagani after the intervention of the provincial governor [—Fun]ndanus Augustanus Alpinus. It provides information about the pagus institutions (magistri pagi, concilium, curatores, publicani?) as well as procedural aspects such as iusiurandum, uadimonium, and judicial formulae.