Ill fortune bore down the family of the Labieni, and an ill repute hangs over their memory. Q. Labienus, an ally of Saturninus, perished miserably, cut down in the Curia by good citizens. His nephew, T. Labienus, Caesar's legate in Gaul from the first campaign to the last, deserted to Pompeius Magnus at the outbreak of the Civil War, conveying promises which he failed to implement, was held in scant honour by his new allies, and met his death at Munda. The son of Caesar's marshal, a renegade styling himself ‘Parthicus imperator,’ invaded the provinces of the Roman People and swept through Syria and Cilicia into Asia with an army of Parthian cavalry: he was defeated in battle and killed by Ventidius the Picene and the Marsian Poppaedius, generals of Antonius.

In JRS 97 Sabine Huebner argued that the brother-sister marriages in Roman Egypt could be explained as marriages between an adopted son and a natural daughter, a widespread family strategy in the Eastern Mediterranean. Remijsen and Clarysse now return to the traditional view that Egyptians did marry their full sisters. Ancient authors considered brother-sister marriages as a peculiarity of the whole Egyptian population and, moreover, papyrological sources do not prove any connection between adoption and brother-sister marriage. Neither the household size nor the onomastic pattern in families with brother-sister marriages are consistent with the usual adoption practices of the Eastern Mediterranean.

When L. Aemilius Paulus visited Delphi after the crowning victory of Pydna his eye rested on a lofty pedestal, upon which his vanquished enemy, Perseus, was intending to set up a golden statue of himself. He determined that his own figure should occupy the vacant place, and his orders to this effect were carried out. No trace of the statue (or group) has been recovered, but there are considerable remains of the sculptured frieze, representing the cavalry skirmish which formed the prelude to the battle of Pydna, and it has been possible to reconstruct the monument in the Museum at Delphi with the surviving blocks and a free use of plaster to fill the gaps (fig. 54 and plate xx).

In volume xx of the Journal (pp. 55–70) there appeared an article by Mr. Syme on the imperial finances under Domitian, Nerva and Trajan. Briefly, his object was to shift on to the shoulders of Nerva the financial embarrassment often attributed to the reign of Domitian, and also to strive for a fairer recognition in general of Domitian's qualities. The following notes deal with some of the principal points at issue, and attempt a reconsideration of the financial policy of the period.

In this paper I wish to discuss the evidence of certain pragmatic calculations in Martial's Epigrams and Statius' Silvae, prescinding entirely from whatever literary qualities this kind of poetry may have. Specifically, the paper is concerned with the problem of presentation, and it has two parts. Part I argues that the poets' published books represent only the last and least important means of presenting poems to patrons, and collects evidence for the ways in which the poems were primarily communicated, via recitation, impromptu performance, and private brochure. Discussion of a special form of presentation, the book-dedication, is reserved for Part II. After attempting to redefine the status of the dedication in an ancient book, I will explore a contrast that is apparent between Martial's procedure and Statius'.

‘Can I fix Rome for you on this poor sheet of paper?’ Something like Petrarch's lament must precede any attempt to sum up Rome in words; only an Atlas could do justice to the vast weight of such a city. But there is at least one compensation: we are describing a city that we all know, or think we know. For Montaigne, it was the first city that entered his consciousness: ‘I have had knowledge of the affairs of Rome long time before I had knowledge of those of my own house. I knew the Capitol and its platform before I knew Louvre, the palace of our kings in Paris; the river Tiber before Seine’. And for him it remained the ultimate city: ‘And therefore can I not look so often into the situation of their streets and houses, and those wondrous-strange ruins, that may be said to reach down to the Antipodes, but so often must I amuse myself on them. Is it nature or by the error of fantasy, that the seeing of places we know to have been frequented or inhabited by men whose memory is esteemed or mentioned in stories doth in some sort move and stir us up as much or more than the hearing of their noble deeds or reading of their compositions?’ For Freud, the city provided the best analogy for the human consciousness itself, an overlayering of past and present events, all capable of being experienced simultaneously. He asks us, in a flight of fancy, to ‘suppose that Rome is not a human habitation but a psychical entity with a similarly long and copious past — an entity, that is to say, in which nothing that has once come into being will have passed away and all the earlier phases of development continue to exist alongside the latest one’.

This paper discusses the widely held view that politics in fifth- and sixth-century Italy were largely driven by rivalry between the two great families of the Anicii and the Decii, supposedly following distinctive policies (pro- or anti-eastern, philo- or anti-barbarian, etc.). It is probable that individual members of these (and other) families had feuds and disagreements from time to time, but there is absolutely no evidence for continuing rivalry between Decii and Anicii as families, let alone on specific issues of public policy. Indeed by the mid-fifth century the Anicii fell into a rapid decline. The nobility continued to play a central rôle in the social and (especially) religious life of late fifth- and early sixth-century Italy. Their wealth gave them great power, but it was power that they exercised in relatively restricted, essentially traditional fields, mainly on their estates and in the city of Rome. The quite extraordinary sums they spent on games right down into the sixth century illustrate their overriding concern for popular favour at a purely local level. In this context there was continuing competition between all noble families rich enough to compete. Indeed, the barbarian kings encouraged the nobility to spend their fortunes competing with each other to the benefit of the city and population of Rome.

