The Surrentinum of Pollius Felix encouraged Statius to play on the meaning of felicity. The villa's prospect extended to Naples and Limon (near Pausilypum), where an inscription of A.D. 65 already attests the name of the family. Nereids climbed the rocks to steal the fortunate proprietor's grapes, and Satyrs tumbled in the sea in the eagerness of their pursuit. A local Siren flew up to hear songs better than her own (112 f.),

hic ubi Pierias exercet Pollius artes,

seu volvit monitus quos dat Gargettius auctor,

seu nostram quatit ille chelyn, seu dissona nectit

carmina, sive minax ultorem stringit iambon.

In other words Pollius was a poet (cf. 39 f.; III. I. 66 f.), who wrote hexameters, elegiacs, and iambi; that is why Statius refers to his eloquentia and facundia, for Schanz-Hosius are wrong to include so private a person among the orators. In particular he seems to have composed didactic verse on Epicurean subjects. In a context referring to the Siren and immediately after a mention of Pierian arts, volvit monitus (co-ordinate with quatit, nectit, stringit) surely refers to something more than an interest in philosophy (thus Vollmer's commentary) or an avoidance of public life (J. H. Mozley's Loeb edition).

Milestones, they are more numerous than needed. They may tell very little, often merely certifying stages and intervals on roads already known, traced and trodden: or, less instructive, the names and titles of an emperor.

There are happy exceptions. From time to time the miliaria, by registering an imperial legate, contribute usefully to the study of the governing class. A new discovery can offer a sudden and welcome illumination. For example, the milestone set up on a strategic road in Palestine in the second half of the year 69: the road from Caesarea by Caparcotna to Scythopolis. At the head stands the name of the pretender, styled ‘Imp. Caesar Vespasianus Augustus’, and this stone was erected by M. Ulpius Traianus, the legate commanding the legion X Fretensis.

The document is variously instructive, not least for the career of that legate. In the narrative of Josephus, Traianus was last heard of in the early summer of 68 when, after the subjugation of Peraea, he brought his army corps to join Vespasian at Jericho. The next fact is his consulate in 70, revealed by a small fragment of the Fasti Ostienses. He followed as suffectus the great Licinius Mucianus (the second consulship of that person). The honour was deserved. Like another legionary legate, Aurelius Fulvus, who commanded III Gallica in Moesia, Ulpius Traianus (the inference is easy and painless) had a hand in the intrigue that led to the proclamation of Vespasian. Both were legates of some seniority. Fulvus is attested in 64, under Domitius Corbulo in Armenia (ILS 232).

A Roman funerary monument was found in 1970 in the area of ancient Corinth, in a part of the village called Kranion (κράνιον), where no other finds have yet been made. Eventually it was acquired by the Corinth Museum, where it now stands in the portico of the courtyard.

Lists of provinces and cities of the Roman Empire were compiled and used for administrative or juridical purposes from as early as the time of Augustus, whose survey of Italy and the provinces formed the basis of the Elder Pliny's description of the Empire. The late Roman period is especially rich in such survivals, the proliferation of which can be ascribed to two tendencies prevalent in the fourth century. The first was the increasing bureaucratization of the Empire, reflected in the most famous and comprehensive of all official lists, the Notitia Dignitatum. The second was the urge to store information on a wide variety of topics in an economical and accessible form. Many lists, which may originally have had an official purpose, survive in literary forms alien to their inception, and which are the work of private individuals.

Sur la Syrie romaine, nos informations sont aujourd'hui vastes, lacunaires et dispersées. Fouilles et explorations ont considérablement enrichi la documentation disponible. Archéologie, épigraphie, numismatique ont donné lieu à des publications nombreuses. Les textes littéraires antiques ont été réinterprétés. Des études d'ensemble ou de détail, au premier rang desquelles prennent place celles d'Henri Seyrig, ont renouvelé notre connaissance des faits et des événements.

Quelques pages ne peuvent être ni une synthèse ni un catalogue; un choix s'impose. Certains points, assurés depuis longtemps, permettent d'être bref; d'autres, récemment acquis ou encore en discussion, appellent de plus longs développements.

A regret, nous laisserons de côté les multiples aspects de la civilisation, ou plus exactement des rencontres de civilisations, dont l'étude rend passionnante l'histoire de la Syrie dans l'antiquité. Nous tentons seulement de fournir pour cette étude en quelque sorte un cadre et une toile de fond indispensables, en montrant comment il a fallu plus de trois siècles pour que la Syrie fût solidement intégrée à un empire romain unifié. De l'emprise romaine, nous nous attacherons à préciser les étapes d'abord, de la conquête de Pompée à la reconquête d'Aurélien, les instruments ensuite, gouverneurs, armée, organisation des finances et de la monnaie. Cette perspective explique que nous nous arrêtions chronologiquement au règne de Dioclétien, malgré le grand intérêt que présente en Syrie le IVe siècle de notre ère.

