The part played by Christianity in the downfall of the Roman empire in the west has fascinated historians for more than two centuries. The Encyclopaedists in the person of Montesquieu opened the debate, but the latter's subtle anti-Christianity in his Considérations sur la Grandeur et la Décadence des Romains (published 1734) was succeeded by the thorough-going attack of Gibbon who singled out Christianity as the main cause for the change and decadence in the empire's structure. Since then the debate has continued. New factors have been brought into play, such as the annihilating effect of the barbarian attacks or the sense of social injustice so graphically described by Salvian in Gaul and Spain that drove many provincials to welcome the rebel Bagaudae and the Germanic invaders as liberators from Roman tyranny. Salvian, however, was not unpatriotic. He was a far greater laudator temporis acti than Augustine and Orosius, and unlike them found positive merit in the poverty and virtue of the Old Romans. What he criticized was the heartless wealth, luxury and oppression of his own day and the failure of the Catholic clergy to do anything about it.

The legend of the Scythians and the books of Athens, with Petrus Patricius' comments on it, raises precisely the most crucial question about the culture and society of later Antiquity: what was the relationship between the all-pervasive literary culture of the time, with its obsessive and apparently sterile fascination with the classical past, and men's conduct in the world ? The question cannot of course be answered. If we wished to stress the positive and vital aspects of Imperial Greek culture, we could partly avoid answering it by concentrating on a few figures of real intellectual stature in the second to early fourth centuries, and thereby pointing to a number of fields in which the Greek Renaissance saw significant, sometimes revolutionary, progress. Ptolemy, Galen, Diophantus, Origen, Plotinus, Porphyry and Eusebius all in their different ways marked an epoch in the intellectual history of Europe. Even a man of much lesser originality, Cassius Dio, provided the Byzantine world with its definitive account of the history of Rome. But we can also try, if not to answer the question properly, at least to raise some themes directly relevant to it.

Two years ago when McDonald (JRS LVII (1967), 1–8) discussed the strategic aspects of the treaty of Apamea in its ‘territorial clause’ (Polyb. XXI, 43, 5–6; Livy XXXVIII, 38, 4–5) he was concerned to define the ‘Taurus line’, in its general significance with relation to Antiochus' position in Cilicia. This involved the text of the clause as well as topographical study of central and southern Asia Minor. He did not go on to treat how Antiochus might use naval transport and ‘combined operations’ at coastal landing points to turn the ‘Taurus line’ against Rhodes and Pergamum, and return to the Aegean.

The ‘naval clauses’ of the treaty represent Rome's decision to block any such move, however unlikely, by reducing Antiochus' strength at sea and imposing geographical limits on where the craft permitted to him might sail (Polyb. XXI, 43, 13–14 ; Livy XXXVIII, 38, 8–9).

Similes in the Aeneid, like Homeric similes, have commonly been thought of as similes à queue longue, as similes which have one point of comparison with the narrative and a large ornamental development. The purpose of this paper is to show that almost all the similes in the Aeneid contain many details which correspond to details in the surrounding narrative. Correspondences involving explicit details in both simile and narrative I call bilateral correspondences. Sometimes there occurs in a simile a detail for which we should clearly supply in our imagination a corresponding detail for the narrative; similarly we should sometimes imagine a detail for the simile to correspond with some detail in the narrative: these I call unilateral correspondences. Sometimes there occurs a correspondence which does not fit the main comparison: this I call an irrational correspondence. To establish and study these three types of correspondence, we shall take as our sample the second book of the Aeneid and look at every simile in it. Then we shall take some similes from other books and see if this approach helps us to understand the text of the Aeneid.