Caesar returned to Rome from his African campaign on 25 July 46 b.c. (by the old calendar). Cicero felt comparatively secure at Rome at this time, both because of the assurances of safety he had received from Caesar and because of his intimacy with those who expected to play a role in the new administration: A. Hirtius, L. Cornelius Balbus, and the pardoned C. Cassius Longinus, M. Iunius Brutus, and P. Cornelius Dolabella. At Brutus's request he had composed a treatise on the role of oratory in the practice of republican politics (Brutus, published earlier in the year) and was at this very moment composing a panegyric on Cato. Cassius, Dolabella and Hirtius had been guests at his Tusculan villa engaged with the master in long-interrupted oratorical exercises (‘intermissis exercitationibus’, Fam. 9. 18. 3) for some time during the month, whence he ‘sent’ them to greet Caesar and put in a word for him with their familiaris.

The frequent use of the first person singular in the text of this article makes it necessary that we should explain how the work has been divided between us. Mr. Fell, who was resident for two years at the British School at Rome, first as Craven Student of the University of Cambridge, and then as Gilchrist Student of the Faculty of Archaeology, History and Letters, is responsible for Section A (The Via Flaminia in History), and Dr. Ashby for Section B (The Topography of the Via Flaminia from Rome to Narni). In Section C the description of the road from Narni to Forum Flaminii by Terni and Spoleto is the work of Dr. Ashby, while from Narni to Forum Flaminii by Bevagna it is the joint work of both writers: but the concluding portion of the road was studied and described by Mr. Fell alone. The whole article has, however, been carefully read by both of us.

The mint of Republican Rome was located on the Capitol somewhere in the vicinity of the temple of Juno Moneta. This is one of the best known but perhaps worst attested pieces of topographical information concerning the Republican city of Rome. The evidence that the coins of the Roman Republic were made there is exiguous to say the least. Indeed, there are only two literary sources that explicitly site the mint at Juno Moneta's temple. The first is Livy's account of the condemnation and execution of M. Manlius Capitolinus, the hero who had previously saved the Capitol from assault by the Gauls. Livy mentions that the people passed a law to the effect that no patrician would thereafter be permitted to live on the Capitol or the Arx, for Manlius' house had stood on the site where, Livy says, now stands the aedes atque officina Monetae, the temple and the workshop of Moneta. The second is contained in the Suda (s.v. Μονήτα), in a passage to be discussed below. These are the sole threads of evidence on which the location of the mint of Republican Rome hangs. Nevertheless, despite an attempt to impugn Livy's reputation for topographical accuracy, they should suffice.

To historians of the ancient world, the closing of the Athenian Neoplatonic school by the emperor Justinian stands as one of the best known, and most debated, events of the later Roman Empire. To some, it is an event of little consequence with only an ephemeral impact upon subsequent developments. To others, it represents nothing less than the death of classical philosophy. Nevertheless, this modern scholarly interest belies ancient attitudes. The only direct statement about the end of Athenian philosophical teaching comes from the Chronicle of John Malalas, and all other ancient sources, including those that rely upon Malalas, are silent about the incident. This silence hints at a fact that this study will make clear. To contemporaries, the closing of the Athenian school was an unremarkable occurrence that represented neither a tyrannical use of imperial power nor an attack upon the valued cultural tradition of philosophical teaching. Like all else in the later Roman world, it occurred within the confines of a political system that, when working properly, matched imperial initiative to the specific needs of a province or city. As a result, the causes and significance of the closing of the Athenian school are best appreciated by understanding how the event developed out of its local political setting.

This article presents a new interpretation of the historiographical production of Jordanes by situating it in the political and social environment of Constantinople of the years 550–552. It argues that these years were a period of crisis in Justinian's reign and that this is reflected in the pessimistic view of Roman power and the critique of Justinian's military and religious policy we can see in Jordanes’ Romana. If this prevents us from understanding Jordanes as a mouthpiece of the court, he cannot be reduced to a mere reproducer of Cassiodorus either: while there is more evidence for a close interaction between Jordanes and Cassiodorus (in particular the use of the Historia Tripartita in the Romana) than usually adduced, this is balanced by Jordanes’ explicit attempts to keep his distance from the senator. If the latter can be explained by Jordanes’ much lower social and literary status and his Moesian rather than Italian origin, which made him only a marginal member of Cassiodorus’ circle in Constantinople, the agreement between both men is the result of a confluence of views caused by the turn of the Italian war in 540–550. Jordanes, then, appears as a unique voice in what must have been a polyphony of opinions in mid-sixth-century Constantinople.

