Excavations at the Latin city of Gabii in 2012–15 conducted by the Gabii Project have uncovered a monumental building complex, hitherto known only very partially from previous excavations in the 1990s. Organized on a series of three artificial terraces that regularized the slope of the volcanic terrain, it measures some 60 m by 35 m, occupying an entire city-block. It is prominently situated at one of the most central locations within the city, on the main urban thoroughfare at the important intersection of the roads from Tibur, Praeneste and Rome. Stratigraphic evidence and construction techniques date the original phase of the building to the mid-third century BC. This report focuses on a contextualization and description of this first, mid-Republican phase and offers a preliminary interpretation of this complex as a public building, with spaces designed for a variety of functions: bathing, public feasting, and ritual activity. If this is correct, it now represents one of the very few examples of public buildings other than temples and fortifications known from the mid-Republican period, and sheds important light on the development of Roman architecture and of the Latin cities in a crucial and obscure period.

The Lupercalia is one of the most important and most controversial of Roman festivals. This paper addresses the issue of its topography, which has received renewed attention in recent years. It is divided into two main sections, the first discussing the hotly debated location of the Lupercal cave, and the second the course of the running Luperci. The former section reviews the literary and archaeological evidence for the location of the cave, discusses its significance as a unique religious site, and calls for further investigation in the area of the southwest Palatine. The second section seeks to challenge the most influential theories on the course of the Luperci by carefully examining the ancient evidence and the terminology it uses. A contextualization of the sources and the topographic elements they describe shows that many modern theories contain serious flaws when it comes to this subject. Most modern interpretations rely on a passage of Augustine which is very problematic because of his biased interpretatio Christiana. The conclusion is that the festival’s typology as a ritual of lustration is key to understanding the course of the Luperci.

This paper discusses two scanty but complex groups of sources which seem to suggest that Thursday (dies Iovis, that is, Jupiter's Day in the Roman planetary seven-day week) was a day of rest in honour of Jupiter during the later imperial period: a number of ecclesiastical texts from late antique Gaul and Galicia, and three documentary papyri from Oxyrhynchus. The former imply that an unofficial observance of Jupiter's Day, as opposed to the Christian Lord's Day (Sunday), persisted among the populace despite Church opposition to such deviant behaviour. The latter hint at Thursday being a non-working day for official bureaux during the third and early fourth centuries, before the formalization of Sunday as an official day of rest by Constantine in 321. The paper concludes with reflections on the idea that during the later imperial period — as the use of the planetary week became increasingly popular — Thursday became the most important and sacred day in the Roman seven-day week by reason of being the day dedicated to the chief god of the Roman pantheon and, at the same time, the day associated with the astrologically favourable planet that had been named after Jupiter. If Thursday was ever a day of rest recurring on a hebdomadal basis during the later Roman Empire, it was presumably the Judaeo-Christian tradition of the Sabbath and the Lord's Day that provided pagans with the notion of a weekly feast day.

This paper aims to analyse how Christianity took shape and put down roots in Tuscia Annonaria (present-day northern Toscana) in the period from the 4th to the second half of the 8th centuries AD, both in urban and rural contexts. This theme has until now been analysed only rarely in a complex fashion. It will be thoroughly examined here, starting from a quantitative approach (based upon compiling material and written evidence), which will lead to a deeper understanding of historiographical problems and of new possible keys to the interpretation of phenomena that were complex and articulated in similar ways as were those which were tied to the transformation of towns and of Roman landscapes and which led to the shaping of what happened after the end of Classical Antiquity.

The study of medieval liturgy is well served by a fuller appreciation of the unique richness of individual manuscripts. One example, Vat. Lat. 7701, is a key piece of evidence for uncovering the reception of the Carolingian project to ‘correct’ liturgy in Chieti, Abruzzo. This manuscript is a ‘pontifical’, created for the personal use of a ninth-century bishop of Chieti. Within this book, he described and prescribed his own liturgical duties, those which made up his office as the Carolingians understood it. The peculiarities of the manuscript and some of its unique features are best understood by reference to this imperative. Alongside other products of the Carolingian scriptorium at Chieti, the manuscript reveals that even bishops at the southernmost tip of the Carolingian Empire saw themselves as fully engaged in an Empire-wide programme to amend liturgical practice, which did not aim for uniformity but led to significant creativity. This programme was associated with imperial authority, but led by bishops themselves. Local liturgical variation is undeniable in our manuscript, but the sharing of texts and communication with sees all across the Empire are equally visible components.

This article examines textual descriptions of smiling, laughing and joking with the pope in thirteenth-century Rome. It focuses on two Anglo-Norman accounts of conducting litigation at the papal curia: Thomas of Marlborough's (d.1236) Chronicon abbatiae de Evesham and Gerald of Wales's (c. 1146–1220×23) De jure et statu Menevensis ecclesiae. Both authors include several careful and prominent references to smiling, laughing and joking, and specifically in relation to Pope Innocent III. These passages have previously been read as straightforward examples of wit and friendship, but this study shows that the authors use these physiological expressions to convey complex and subtly different pictures of the papal curia. Above all, this article demonstrates how Thomas and Gerald's descriptions of humorous interactions with the pope play crucial narrative and mnemonic roles within their work.

In Lucca in 1430 the republic was restored after 30 years of princely rule. The restored republic ruled over a territory that included much of the Versilia and parts of the Garfagnana. The important role played by notaries in the administration of the territories of both cities and princes has long been recognized. Moving rapidly from office to office, notaries were key figures in the courts, as administrators, and for the fisc. The present article examines the functions, personnel, reputation and effectiveness of notaries in the service of fifteenth-century Lucca following the restoration of liberty. Much attention has been paid to state-formation and territorial administration in the recent literature; relatively little to the precise role played by notaries. This article aims to provide a case study against which experiences elsewhere can be measured. Lucca was distinctive in the fifteenth-century context by virtue of its continued independence as a traditional city-state. Comparisons have been drawn between Lucca and its neighbouring states, but with due recognition of the obvious differences that divide Lucca both from the newer territorial conglomerations and from subjected cities that continued to enjoy extensive, supervised rights over their local administration.

This paper analyses the manuscripts of Diego de Revillas in the British School at Rome Library regarding the Severan marble plan and its arrangement in the Capitoline Museum, in 1742. They offer some insight into how this much discussed work was undertaken by Giovanni Battista Nolli, under the supervision of Alessandro Gregorio Capponi and Revillas. Specifically, Revillas’ documents throw new light on the way the scale reduction of the Forma Urbis was (incorrectly) figured out.

One of the most remarkable stories in the history of Roman archaeology, and totally unknown to modern scholars and works of reference, despite the comprehensive documentation, is the story of the extraction of the column of Antoninus Pius in the Campus Martius (1703–5). The work was placed in the hands of the ‘noble’ architects Carlo and Francesco Fontana, instead of competent engineers, and the result was the destruction of the column.

Nothing has so characterized the British School at Rome's approach, from its inception, as the commitment to landscape archaeology in one form or another. This paper discusses the origins of this commitment in the work of Thomas Ashby, but focuses on the major contribution of J.B. Ward-Perkins and the South Etruria Survey. This survey is set in the context both of intellectual developments in landscape archaeology, and the specific circumstances of the BSR, and its Director, after the Second World War. The article traces the impact of this work on subsequent landscape archaeology.

This gazette presents to the reader outside Rome news of recent archaeological activity (primarily in 2017, but also in the first half of 2018) gleaned from public lectures, conferences, exhibitions and newspaper reports.