It is generally recognized that the first cohort of a legion in the Principate was larger than the other nine cohorts. It consisted of five centuries, each double the size of each of the six centuries of cohorts II to X. Literature, epigraphy and archaeology all agree over this point. Vegetius, in the Epitoma rei militaris, probably quoting a third-century source, says that the first cohort was twice as large as each of the other cohorts, but he disagrees with himself over the number of men in the cohort. At one stage (II, 6) he states that the first cohort had 1,105 pedites and 132 equites and was called a cohors miliaria, compared to the 555 pedites and sixty-six equites of each of the other nine cohorts, cohortes quingenariae. But two paragraphs later (II, 8) this number has been reduced to 1,000. This is made up of 400 men in the first century, 200 in the second, 150 in the third and fourth and 100 in the fifth. Although none of Vegetius' figures is to be trusted, his basic point remains—the first cohort of a legion was double in size. This is supported by epigraphic evidence. III, 6178, dated to about A.D. 134, lists, by cohort, the soldiers of legio V Macedonica discharged at one time. The first cohort contains at least forty names, the second seventeen, the third at least fourteen, the fourth at least ten and the ninth at least twelve. A similar situation is found on III, 14507, a laterculus, which is a dedication by veterans of VII Claudia discharged in 195. In this case the first cohort discharged forty-seven men, the second twenty-two and the third eighteen. These two inscriptions point to the fact that the first cohort was about twice as large as each of the other nine. Excavations at Inchtuthil have provided the most eloquent testimony. Here the barracks of the first cohort, ten in number, compared to the six of each of the other nine cohorts, have been revealed, in association with five large centurions' houses, situated next to the headquarters building. This is where it is placed by ‘Hyginus’ in the liber de munitionibus castrorum (3; 4), probably dated to the sole reign of Marcus Aurelius.

During the 1965 and 1966 campaigns of excavation at Aphrodisias in Caria, conducted under the aegis of New York University, investigations of the large Theatre of the city were initiated. The Theatre lies mostly buried along the eastern slope of the ‘acropolis’, a conical hillock in the southeastern part of the site. Dr. Elisabeth Alföldi-Rosenbaum supervised four initial trenches and soundings (Theatre I to IV) excavated on the north side of the building, which revealed the proscenium, the adjacent lowest tiers of seats, the north parodos and the analemma. In August, 1966, two adjoining pieces of a large block of coarse-grained local marble inscribed with a letter from Gordian III were discovered. The lower piece of the inscription was found built into the analemma, facing the north parodos at a height slightly above eye-level. The upper fragment came to light on the parodos floor and was removed to the surface and photographed by Dr. E. Alföldi. Progress in the excavation of the parodos in 1967 and 1968 allowed careful inspection of the lower portion which remains in situ. The two fragments (inv. nos. 66–608 A and B) are well-preserved and constitute virtually the whole block, although some damage is evident on the upper left-hand corner of the face and along the break. The total measurements are 1·53 m. × 0·72 m. × 0·72 m. It cannot be entirely excluded that the block may have been reused in the analemma wall since there is some evidence of repairs in this area. The letters average 0·025 m. in height and are cut in a style typical of the later second and third centuries A.D. at Aphrodisias; particularly characteristic is the form of B, see Pl. I.

The aim of this article is to consider three questions which seem to me to be crucial to the understanding of the late-republican and Augustan censuses: (a) Why was only one lustrum—that of 69—performed between 86 and 28 B.C.? (b) Does this mean that there was only one census of the Roman people held in that period ? (c) Why was the figure of civium capita published in 28 B.C. (4,063,000) so much larger than that for 69 (900,000 or 910,000) ? The third question was re-opened recently when Professor Arnold Toynbee, in a long Annex on the republican census-figures in the first volume of Hannibal's Legacy, endorsed Beloch's view, which Tenney Frank had rejected, that Augustus used radically different criteria for his enumeration from those employed by the censors of the Republic. Moreover, P. A. Brunt has indicated his adherence to Beloch's view in several places, and defends it in detail in his forthcoming book on Italian manpower.

With the welcome appearance of The Roman Inscriptions of Britain, Vol. I: Inscriptions on Stone, by R. G. Collingwood and R. P. Wright, the major part of the epigraphical evidence for the Roman presence in Britain has at last been conveniently assembled under one cover. An Index is still forthcoming and inscriptions have not been included which came to light after 1954; but so clearly is the material laid out that it is a comparatively light task to comb the 2,400 inscriptions of the collection and to add later texts published in the annual report of the Journal from 1955 onwards. The following remarks have been occasioned by a survey of British inscriptions attesting the worship of the Imperial numen. They are not concerned, except incidentally, with the religious doctrine underlying this concept, still less with the thorny problem of the relationship between the numen and the genius. My main purpose is to consider some of the epigraphical problems resulting from the various ways in which the cult of the numen is recorded in order to establish a basis on which to discuss the nature and significance of this particular form of worship in Britain.

