Nobody who has worked in the field of late Republican and early Imperial Rome can fail to be aware how remarkably little archaeological evidence we have of any specifically Roman presence in the provinces of which Rome was in political and military control during the last century of the Republic. In the east, where she was faced with a civilization older and richer than her own, this is intelligible enough. But for the student of the spread of Roman institutions and ideas in the west the gap is embarrassing. In Roman Britain we have no difficulty whatever in identifying the Gallic precedents for the settlement that followed the Roman conquest. But what lay behind the Caesarian and Augustan settlement in Gaul itself? In terms of the recent history of the area it would be reasonable to expect that in the south, at any rate, it should have been rooted in local Republican Roman practice; and yet there is remarkably little evidence of any such roots in the surviving remains. Much the same is true of Spain and Africa. Why is this? Is it that the impact of the early Imperial settlement was so strong that it swept away all trace of what had gone before? Or is it simply that the Republican Roman presence in these territories was not of a character to leave any substantial mark on the archaeological record?

To major suggestions have been advanced about the text of SB 10295. First, that the letter is not complete; the text now extant constitutes the end of a letter written in a single column containing not more than two or three lines above the present remains. Second, that the addressee, Apolinarios, is identical with the addressee of P. Oxy. 933, who was a bouleutes of Antinoopolis and a and that the title should be restored in SB 10295. Possibly he is also identical with a known president of the boule of Antinoopolis in the later second century. It has been suggested that Apolinarios went on an embassy to Alexandria in the spring of an unspecified year in connection with the accession of a new emperor. As a corollary to these hypotheses, it has been argued that the emperor concerned is in fact Avidius Cassius. Nothing in the text precludes this, and three references support it very strongly: namely, the distinction between ‘election’ and ‘accession to the close ties with Alexandria and the fact that Avidius Cassius' father was a prefect of Egypt, and finally the date. Objections which have been raised against previous theories do not hold for this one, and there is no reason (palaeographical or other) why SB 10295 should not date to A.D. 175.

A wide variety of objects may function as money in the different uses which this possesses—for payment, for storing wealth, for measuring value and as a means of exchange. In the Roman world coined money was clearly dominant over other forms of money in the first three uses, and I want here to explore the extent to which it served as a means of exchange, partly because this is the most distinctive function of money and one for which coined money or a token substitute is essential to achieve any great versatility, partly because the problems involved seem particularly complex. It is not sufficient simply to discuss how coined money was used as a means of exchange. Attitudes to the process are equally relevant. Nor should the absence of ancient discussions of monetary theory mislead us into minimizing the practical importance of coined money in the ancient world.

The triumph, to a Roman of the later Republic and Empire, seemed sacred and all of a piece. Its venerable antiquity was more important than its origin or development. So on the one hand Roman antiquarians agreed the triumph was as ancient as Romulus himself; and on the other its antiquity was felt to be confirmed rather than impaired by the connection of many details with the Etruscans—though the ancients never claimed, as modern scholars have done, that the institution itself was borrowed from the Etruscans. It was simply neither important nor desirable to pin down precisely the dates or phases of such a hallowed celebration.

Of course it is not true that there were no changes. Yet the Roman attitude may have also affected modern historians, who until rather recently have been satisfied with a kind of ‘unitarian’ view of the triumph as something permanent and immutable, untouched by history; discussions of particular problems, such as the alleged divinization of the triumphator or the location of the porta triumphalis, have taken very little account of changes in the triumph itself. Many Roman rituals did, indeed, continue practically unchanged, and it is a peculiarity of Roman history that our most reliable documents for the early period are religious festivals celebrated year after year, rather than written records or histories. But the triumph was, more than other religious festivals, a part of the political life at Rome.

It is generally recognized that Rome of the early Republic offers a good example of the correlation between military and political organization. The ordering of the Roman citizenry in centuries, classes and age-groups was in origin and essence a military system. The Comitia Centuriata was the exercitus urbanus—the army on parade in the Field of Mars.

But by the third century B.C. the Roman army and the centuriate assembly were manifestly two different systems, even if vestiges of their interconnection lingered on. The process whereby this differentiation had come about is, unfortunately, not so clear. The traditional accounts of early Roman history generally failed to devote much attention to questions of that order. Yet the effort to tackle and, if possible, solve this complex of problems can hardly be evaded. The answers given, or assumed, by modern historians are bound to determine how the whole history of early Rome is interpreted and represented.

The varied talents of Olympiodorus of Thebes, which made him a significant personality of his own age, deserve also to have made him, more than he seems to have become, a figure of interest to students of his age. By origin and education, he represents the surviving vigour of the late ‘Hellenistic’ culture of the Roman empire; in his political services to the court of Constantinople, he can be recognized as the first of a distinctive profession—of Byzantine diplomats; as a man who travelled to Syene and the distant Blemmyes he subscribes to a tradition of educated tourism reaching back to Herodotus; while in the inseparable company, which he kept for more than twenty years, of a pet parrot that could ‘dance, sing, call its owner's name, and do many other tricks’, Olympiodorus even cuts, to modern eyes, an eccentrically buccaneering figure. And above all, as a historian he claims a central place in a continuous tradition of Greek writing on Roman affairs—a tradition notoriously lacking in western historiography.

At first glance, L. Licinius Sura and Q. Sosius Senecio have many points of resemblance. Both were men of erudition and culture, like their mutual friend the younger Pliny. Both stood close to Trajan and participated in the two Dacian wars. Both received the rare honour of a public statue from the emperor. Together they gave their names to the year 107, sharing the fasces as consules ordinarii.

