L'articolo si propone di presentare lo storico dell'arte paleocristiana e bizantina tedesco Wolfgang Fritz Volbach (1892–1988) come museologo, alla luce di alcune ricerche recenti, di nuove acquisizioni documentarie e di una più ampia rassegna della sua attività tra Magonza, Berlino e Roma. Il testo si concentra sul suo periodo romano (e in particolare vaticano), sia in qualità di precoce professore di museologia al Pontificio Istituto di Archeologia Cristiana di Roma, sia come attivo collaboratore nella riorganizzazione del Museo Sacro della Biblioteca Vaticana. Si riflette poi anche sulle sue idee di museologo, attingendo ai suoi testi critici e ai musei in cui ha lavorato tra Berlino e Magonza.

Considering Roman art as a cumulative process could help resolve a small iconographical problem. Cubiculum N in the burial hypogeum under the Via Dino Compagni in Rome (c.350–75 ce) features a series of figure scenes referencing the exploits of the mythological hero Hercules. One of these scenes, presently entitled Hercules Slaying an Unknown Enemy, has no direct equivalent in extant Roman art and so has proved difficult to identify. This article suggests that Hercules’ battle with Cacus is most likely the incident referred to here. This is because Antonine medallions and coins, and third-century Roman sarcophagi, use imagery associated with the Cacus story that collectively could have contributed to the design of the Unknown Enemy panel. Further, identifying the defeated enemy as Cacus fits in with, and indeed helps to clarify, programmatic themes and associations already established in the other figure scenes in this funerary chamber.

We start this survey in Italy during the early first millennium bce; a context on which Seth Bernard's new monograph offers an exciting, and in several respects transformative, contribution.1 Its general claim is that, while Rome did not develop a historiographical tradition until Fabius Pictor, there was a keen and pervasive interest in history across ancient Italy, since the early Iron Age, which played out across a wide range of venues and media. The brief of the historian must be to jettison any hierarchical approach to the interplay between textual and archaeological evidence, and to take as broad a view on what history amounts to as possible.

The first book in this review refers back to a theme we have considered repeatedly in previous reviews: cities, in this case those of Roman Italy and the new modes of investigation that are bringing them alive.1 The volume is particularly interested in looking at the diversity of these centres, laying to rest that early twentieth century faith in the regularity of the Roman town plan. Instead, the case studies in the volume show how towns in different areas of Italy fared and failed to meet the demands of their immediate surroundings as well as responding to wider political and economic changes. This changing understanding comes from two directions: our willingness to ask new questions of the cities and the use of new technology. In all the case studies, different kinds of remote sensing technology (clearly laid out by Martin Millett in the first chapter as a preamble to his case study of Falerii Novi) and drone photography allow the city to be mapped and explored in new ways. The book shows how these have allowed new evidence and questions, affecting traditional interpretations. The whole thing is finished by an epilogue by John Patterson, who pulls together some of these themes and points to new questions.

The present article will reconsider the historiographical value played by the 182 bc Antigonid military ritual – known as Xanthika. Firstly, in order to appraise ancient historiographical adaptations and modern analytical shortcomings, this article will retrace extant ancient sources and, secondly, its current state-of-the-art. Thirdly, the original Polybian treatment will be discerned from its Livian adaptations, and historiographical distinctions will be proposed for each version. Fourthly, the Xanthika will be reconsidered as a key historiographical device through which Polybius coupled the Hellenic themes of Alexandrian legitimacy, deep-rooted tyrannical discord, and irreversible royal decadence within a larger narrative of the Roman ascendance towards world dominance.