This paper deals with the relationship between Latin poets and their wealthy friends at Rome, and it has a mildly polemical aim. I will begin by noticing some embarrassments which arise when one approaches the subject in the light of conceptions like ‘patronage’ and ‘patron’. Then I will show that poets and their great friends conducted themselves according to a characteristically Roman code of manners, and will argue that this familiar code of amicitia fully explains the treatment of poets in Roman society. In part two I will describe the advantages—social visibility, literary backing, and material support—which poets sought by associating themselves with the life of the upper classes, and I will try to connect these objectives with the equestrian status which so many Roman poets seem to have held.

In JRS 43 (1953), 77 f. I stated that in a number of passages Silius Italicus (1. 625 f.; 4. 150 f.; 6. 555 f.) seems to attest a version of history according to which not only the city but the Capitol also was taken by the Gauls. I therefore suggested that the same version I should be recognized in Ennius, Ann. 164 f.:

qua Galli furtim noctu summa arcis adorti

moenia concubia uigilesque repente cruentant.

Until the early nineteenth century it was agreed that the Eclogues of Calpurnius Siculus were products of the reign of Carinus, for the name of the poet Nemesianus appeared in the manuscripts and Nemesian was known as the author of the (partly surviving) Cynegetica, which explicitly praises the sons of the emperor Carus. However, in 1819 G. Sarpe first raised some of the arguments for setting the poems in the early years of the reign of Nero, and in 1854, in what Wilamowitz subsequently lauded as a model of scholarship, M. Haupt firmly distinguished the seven poems of Calpurnius from the four of Nemesian. With the link to Nemesian went the only support for a date in the later third century, and Haupt settled the identification of Calpurnius Siculus as a Neronian poet which has remained entrenched to this day. Attempts there have been to upset it, by seeing in the young Caesar praised a Domitian, a Commodus, a Severus Alexander, a Gordian III, even a Probus, but such attempts were clearly heterodox and obviously flawed. Those that were not refuted were ignored, and only isolated doubt remains today.

In JRS XL (1950), 77 f. P. M. Fraser published from a photograph a considerable but incomplete inscription comprising documents sent to the city of Cyrene by Hadrian (and possibly others during his reign). It seemed natural to relate them to the material and moral damage caused by the Jewish Revolt of A.D. 115–17, although Fraser thought that they had been inscribed much later. Subsequent discussion has been concentrated mainly on the opening sections, concerned with representation in the Panhellenion.

This article arises from the current programme of excavation and survey of the Ager Cosanus and, in particular, of the Late-Republican villa of Settefinestre. The villa stands on a hill in the hinterland close to Cosa beside the line of the road which ran from the statio of Succosa, on the Via Aurelia, towards Saturnia. This villa is the most substantial and best preserved of a number of farms scattered over the district, all similar in plan and architectural features. The structural remains of some of these are still clearly visible: namely, the villa of Casale della Provinca which stands immediately to the north of Poggio di Malabarba, and the villa of Sughereto di Ballantino (or Valle d'Oro) which stands a few metres from the Via Aurelia opposite Succosa. Other visible remains, although clearly recognizable as villas, are in a worse state of preservation and do not allow any reasonably accurate reconstruction of their plan to be made.

In investigating the workings of the Roman clientela system in the first century B.C., we are accustomed to finding a complex pattern. Within a province or other area, different cities or even different families inside a city may look to different Roman magnates, or even have a plethora of patrons, who can be played off against each other. For example, Sicily in Cicero's time was particularly richly provided: various branches of the patrician and plebeian Claudii, notably the Marcelli, also Pompey, Cicero himself, and others. After the Mithridatic War, as I have tried to argue, Pompey's view of his influence and responsibilities in the East clashed head-on with that of the patrician Claudii, who had long-established interests in many parts of the area. A great dynast might indeed control a city, though he would probably have some opponents in it; given inter-city and other rivalries he would find it hard to control a whole province, though his influence might be strong and widespread within it.

Roman soldiers were forbidden by law to contract a marriage during their period of military service, at least until the time of Septimius Severus. This restriction seems anomalous, especially in the context of the legal privileges conferred on soldiers, in the making of a will, in the relative freedom from some of the restraints of patria potestas, and in court. Some of these privileges were in part an attempt to protect soldiers against and compensate for the rigours of military life with its enforced lengthy absences from home, often in remote areas of the empire. And so it is strange that a soldier was prevented from obtaining the solace of normal family life through wedlock, by a law that was virtually unenforcible and which caused the authorities trouble from the start. The ways in which emperors reacted to the marriage ban and the uncertainty created by it, and sought to ameliorate its consequences, provide a useful study of the working of imperial ‘government’—how and why decisions were taken on a matter that was perhaps sensitive for the emperor's relationship with the army. Furthermore, I hope to demonstrate that the marriage prohibition was eventually lifted by Septimius Severus, and that this was an important part of the improvement in the material position of the army in the reign of this emperor—who used his troops to fight his way to power and allegedly proclaimed to his sons on his deathbed, ‘Enrich the soldiers and scorn the rest’. In what follows, section I considers the problems suffered by soldiers as a result of the marriage ban, and section II the attempts made before the reign of Severus to mitigate these. Section III examines the evidence of the literary sources for the removal of the ban by Severus, section IV the evidence of legal sources, and section V the evidence of military diplomata for the position of soldiers after Severus. Section VI provides a summary of the conclusions and their importance.