So many are the similarities, in fact, that the two are difficult to think of as separate and defined characters. There is another and graver reason for juxtaposing their careers. Sura's is often assumed to be largely known from an acephalous inscription found in Rome in the sixteenth century: that view goes back to Lipsius, but was first forcefully argued by Borghesi. In recent years doubts have been voiced, in the first place by Professor Syme: not Sura, but possibly Sosius Senecio. It is time to argue that the ignotus is indeed Sosius, and to draw the consequences for the early years of Trajan's reign.

So much has been written on even the most minute problems of Roman Law that it is surprising to find topics of fundamental importance which have been generally neglected. But such a one is the course of development of the praetorian Edict—perhaps the most important source of Roman law—despite the broad studies of Dernburg and Kelly.

Two primary difficulties face any attempt to reconstruct the course of development of the Edict. The first is the extreme rarity of positive or virtually positive dates for the introduction of individual edicts. In fact there are only four. The edictum de hominibus armatis coactisve et vi bonorum raptorum was introduced by M. Lucullus who was praetor peregrinus—not praetor urbanus—in 76 B.C. The edictum de dolo was the work of Aquilius Gallus who was a praetor in 66 B.C. An edict on metus was issued almost certainly by the Octavius who was consul in 75 B.C. and hence praetor not later than 78. It is noteworthy that all positive dating for these three edicts comes from Cicero.

Aphrodisias in Caria had already yielded a number of fragments of the Latin text of Diocletian's Edict on Prices by the early years of this century, and others, some of them very important, came to light during the brief Italian investigations conducted by G. Jacopi in 1937. The excavations initiated in 1961 by New York University under the direction of K. T. Erim have yielded in the course of their annual campaigns a considerable number of new pieces. Although more fragments will undoubtedly come to light in future seasons as work proceeds, it seems appropriate that the group so far discovered should be published. All of these pieces have been made available to Professor S. Lauffer for use in his consolidated edition of the text of the Edict as known at present; nevertheless, we consider it our duty to publish the new material from Aphrodisias separately and in full; we do so here and offer such comments on it as we can.

In JRS XLV (1955), 106 f. (cited below simply as JRS), Giacomo Caputo and Richard Goodchild published fragments of a copy of the Edict discovered at Ptolemais in Cyrenaica. Subsequently a number of additional fragments have come to light, two in the course of excavation on the site by the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (published by C. H. Kraeling, Ptolemais (Chicago, 1962), p. 215, no. 47 and pi. LV b, c, cited below simply as Kraeling), the remainder by the Department of Antiquities of the Government of Libya. In the course of completing work left unfinished by Goodchild's untimely death, I studied the whole collection during visits to Ptolemais during the summers of 1968 and 1969 and have some new readings and interpretations of the older fragments to propose as well as the new fragments to present. Since the Ptolemais copy has been cited at a number of points in the account of the Aphrodisias copy I take this opportunity to summarize the present state of knowledge on it.

A huge tombstone with two reliefs and a Latin inscription accidentally came to light in 1965 in the fields of Grammeni, a village to the north-west of the ancient Philippi in Macedonia (Pl. XIII). The inscription represents the most detailed career of a Roman soldier so far known, providing new information on the structure and functioning of the Roman army. Its hero is revealed as the ‘captor’ of King Decebalus, one of imperial Rome's greatest antagonists, and his spectacular deed is portrayed on one of the two reliefs. The new find deserves special attention and is published here for the first time.

In a previous article, based on a rigorous study of the text on both sides, I hope to have shown that fragments A and B of the famous Tabula Bembina should be set c. 35 letter-spaces closer together than in Mommsen's edition, and that the estimated width of the tablet should be reduced correspondingly. This is likely to have disturbing consequences. In particular, it now seems fairly certain that four whole chapters of the extortion law—mainly concerning rewards to prosecutors—recur verbatim in the fragmentary republican law from Tarentum. I would like to probe this matter further. Theoretically three possibilities would appear to be open. The two laws could be identical. The passage could have been transferred from one extortion law to another. Or, thirdly, it could have been adapted from the extortion law to a statute governing another quaestio. Schönbauer indeed argued that the Tarentine law was the Lex Apuleia de maiestate. Against this one must set the strong arguments for identifying the Lex Bantina with Saturninus' treason law. Though there is some overlap, the Lex Tarentina and the Lex Bantina are clearly not parts of the same measure.

The Augustan conquest of the Asturias was resisted with all the tenacity native to that region, but under the combined pressure of no less than three legions, this wild and mountainous area of North-Western Spain finally capitulated in c. 25 B.C. On the Roman side the prospect of mineral exploitation was a major motive that demanded at times the presence of both Augustus and Agrippa. The literary references to the Spanish mining-projects that followed the conquest do not specify particular sites, but indicate instead general areas where mining was initiated. Fortunately, however, the gold-rushes of the last century in California and elsewhere reawakened interest in other areas of the world, and particularly this region of Spain, partly as a result of the legendary stories of Roman successes. The prospectors found many traces of those efforts, although in the main unsuccessful themselves. Part at least of what they saw was recorded in the current mining papers and journals of that period, and we are indebted to the work of O. Davies for abstracting and summarizing much of this information, which would otherwise be difficult to assimilate, the sources now being unobtainable or very inaccessible. We may be sure that the twenty or so mines that he noted are an underestimate, and that many more await discovery. Although Davies' list was made over thirty years ago, none of the sites have since been surveyed in any detail and no photographic record exists.

A. H. M. Jones died from a heart attack on a very rough crossing from Brindisi to Patras; he was on his way to give lectures at the Universities of Thessalonica and Patras. It was a tragically sudden end to a life of intense mental activity. Academically he had fulfilled his greatest ambition; for more than twenty years he had determined to complete a major work of synthesis on the late Roman Empire: the publication in 1964 of The Later Roman Empire 284–602 will still be recognized as a major work by our grandchildren.