Any discussion of the policy of the Roman Senate towards the Hellenistic world at the end of the third century B.C. must inevitably take account of the work of two men who wrote their most important books around this topic. One is, of course, Polybius, the other Maurice Holleaux. Holleaux's book on Rome, Greece and the Hellenistic monarchies appeared in 1921; but it came as the culmination of several studies on this subject, which had been exercising his attention particularly since 1913. Today, then, we stand virtually at the fiftieth anniversary of Holleaux's thesis, and we can appropriately consider how far it has stood the test of time. However, that is not my main purpose in this paper, which will be concerned much more with what Polybius has to say on the subject. As everyone knows, it is the evidence of Polybius that stands behind Holleaux's remarkable reconstruction of Roman policy; and Holleaux's problem is quite central to Polybius' interests—indeed it is very close to, though not identical with, his main theme. ‘Who,’ he asks, ‘is so worthless and so indolent as not to want to know by what means and under what constitutional system the Romans in less than fifty-three years have succeeded in subjecting nearly the whole inhabited world to their sole government—a thing unique in history?’ It is perhaps not unfair to judge a historian by the degree of success he attains in tackling his main theme. If that seems a reasonable proposition, we may ask ourselves: Does Polybius in fact offer a satisfactory answer to the question he has raised?

Within the next few years greater attention will be given to a period of Roman Imperial coinage which, apart from special and isolated studies, has so far lacked a broad and balanced treatment. The completion, now near, of volumes VI, VII and VIII of ‘Mattingly-Sydenham’ will fill the large and difficult gap between the end of the third century and Pearce's volume IX, i.e. from c. 294 to 364. For the earlier Empire the great sequence of British Museum catalogues has furnished a powerful instrument by which imperial achievement can in some degree be measured against imperial claims or aspirations; and it is now reasonable to assert that a valid distinction is to be made between the imperial image as the emperors presented it and that which the ancient historians wished or chose to reflect. In the third century, and especially in the middle of the third century, the imperial coinage suffered an increasing debasement, not only in actual metal but also in types used with such indiscriminate generality that they must have diluted the previously selective imperial image to an ultimately negligible significance. Hence the interest of the coinage from c. 294 to 364. Avoiding altogether the excessive type-variation of the mid-third century, this seems often to wear a stereotyped or even rigid air; but in fact this economy of usage will allow a much more perceptive interpretation of those lesser variations which were from time to time permitted or necessitated. Such interpretation, against the general historical context of the time, should be a major exercise in the coming years.

I am concerned in this paper with Plutarch's treatment of the story of Coriolanus, not with the historical truth of the legend or with its development before Plutarch's time. I start from the hypothesis that the Life is, in its essentials, a transposition into biographical form of the historical narrative in Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities, Books V to VIII. This has long been the common view. It was held and defended by Hermann Peter, Mommsen, and Eduard Schwartz. A careful reading of the two texts side by side tempts me to call it certain, so exact and frequent are the echoes. It is at any rate probable enough to justify an attempt to follow out its consequences by treating the differences between Dionysius and Plutarch, in default of other evidence, as Plutarch's constructions, to be explained in terms of his literary purposes and methods. This is what I shall do in the main part of this paper. I preface the details, however, by a few more general considerations.

The early Principate tends to be interpreted in terms of the constitutional forms in which it was clothed and the administrative innovations which it brought, to the neglect of those, largely unchanged, social and economic factors which shaped the actual working of Roman politics. In no area has this tendency been more obvious than in works dealing with the Fiscus, which has thus been seen as an alternative ‘state treasury’ created at a given moment, by Augustus, perhaps in 21 or 20 B.C., by Tiberius, or by Claudius, which absorbed the revenues of the imperial provinces, and some indirect taxes. It is also seen as an administrative unit (like a Treasury, or a University Chest) concerned with the handling of an area of public finance.

In the most southerly group of desert routes between Syria and Mesopotamia Palmyra lies at the cross-roads. The north-eastward route from Damascus to Circesium is crossed by the eastward route from Emesa, now Homs, to Babylonia. Palmyra owes this key-position first to its precious springs and secondly to the fact that here the natural traffic lines from west to east debouch from the Syrian mountains into the head of the eastwardlooking basin of the Wadi el Khorr, a winter tributary of the Euphrates. Nor were these obvious routes the sole possibility. At Circesium the Euphrates may be crossed: at its eastward turn the lower river and its valley-dwellers become dominant—here runs the modern frontier between Syria and Iraq. Avoiding this control, caravan routes, negotiable solely by those with intimate knowledge of the waste and its people, lead direct to the heart of Mesopotamia and onwards to the Persian Gulf. As between East and West, Palmyra, an island in the desert, offered both a mart for exchange and an essential staging-point for direct through traffic. Its possessors were by nature masters of the situation; and, while they might be subject to the cultural or political influences of either East or West, their geographical isolation secured for them an independence founded upon pre-eminent experience of desert ways, which constituted them the natural masters and middlemen of the caravan routes that met and branched or crossed in their oasis.

Gabinius, tribune of the plebs in 67, procured for Pompeius the great command against the Pirates, defying the ‘principes’ and incurring the bitter resentment of the Optimates. When the Imperator wanted to have Gabinius as one of his legates, men of ill will duly brought up impediments. Cicero rebukes them in the oration for the Lex Manilia the year after. Their conduct, he says, is an affront to Pompeius. Other commanders who by contrast went out to rob the provinces have taken with them any legates they liked—‘cum ceteri ad expilandos socios diripiendasque provincias quos voluerunt legatos eduxerint’. It is also an affront to Gabinius, whose law has ordained ‘salus ac dignitas’ for Rome and the whole world. Nor can any objection hold against Gabinius. Cicero goes on to name four senators who had employment abroad as legates in the year following their tribunates— ‘C. Falcidius, Q. Metellus, Q. Caelius Latinianus, Cn. Lentulus, quos omnis honoris causa nomino’.