Scholars have given much attention to the procedure for submitting private petitions to the Roman emperor. Literary sources suggest that emperors spent a lot of time answering petitions from private individuals, and papyri and inscriptions offer tangible evidence that this was so. But our richest evidence is provided by the Roman legal sources, which preserve over 2,500 of the replies written by the emperors, at least in theory, beneath the petitions themselves. The sheer quantity of these subscriptions, and the fact that some of them were addressed to petitioners of relatively humble status, have suggested that the emperors attended to their subjects in a surprisingly personal way. Even more important is the fact that subscriptions in our legal sources consist almost entirely of formulations of principle; it has been assumed that they were issued to clarify the law, for private petitioners who had questions about it.

No aristocrat of the fourth century A.D. was so brilliantly successful or so widely hated as S. Petronius Probus. Greedy for public office when his peers preferred opulent leisure, more at home amid the intrigues of court than the salons of Rome, a Christian when most of his peers were still pagan, he rose to a pinnacle of wealth and power.

His unusually long career is abundantly documented by literary, legal and epigraphic sources. But the details have always been problematic. And in 1971 G. Barbieri published a new dedication from Capua that raised a whole new set of problems.

The subject of this paper is the relations between Jews and Greeks in Alexandria, that long-protracted racial animosity which forms one of the most interesting chapters in the history of what is commonly, if loosely, known as anti-semitism; but before coming to my subject proper it will be necessary to say something about the position of the Alexandrian Jews.

A papyrus dated to the year 8 B.C. attests the existence of the legion XXII Deiotariana and, indirectly, that of the other legions as well in the series with numbers running from XIII to XXII. It is therefore no longer necessary to say anything about the theory of Mommsen, that eight of them were raised all at once at the time of the Pannonian Revolt, and the other two after the disaster of Varus, or about the milder form in which Hardy served it up. Nobody could now wish to depart very far from the estimate of Emil Ritterling, that Augustus began his Principate with twenty-six or twenty-seven legions, or from that of Mr. Parker, that in 15 B.C. he had twenty-eight. But a general acquiescence does not preclude debate about details which, if they appear small, are never to be despised when they cast light upon imperial principle, or at least practice, and add coherence to a narrative or harmony to a picture.

The following pages contain the results, not devoid of interest, if meagre in quantity, of various short visits to the valley of the Caystrus in Central Phrygia, and to the hills which bound it on the north and south. This valley formed the meeting-place of five great Anatolian roads, the northern and central trade-routes from the east, the highways to the west coast down the Maeander valley or past Akmonia or Eucarpia and Sardis, and the road to the Bosporus by way of Dorylaeum. Naturally therefore the valley of the Caystrus was traversed by many generals or governors or other persons known to history, and, little as history has recorded of the state of the valley at different periods, enough has been gleaned from various writers to enable us to fix the main features of its ancient topography. It was traversed from west to east by Cyrus the Younger and Xenophon in 401 B.C. Alexander the Great crossed it from south to north on his way from Celaenae to Gordium in 333 B.C. The battle of Ipsus was fought somewhere near its eastern end in 301 B.C. The plunder-laden army of Cn. Manlius Vulso moved slowly over it, proceeding northwards, in 191 B.C. Cicero travelled through it on his way from Synnada to Philomelium in 51 B.C. To cut short a long list, this valley was the scene of a fierce battle between the emperor Alexius I and the Turks in A.D. 1116; the account given by Anna Comnena of this campaign is the fullest record we possess on the ancient topography of the Caystrus valley, and it throws some light on places in the hills to the north.

When ancient historians wanted to take cognizance of what their predecessors had written, they seem usually, though not always, to have preferred an anonymous reference to one by name. To this practice the most noteworthy exception is Polybius. In his Histories he mentions about a score of previous writers, including philosophers, orators and historians, a large number of whom are the object of quite bitter self-righteous polemic. This harsh trait in Polybius' character appears slightly odd, when one considers his generally sanguine and optimistic view of the world he lived in and of the advantages which he himself enjoyed over his predecessors.

The movement that commonly goes under the name of the Second Sophistic extends far beyond mere literary affectation. It is as much a social phenomenon to be understood within the context of the Roman Empire of the second and early third centuries as a cultural development basing itself upon the models of an earlier Greece. Evidence drawn only from orations and belles-lettres does not suffice to do justice to all its complexities, and recent authors have rightly adduced inscriptional and legal references to supply both background and explanation. Among them Professor Bowersock has discussed with clarity and percipience the immunities granted to sophists and men of learning by successive emperors in the second century, and has attempted to relate these grants to the social and intellectual life of the time. His account of their development is unexceptionable: the lavish immunities given by Hadrian were curtailed by Antoninus Pius, and the modifications of later emperors brought no appreciable change.