If a cynic were asked why the Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies had been founded, he might reply that it was done to satisfy the grumbles of a few specialists. That is certainly a part of the truth. But this meeting would not have been convened nor would the council of the society have bidden the President to deliver an inaugural address unless much larger issues had been involved.

This year the Italians celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the proclamation of Rome as capital of United Italy. Apt as usual to seize the appropriate idea, they decided to mark the occasion in Rome herself by an exhibition that should not merely display the growth of present Italian art and industries, or afford hospitality to the art of other nations, but should set forth besides in visible monuments the former glory of Rome, the wide range of empire uled by the Eternal City, which, again a capital, is again the centre of a strong national life. Thus arose that unique feature of Rome's 1911 Exhibition, the Mostra Archeologica in the baths of Diocletian. The scheme of this section, as originally unfolded by Professor Lanciani at a meeting of the British School of Rome in the spring of this year, was limited to the life of the Roman provinces, whose chief monuments, whether in situ or in museums, were to be represented by casts and models, drawings and photographs. This programme has been adhered to in the main, in spite of certain later additions and accretions.

In the stress of the second Punic war the Romans resolved to receive the Great Mother from Mount Ida among the gods of their state, but no sooner had the gift of their friend and ally, king Attalus of Pergamum, arrived in Rome, than they were seized with horror at the nature of the goddess and the character of her priesthood. The decree of the senate went forth forbidding Roman citizens to take part in the worship of the goddess. Only on one day in the year might the revolting procession of the priests leave the temple on the Palatine, when on the 27th of March the image of the goddess was bathed in the little river Almo.

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.

In 1857, J. F. Boudon de Saint-Amans published in Agen an illustrated octavo Essai sur les antiquités de Lot-et-Garonne. On page 198 of that work the bronze figure which we here reproduce (plate XIII) is thus described:

“Petite statue de Jupiter en bronze trouvée à Saint-Côme près d'Aiguillon. On ne saurait voir en ce genre rien de plus parfait que cette figurine … Cette petite statue, haute de 6 pouces, dont les yeux et les extrémités du pénis sont en or, appartient à M. le vicomte de Vivens, membre du Conseil général du departement de Lot-et-Garonne.”

On plate 22 there is a very poor outline engraving which, not knowing then the original, I caused to be reproduced in the Répertoire de la statuaire, vol. ii (1898), p. 10, no. 2.

Three years later, in July 1901, the statuette, then belonging to the Marquis de Poyen, at Barry near Clairac (Lot-et-Garonne), was offered for sale to the national museums. I secured it for Saint-Germain at the low price of 1,250 francs (£50) and now publish it for the first time in a manner worthy of its interest and excellence.

The proposals which were made at Rome from time to time to grant to “Latini” the privileges of the provocatio, wholly or in part, raise questions which touch closely the history of the evolution of constitutional and criminal law at Rome during the republican age. So far as is known, the first attempt to sever the provocatio from the general rights of the Roman franchise, and to bestow it on Italian allies, was made by M. Fulvius Flaccus, consul in 125 B.C. the associate of C. Gracchus, who perished with him. According to Valerius Maximus, ix, 5, 1, he introduced “perniciosissimas rei publicae leges (rhetorical plural) de civitate Italiae danda et de provocatione ad populum eorum qui civitatem mutare noluissent.”

In the heart of the Sierra Morena, and at some twelve kilometres as the crow flies to the north-west of the modern town of La Carolina, in the province of Jaen, a silver-lead mine is at present being successfully worked by an English company. But the English company would not be working it to-day, nor would they be doing so successfully, were it not for the fact that the Romans had been there before them and that the Roman miners had left indications on the surface that pointed to extensive workings below, and had not exhausted the riches which kindly Nature had stored in the vein which they exploited. That the Romans must have worked the mine which is known in our times as “el Centenillo” during a long period is principally evidenced by the extent of their underground operations, which attained the astonishing depth of 210 metres (690 feet) from surface, while in length they exceeded a thousand metres (3,280 feet) and gradually narrowed down in depth until, for some reason that will never be known and which it would be imprudent to guess at, the “old men” abandoned the mine. They worked on the best part of the lode which, in all probability, resembled other lodes in the district in being richer in silver near the surface. The Romans must, however, have been principally working the mine for lead when they determined to leave it, as their lowest workings were in a highly mineralised zone which was very good for galena but relatively poor in silver; although, as a matter of fact, the mineral, even at the depth of 325 metres (1,066 feet) which has been attained to-day, carries more silver than the other silver-lead mines of the district. (The galena contains about 82 per cent, of lead and yields about 20 ounces of silver to the ton.)

The excavations which have been in progress during the last ten years in the catacombs encircling Rome have added greatly to our knowledge of this vast area, and in some cases have compelled us to modify considerably our views concerning their topography. This has specially been the case in the cemetery of S. Callixtus, lying in the triangle formed by the Via Appia, Via Ardeatina, and Via Appio-Ardeatina at the apex of which stands the chapel of Quo Vadis (fig. 11).

Roman London illustrates in more than one way the worst features of English archaeological study. There has been no want of interest in the subject. In England, indeed, Roman archaeology has throughout received a fuller share of general public interest than in any other country. Thanks to our classical system, nearly everyone has read a little Caesar and, it may be, some Tacitus, and though he has forgotten nine-tenths of it, he generally deems himself fitted to enquire into the history of the Roman empire. People who in every other country would give no heed to archaeology at all are in England extremely interested, and it has always been thought right and proper that they should be interested. Unfortunately, it has also been thought needless to do more than to be interested.

English scholars, loyal in their homage to Trajan's sound common sense in all matters of administration, never weary of quoting and approving, though not always without reserve, a verdict which that emperor is said to have passed on the first five years of Nero's principate. Abroad this verdict seems to have received comparatively little attention, but in England it is so constantly repeated in histories, large and small, and in reviews, long and short, that it has obtained the currency of a proverb, and its truth has almost become an article of faith. Trajan, we are told, often declared that the first five years of Nero's rule far excelled the government of all other emperors. There is a notable unanimity in the form of the statement.

The important excavations conducted at Numantia by Dr. Schulten represent one of those rare cases in which the work of the archaeologist is brought into direct connexion with that of the historian. The patient and methodical exploration of the Celtiberian stronghold and the Roman siege-works surrounding it has yielded results which are not interesting merely to the specialist in Roman military history, but add largely to our knowledge of an important historical event and furnish a topographical commentary to our literary records. In view of these facts it is somewhat surprising to find that in a recent English history of the Roman republic, both detailed and elaborate, Dr. Schulten's work is ignored and the site of Numantia is said to be only known by conjecture.

There are published several examples of a bronze medallion of Antoninus Pius, dated A.D. 140–144, with the following reverse (fig 33):

AESCVLAPIVS in exergue.

Ship to right under arched structure; one man is visible on ship; at prow, serpent springing to right; to right, river-god facing left with right hand extended in greeting; above him, indications of rocks; above them, three buildings and a tree.

The casual observer would naturally interpret the scene as follows : “From under a bridge comes a ship in motion, from the prow of which a serpent leaps to the land; a river-god greets him; the inscription AESCVLAPIVS identifies the scene as the arrival of the sacred snake of Aesculapius at the Insula Tiberina, the Insula Tiberina being represented to the right, and a bridge across the Tiber (Pons Aemilius?) to the left; the river-god being the Tiber.”