A new moneyed class, thrusting rapidly to public estate in an ancient society, needed the enhancement of symbols and titles. Most Roman titles were military in origin, and it was natural to borrow the name of the old Roman cavalry, with its associations of high rank and property-census, antique tradition, and decorative imagery. Not less naturally, the military metaphors of the new civil equites concealed change and misled some secondary authors into anachronism. Modern historians too have been apt to assume the perpetuity of forms or conditions appropriate to the Servian Army, and long afterwards retailed in antiquarian descriptions of the ‘exercitus urbanus’. In general outline, indeed, the comitia centuriata may have retained its archaic structure; nevertheless, both Dionysius and Livy warn us plainly enough that changes had taken place. However modern hypotheses may attempt to reconcile the difference, the stark fact remains that two discrepant versions of the Servian system were current in the first century B.C. Such institutions were perhaps not as static as the terminology which attached to them.

Palladio's version of the Corinthian Order (fig. 6) is not, so far as one can see, taken directly from any Roman building but it is thoroughly Roman in inspiration and based on Palladio's careful study of ancient Roman buildings. The design and detail relate most closely to buildings of the time of Trajan and Hadrian but a similar order could have been found on any Roman building erected from the end of the Augustan period onwards. It may be seen that there are several elements in the design which are derived from Greek versions of the Ionic Order: the architrave with its three divisions and crowning mouldings, the plain continuous frieze and the cornice with dentils. One feature of the design, however, immediately distinguishes it from that of Greek Ionic and this is the presence of a series of brackets—modillions or consoles, as they are variously called—spaced at regular intervals below the projecting part of the cornice and serving to give it visible means of support. Between the modillions there are square panels or coffers, framed by a decorated moulding and each containing a rosette in relief.

Modern assessments of city population in the Roman provinces of Africa have been based on notions about the numbers that a given area of land is likely to have supported; upon estimates of the size of the piped water-supply; upon comparisons between ancient and modern city areas; and upon inferences from the density of surviving Roman remains. Reference has also sometimes been made to the seating capacity of theatres or amphitheatres. While each of these methods can suggest loose probabilities, none of them provides firm or precise information.

In a recent article, Sir Maurice Bowra accepted the view of E. A. Thompson that the Emperor Julian did receive a Delphic oracle before setting off for the East—the lines quoted by Theodoret (HE III, 21, p. 200, Parmentier, and again in the Graec. Affect. Curatio, PG 83, 1069), and repeated by the eleventh-century Byzantine chronicler Cedrenus (1, p. 538, Bonn). When Cedrenus introduces the oracle he cites Agathias, the sixth-century historian: Ίουλιαòς δὲ μαντείαις καὶ θυσίαις καὶ ἐπῳδαῖς δαιμόνων καὶ ἀπάταις φραξάμενος, ὡς φησὶν Άγαθίας, κατὰ Περσῶν ἐστράτευσεν, ὅτε καὶ χρησμὸν ἔλαβεν ἔχοντα οὕτως…. Bowra therefore assumed that Cedrenus took his oracle from Agathias, ‘who may well have got his information from Theodoret’ (o.c., p. 428). And he also speaks of ‘the occasion mentioned, in different ways’ by Theodoret, Agathias, and Cedrenus, as though the fact of Cedrenus's having the oracle added something to the value of the story.

With three volumes of E. Gjerstad's Early Rome still outstanding we are exactly in the middle of the new phase of the research on the origins of Rome. Other works due to appear very soon (perhaps they will already have appeared by the time these pages are published) include A. Alföldi's T. S. Jerome Lectures on Early Rome and the Latins, R. Werner's Der Beginn der römischen Republik and a new volume by H. Müller-Karpe, the author of Vom Anfang Roms (Heidelberg, 1959). Furthermore, historians and archaeologists most actively engaged in this field of research, such as M. Pallottino, R. Bloch, R. Peroni and P. Romanelli, have still much to contribute. In these circumstances any attempt to draw conclusions is clearly premature. But Gjerstad, Alföldi and Bloch have already presented their theories in outline with the explicit or implicit purpose of having them discussed before they are given their final shape. The present paper, which represents two of the three J. H. Gray lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge in March, 1963, is intended as a contribution to this preliminary discussion.

This tablet was found on 10th December, 1960, by Mr. Roger Wilson of Thrumpton, Notts, after ploughing had taken place on the lower slope of Red Hill in the parish of Ratcliffe-on-Soar, Notts. Roman pottery, bone counters and other objects have been found on Red Hill, which appears to be a Roman site. It is at the junction of the rivers Trent and Soar (where also Nottinghamshire and Leicestershire meet). The tablet was folded roughly into three when found. The material, discoloured by corrosion and of a browny copper colour, proved on analysis to be essentially lead (in an impure state). Its maximum measurements are 8·4 cm. in height, 5·7 cm. in width. Both sides have been lightly incised, perhaps with a needle, with Latin cursive writing. The hand is regularly formed and clear and shows skill on the part of the scribe. To judge from parallels from Egypt, it should be assigned to the end of the second or the early part of the third century A.D. For the earlier limit compare the receipt P. Lond. 730 (plate in Écriture Latine 26) of A.D. 167; and for the later, P. Oxy. VIII, 1114, a declaration of inheritance of A.D. 237 (plate ibid., pl. 7). Both of these, however, show a slope to the right, whereas in this tablet the slope is to the left in the older manner.