A study of the fate of Manichaeism in the Roman Empire derives its interest from three main problems. First, Manichaeism was invariably associated with Persia: to study the growth of Manichaeism in the eastern provinces of the Roman Empire, and to trace the attitude of the Roman governing-class to its expansion, is to touch on an important sector of the cultural relations between the Sassanian Empire and the Roman world. Secondly, the repression of Manichaeism in the Christian Empire was the spear-head of religious intolerance: the only Christian heretics to be executed in the Early Church were Manichees or those, such as Priscillian, on whom the accusation of Manichaeism could be made to stick. Thirdly, Manichaeism was a missionary religion: its rapid expansion in the third and fourth centuries makes it the last religion from the eastern provinces to attempt to make headway in Roman society, just as its appearance in the T'ang Empire of China, alongside Buddhism and Nestorian Christianity, place it among the leading ‘barbarian’ religions that spread into an Empire which had suddenly opened to the Western World. Conversely, the withering away of Manichaeism in the Roman Empire is a symptom of the growth of a new, more exclusive, more localized society, that foreshadows the embattled Christendom of the Middle Ages.

The results of the air reconnaissance here summarized continue from earlier surveys already described in this Journal. The weather was not particularly favourable for archaeological reconnaissance during any of these four summers, while the period May to October 1968 was, over much of England, one of the wettest of this century. In Scotland, however, the summer of 1968 was comparatively dry with correspondingly favourable development of crop marks.

Most of the new information has been gained in the military districts of Wales and the north. Roman military remains tend to be standardized and to form part of a system. Thus both temporary and permanent works may often be identified from a minimum of evidence without the necessity of the whole site being visible, while the geographical distribution, so far as it is known, often suggests where further reconnaissance may profitably be made. Descriptions of military sites and their full significance in the system to which they belong, call for continual reference to local geography, so that the text is best considered in conjunction with appropriate maps such as the 1 inch to a mile series of the Ordnance Survey. Nearly all the features described have been examined on the ground: except when noted otherwise, no remains are ordinarily to be seen on the surface. The records and photographs on which this account is based are housed in the offices of the Committee for Aerial Photography of the University of Cambridge.

Since Mommsen's magisterial publication, no one has seriously attempted to rearrange those fragments of a Roman bronze tablet that were once in the collection of Cardinal Bembo. There can be no doubt but that Mommsen placed most of the fragments correctly, both in relation to each other and to the preserved top and left side of the tablet. Only three variables remain: the extent of the gaps between the A and B fragments, the width of the tablet and its original height. Mommsen's arrangement leaves awkward discrepancies between lacuna lengths in lines 12–15 and 16–18 of the extortion law, where whole clauses are repeated virtually verbatim. Tibiletti boldly proposed to remedy this by shifting the B fragments some 14 letter-spaces towards A, whilst making no change in Mommsen's estimate of the tablet's width. This is, at first sight, a very attractive solution. But Tibiletti did not probe its consequences for the agrarian law on the reverse—and Badian has rightly insisted that this simply must be done. Rigorous study of both laws will, indeed, show that Tibiletti was not radical enough. Yet he must be honoured as a pioneer, and I am glad to acknowledge that my present paper owes much to his example.

My intention is to base the present summary on the discoveries which have been made in the field during the past twenty years, but obviously within the limits of the space at my disposal I can only indicate the main outlines. My main concern is with the provinces of Germania Superior and Raetia, but I shall also refer from time to time to the results of recent research in Germania Inferior. The main Map B (opposite p. 176) is supplemented by Map A (fig. 16), which shows the military sites of the Augustan-Tiberian period, and by Map C (fig. 23), which indicates the sites of the late-Roman period. Each map is supported by its own bibliographical list; these should be consulted when specific footnote-references are lacking in the text. These lists and footnotes, wherever possible, give references only to the most recent literature and have been reduced to a minimum. For the General Works to be consulted, and for the Abbreviations used, see lists below (pp. 196 ff.).